What Separates Bloggers who Grow from Bloggers who Plateau

This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase with one of these links, I recieve a small commission at no additional cost to you. Read the full Affiliate Policy.

Picture this for a moment: Two bloggers start on the same day. They have the same amount of free time, the same enthusiasm, the same “I’m going to make this work” vibe and energy and squee. A year later, Blogger A has doubled her traffic. And Blogger B is sitting basically exactly where she started.

It’s not necessarily talent, nor is it necessarily luck. It’s not that one of them just happened to write a post that went viral.

I reckon it comes down to a handful of habits, while the other blogger was doing something that felt just as productive but wasn’t actually moving the numbers.

I wanna suggest there are a few things that can make the difference between Blogger A and Blogger B.

1. Consistency vs sporadic posting
2. Learning and applying SEO vs winging it
3. Having accountability vs going it alone
4. Treating it like it matters vs waiting for motivation

4 Things Bloggers who Grow do for their blogs

Consistency vs sporadic posting

The blogger who grows posts on a schedule she can actually stick to, even if that schedule is just once a week, has grown her blog so much more than the blogger who posts in bursts; six posts one month, then nothing for six weeks, because life got busy or motivation dipped.

And I’m not saying you have to post all the time, every day or even every week. But a blogger who regularly puts out new content in their niche is going to have so many more opportunities to be seen than the blogger who doesn’t.

💡 Check out: Grow Your Blog by 36,500% in One Year: How She Did It

Learning and applying SEO vs winging it

Blogger A, who grows, treats SEO as an ongoing skill, not a box she ticked once, is paying attention to what people are actually searching for, adjusting her titles and headings, and checking in on how her posts are performing.

And then Blogger B who has plateaued her blog is still writing purely from inspiration and hope, crossing her fingers that the right people find it. Passion is a great starting point; it really is. And you need that when you start … but it’s not a strategy.

Having accountability vs going it alone

This one really helped me when I was a fresh blogger. But Blogger A, over the course of that one year, usually has someone, or a group of someones, checking in on her progress. A coach, a mastermind, a membership, a group of other bloggers, or even just one blogging friend she’s accountable to.

Blogger B is going at it alone. And blogging solo is hard to sustain, because there’s nobody noticing when you go quiet, nobody to bounce blog post ideas off when a post isn’t working, and nobody celebrating the wins with you either.

Treating it like it matters vs waiting for motivation

Blogger A shows up on the days she doesn’t feel like it, even when she doesn’t have time to write a full blog post.

She’s built blogging into her routine the same way she’d build in anything else that matters to her, rather than treating it as something she’ll get to when inspiration strikes. Yes, she might only get a few things done in that set-aside time, but even the little actions like fixing a broken link, or updating a blog post, or jotting down a few ideas is going to move her in the right direction.

Meanwhile, Blogger B is still waiting to feel motivated before she’ll sit down and write. And motivation, as anyone who’s tried to rely on it will tell you, is famously unreliable.

None of this is about who’s more talented

I want to be really clear about this: none of the bloggers who grow their sites are growing because they’re naturally better writers, or because they got lucky with the algorithm, or they have a huge team. It often really does come down to habits, repeated over time, and mostly pretty boring ones at that!

I had to learn this the hard way myself. I didn’t properly get my head around SEO until years into my own blogging, and once I did, that’s when things actually started to shift. If I’d known then what separates growth from a plateau, I’d have saved myself a fair few years of wondering why nothing was working.

It made all the difference to me, moving from being Blogger B to Blogger A. And now I’m at a place with my blog that I actually love.

---

Psst, if you’ve read this thinking “yep, that’s the accountability bit I’m missing,” that’s exactly what The Blogging Room is there for. Monthly masterclasses, a community that actually checks in, and someone in your corner while you figure the rest out. Come say hello.