Blog Progress Update #4: 100 Posts! [Lessons, Analytics, & Future Goals]

It’s official!  I’ve finished writing 100 blog posts on my blog and it took me exactly 352 days to do it!  

It’s definitely been quite the journey since starting my blog on June 23, 2019. 

If you didn’t catch the first couple updates I did, then you can find them here:

• Blog Progress Update #1: 30 Posts In [Lessons, Analytics & Future Goals]
• Blog Progress Update #2: 50 Posts In [Lessons, Analytics & Future Goals]
• Blog Progress Update #3: 75 Posts In [Lessons, Analytics & Future Goals]

Here’s what I’ll be covering in this update:

• Road To 100 Posts
• Lessons Learned After Writing 100 Blog Posts
• Blog Analytics
• Future Plans

Let’s get started! 😀

Road To 100 Posts

If I’m being honest, I started this blog to be able to document what I’m learning in terms of blogging, SEO, and building an online business.  

After I started getting a handful of visits per day to my blog, I started to realize that there was massive potential to get traffic through SEO and convert that traffic into sales.

That’s when I wrote this post on Facebook.

I knew that the only thing stopping me from having growing and having success was focusing on one thing now that I knew it was working.  So, I committed to writing all 100 posts myself to learn SEO and grow my business.

Well, the great news is that I’ve finished writing 100 posts and am planning to continue to write more posts, outsource some, and start to expand to additional platforms.

Lessons Learned After Writing 100 Posts

There are a few lessons that I learned along the way after writing 100 blog posts.  Let’s take a look at what they are.

1. You Never Know What Blog Post Will Get The Most Traffic And Take Off

It could never be more true: certain blog posts will simply rank higher, get more traffic, convert better, and result in more sales than others.

I started to recognize certain patterns when it comes to on-page SEO and what things make a post rank higher.  Google takes hints on what posts are about based upon sub-headings so it’s important to include the keyword in multiple sub-headings if it makes sense.

Another huge thing that has helped with ranking higher has been optimizing my blog posts for featured snippets. 

I recently purchased the Project 24 course and they’ve got an entire course that explains exactly what you need to do to correctly optimize each post for the different types of featured snippets based upon hard data.

With all this being said, you can optimize a post well but for some reason, it may simply not reach the first page.  Other posts will end up ranking number one though for the main keyword being targeted and bring in traffic and sales.

The key point here is that you need to have enough content out there and posts written to have a fighting chance at starting to generate income from your blog.

2. Backlinks Start To Come Organically With Enough High-Quality Posts Ranking 

This is actually a point that I’m only just now beginning to realize and see come to fruition.

Not every post that ranks number 1 for a keyword will get organic backlinks, but if you’ve got enough posts ranking highly then you will inevitably start to get organic backlinks.

Just take a look at all of the backlinks I’ve gained below with the majority coming completely organically (over 1,000 backlinks 😃).

3. Content Upgrades & Software For Lead Generation

There’s two main things that have helped a ton with lead generation:

1. Content Upgrades
2. Software

Content upgrades are simply lead magnets that are specific to only one post.  This allows you to get super targeted traffic to see a specific lead magnet, which means that each blog post can be turned essentially into its own landing page.

My software DSLinker has also generated a ton of free leads for me.  All I did for this was create a few blog posts to drive traffic to the same landing page for my software and now I’ve got a steady stream of new signups coming daily.

Blog Analytics

1. Google Analytics

Now, it’s time for the good stuff.  Here’s a look at my current Google Analytics dashboard.  The results are shown since the last update (April 18, 2020 – June 10, 2020) that I made and also for the lifetime of my blog.