Grow Your Blog by 36,500% in One Year

Last updated on 6 June 2024

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When Kassidy sent me an email with this screenshot I was absolutely gobsmacked. What I was looking at was a snippet from her Google Search Console, showing that in the past year, she had grown her blog by 36,000%. 😱 I was shocked. And then super proud. How do you grow your blog that much?!

Starting a blog can be tough. It’s so often the case that you have these grandiose ideas, and you buy the hosting and domain, and you set up your blog, and you even publish your first post … You keep at it for a few months, but when you don’t see the soaring blog growth that you thought you would, you get frustrated, disheartened and feel like this whole blog thing was a waste of time.

You’re not alone. I know so many bloggers who started their blogs and promptly gave up after a few months because they didn’t see the results they wanted.

You know what else didn’t do? Take time to learn the things that they needed to learn. Disregarded SEO or didn’t even bother. Wrote only for them and not for others. They weren’t willing to put in the work to make their blogging dreams happen. They weren’t patient.

Someone who did the opposite of all that … is Kassidy.

Kassidy blogs over at Fruitful Reader, a book blog which showcases clean reads, book lists, tips for getting into reading (or getting out of a slump) and lots more. If it’s clean and bookish, you can find it on Kassidy’s blog.

And the other thing? Kassidy started her blog in the early months of 2023. And by May, she was only seeing a handful of monthly blog sessions (or traffic). She was getting to feel those disheartened feels, and feeling bring down about her views. But instead of wallowing, she picked herself up, she did some research, and she got stuck into it.

Less than a year later – in April 2024 – her blog traffic had soared and her sessions were 36,500% higher than the previous year (that’s the second number on the chart below – but look at all the others numbers!). You can see below that this is a grab from May 2023 when she started making chanings, and then at the time of the screenshot, April 2024.

I immediately emailed back congratulating her on all her hard work.

And then I asked her: What was it that you did to see that insane blog growth in a year?!

And she told me. And you know what?

They’re not some weird and whacky hacks. They’re not complicated, and they’re not mega time-consuming. They’re simple. They’re straightforward. And the best part? You can do it, too.

4 things will help you grow your blog

There were 4 main things that Kassidy did to grow her blog by 36,000% in under a year. When I asked her what they were, here’s what she said.

Write posts consistently
Invest in SEO
Have accountability
Niche down

Let’s unpack why she did the things and why it made such an incredible difference to her blog growth. Her comments are in the quotes.

Write posts consistently

It sounds cliche, but write, write, and write more. I posted a minimum of 8 posts every month for a year and I think that made a big difference.

It doesn’t sound cliche at all! I’ve always said that it’s really important to stay consistent when it comes to your blog. There’s no point in writing a blog post for one month and then leaving it abandoned and alone for 6 months. Not only will your readers wonder why you’ve dropped off the face of the planet, but Google and other search engines will think that you’ve stopped blogging. When really you just haven’t got around to it.

Your blog isn’t going to grow by itself. Sure you might get some traffic back to whatever blog posts you already have on your blog, but if you’re not updating your site with high quality blog posts that people are going to love, Google is going to stop sending people your way.

While you don’t need to do what Kassidy did and write 8 blog posts a month (roughly 2 x week), you could set yourself a blogging goal that you can achieve – that might be 1 x week, or 2 x month – and try to stick with it. After 3 – 6 months of being consistent with your blog posts, you can reassess and see if you can up the count.

Invest in SEO

Invest in a good SEO course and an SEO tool right off the bat. This was pivotal. I was able to write better keyword researched posts right away.

Learning SEO and figuring out what it was all about and how to ‘do SEO’ was pivotal for me. But that pivot and change came far too many years into my blogging journey that I care to admit. Luckily for Kassidy, she was on the ball right at the beginning. She recognised the need to learn SEO, and she took up the challenge right off the bat, as she says.

Knowing what SEO is, and how to use keywords to create content means that you’re starting your blog so well, and you’re giving that that opportunity to do well right from the get-go.

Have accountability

Have accountability. I joined The Blogging Room right away which helped keep me motivated to write and keep learning more.

When I was a few years into my blogging, one of the things that was so key to my own blog’s success was being part of a group. There were a few of us who used to gather in a cafe once a week at lunchtime (during our work days) and work on our writing. Some of us were bloggers, and some were hobby writers or working their novels. But the point is this: having that group meant that I had people to bounce ideas off, to seek advice, ask questions, and stay accountable to.

For Kassidy here, she found that in The Blogging Room. It helped keep her ‘motivated to write’, she says, and also she was part of a group that was learning new things every single month and part of a group that was upskilling in their blogging. It’s more than just a membership that delivers you awesome blogging resources every single month and hosts live masterclasses with experts … it’s an accountability community thriving in their blogging spaces.

Niche down

Niche down. I talk to a very specific audience which has helped me create better content and grow.

Now, niching down might not work for everyone. It’ll depend on what you’re writing about, how you like to communicate, what lights you up. But for Kassidy, her passion for books, and specifically writing blog posts that feature ‘wholesome, clean, and spiritually uplifting books’, has done her wonders.

Instead of just writing about books, she’s niche down further to write about books that she doesn’t see a lot of these days: clean romance, wholesome stories. So much is spicey, or gory, or violent, that when she saw a gap in the blogging market, for want of a better term, she really leant into that.

If you’re struggling to grow your blog with your current niche, it might be worth seeing if you can focus in a little bit more. What posts are doing really well at the moment? What are people really loving? Can you create more like it?

She’s well on her way to seeing more great blog growth in the coming years

And you know what? I reckon you can do what she did, too.

All you need is the willingness to learn, the patience to keep going even when it seems like nothing is happening, and some accountability to keep you on the right track. If you’re interested in joining The Blogging Room, you can learn more here.

Or get in touch with me to see how I can help you further!

How have you taken action to grow your blog in the last year? Let me know below!