How to go from 0 to 20,000 visitors per month ?

Since the advent of CMS and all the out-of-the-box solutions they offer, you can have a site up and running in just a few minutes

However, although website creation has become accessible to everyone, the real challenge for businesses is to attracting quality traffic that can be converted intothat can be converted into loyal customers.

But how can a newly created website manage to go from 0 to 20,000 visitors per month?

There is a lot of content on the web with miracle solutions to try to answer the question

However, behind every honeyed promise there are unspoken words that later lead to misunderstandings and sometimes even frustration on the part of customers

What is really going on with all this myth about SEO? How can a website really go from 0 to 20,000 active visitors per month?

In this article, I present you with effective strategies, not based on speculations, but on real strategies that I had to experiment with on my own Twaino site

These strategies have allowed me to exceed 20,000 monthly visitors without investing a single cent in advertisements. This is also possible for you, no matter what your niche or size of business is.

This is a rather special article format, a kind of case study in which I present in all transparency the figures on the performance I have gradually acquired on my site

Those who have been following me for a while have probably read my previous content in the same format, including

• ” How to go from 0 to 1,000 visitors ? “
• ” 10,000 visitors Twaino SEO Agency “
• Or ” 17,000 visitors to Twaino | SEO Agency ”

The purpose of these contents was never to brag about some achievement, but simply to make you realize how effective SEO can be, even in a competitive sector like mine in Paris

And as soon as you will have succeeded in gathering 20,000 visitors on your site, you will notice that 50,000 visitors will be more accessible for you, then 100,000 and so on

But enough chit-chat, let’s go and discover the figures of my site, and of course these famous SEO strategies

Let’s go!

Chapter 1: The current statistics on the performance of my site Twaino.com

I personally think it would be more credible to show you the performance I managed to have on my own site, with proof, before claiming to help you in your turn to achieve these same performances

And for that, what better way than to use reliable and globally recognized SEO tools to evaluate the performance of a site

I want to mention

• Google Analytics
• And Google Search Console

1.1. my current data on Google Analytics

Let’s discover the important reports of Twaino’s Google Analytics account

1.1.1. Traffic overview

Instead of looking directly at the current numbers, let’s go back in time a bit and see how Twaino’s traffic has grown in recent times

As you can see from the screenshot below, as of February 09, 2021, my site had exactly 17,757 active visitors per month.

After one month, day for day, that is to say on March 09, 2021, there are more than 20,000 active visitors to Twaino’s site, 20,143 to be more exact

As you can see, my site has surpassed the 20,000 active visitors per month mark with 2,386 new visitors registered in 1 month.

This is quite encouraging news for me in the sense that I’m convinced that I’m on the right track and that my efforts are paying off

As I had to say before, SEO is a pragmatic discipline that requires strategy, but also consistency in efforts

And getting these results makes me want to persevere more to achieve better performance. This is all well and good, but where does my traffic come from?

1.1.2. Where my traffic comes from

Well, not surprisingly, the main source of my traffic hasn’t changed: Search engines are still the channel that generates the most traffic for me

And here’s what the Google Analytics “Traffic Channel” report reveals about it

Google Analytics classifies traffic sources into 5 categories

• Organic Search
• Direct Search
• Social Search
• Referral Search
• And a last category named Other

1.1.2.1. Organic Search or organic search

To interpret this graph, the parts in pure blue represent the Organic Search, literally translated into French as organic traffic

This is the traffic that comes directly from search engines and we can clearly see that this dark blue proportion is much more dominant than the rest of the colors

Statistically, Organic Search represents 85.2% of all my traffic and this is a testament to my expertise in SEO

Imagine for a moment your reaction if I claimed to run an SEO agency and my traffic was largely dominated by paid traffic. You will probably find that this is not professional and I will agree with you

That’s why, in order to remain as consistent as possible in my branding strategy, I use a 99.99% SEO oriented approach, if only to set an example, a bit like a well-shod cobbler

1.1.2.2. Direct Traffic

Then comes the direct traffic which includes people who enter directly https://www.twaino.com/ in their browser to access my site

These are generally Internet users who are used to reading my content to the point of memorizing Twaino’s domain name so that they don’t have to search for my site every time in the search results

There are also a few recommendations, i.e. Internet users who have appreciated what I produce internally on my site and have decided to share my domain name with a colleague, a relative or a friend

This person will then click directly on the URL of my site to access the site and discover the content I offer. Direct Traffic represents 11.73% of all my traffic, or 2,152 people

And it is also an important data for me because it proves that my site is gradually gaining notoriety on the web

1.1.2.4. Social Traffic

My traffic also comes from the Social Traffic which as its name indicates means the traffic that I acquire from social networks. Indeed, I have been working on the visibility of my brand on social media for a while now

You can also reach Twaino on

• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Pinterest ;
• And Facebook

Although I don’t invest much in Social Traffic, my SEO efforts still manage to generate 1.8% of all my traffic, or 353 people to be precise.

My priority has always been Organic Search, so I don’t frequently publish content on these different platforms except LinkedIn, on which I try to be active

I have to admit that this social network has a more or less important place in my strategy since it allows me to exchange with beginners and professionals in my field

In order to stay as active as possible on the network, I try to publish regularly attractive contents and the feedback I get is fascinating.

To share some of these opinions with you, here is a publication I made on LinkedIn when my site went from 5,000 to 6,000 visitors :

This post got me thousands of views with nearly 100 comments

The content piqued the interest of several SEOs like me who didn’t hesitate to engage in constructive discussions with me

And in the ranks of the neophytes, I received congratulations to encourage me in this beautiful performance that I achieved:

I also try to be active on YouTube with a channel that has 621 subscribers and 245 videos posted

It is mainly content related to SEO to help you train in the field

But you’ll also find content that traces the journey of my agency Twaino

• How did I start my website?
• What was my business from the beginning?
• What were the first difficulties I faced from the start?
• And so on.

As you can see, I’ve always had this penchant for playing it straight about how my business works and grows

This is all important to me because once a brand reaches a certain level of success, people tend to think it’s something easy

Well, it’s not, and that’s what I’m trying to convey through this content so that later on, when my brand becomes a giant in the SEO industry (I hope so anyway?), young SEOs will be able to learn from my journey

And know that I also started from 0 visitors, then

• 1 000
• 3 000
• 5 000
• 8 000
• 9 000
• 10 000
• 11 000 ;
• 16 000;
• 20 000
• And so on

To close this section on Social Traffic, I would like to remind you that social networks are also a great channel to attract traffic. I am aware of this and I intend to focus on it, exactly as I would recommend to my clients

The idea will be to regularly publish quality content on all the networks on which my brand is already present in order to expand Twaino’s audience and have something a little more equitable in terms of traffic sources

1.1.2.5. Referral Traffic

Google Analytics classifies as “Referral Traffic” all the traffic that a site receives from other sites, excluding of course social networks. The referral represents 1.1% of my traffic and has brought me 210 people at the moment.

1.1.2.6. Emailing

Here, it is the number of people who connected to my site from my emailing list. Emailing represents 0.6% of my global traffic, i.e. 110 people who connected to Twaino from their mailbox

It must be said that unlike some agencies that bombard their subscribers’ mailboxes with spam, I personally do not harass the people who subscribe to my newsletter

I just send one email per week to my mailing list to share quality content on good SEO practices to adopt to improve its SEO

My approach is really to help an audience that is already interested in SEO without forcing or harassing

1.1.2.6. Geographical location of my audience

The Twaino agency being located in Paris and in several other French cities, it is quite normal that most of my audience connects to the site from France

As you can see on this map provided in the Google Analytics “Geographic Data” report

And when you scroll down, you can access the top 10 countries through which users connect to my site

The trend remains the same, France is at the top of the ranking with 66.7% and the rest of the percentages are shared all over the other continents

This is a good sign that my brand is also known abroad, mainly by French-speaking Internet users

But what is the behavior of these visitors when they connect to my site?

1.1.3. How do visitors behave on the Twaino site?

To analyze the behavior of visitors to my site, we will focus on two metrics in particular

• The bounce rate
• And conversion

1.1.3.1. The bounce rate

The bounce rate is the number of visitors who connect to a first page of a site and close their session without visiting a second page

When we consult the Google Analytics reports, the bounce rate of my site is 89.01%

A bounce rate that is rather high I must admit. But the fact is that the “normal” bounce rate varies from one type of site to another

Statistically:

• Blogs have an average bounce rate that can range from 70 and 90%
• Content sites are slightly lower, between 40 and 60%
• E-commerce sites are around 33%
• And service sites generally hover between 10 and 30%

Source Cxl

While Twaino is essentially a blog, I still shouldn’t normalize having an 89% bounce rate

But in my defense, I do want to point out that Twaino often has quality comprehensive guides that are usually quite large

When I take a given topic, my strategy is to gather as much useful information as possible in a single content to help the user understand the topic at hand

Let’s take for example my complete guide on ” How to create backlinkss” which is more than 20,000 words divided into 14 chapters. I could sequence it well and scatter the information in small contents

But I thought of making it easier for the user to find the information by expanding all possible questions in the one content. The advantage of this approach is that I offer a better user experience and the users spend a lot of time on my contents

And this is reflected in my results because when you look at my numbers, my record in terms of time spent on a page is 26 minutes 33 seconds on the article ” How to Choose the Right SEO Agency ? Complete Guide & Pitfalls to Avoid ”

This is a sign that my content is of good quality and that my users seem to like it

But what do you think will happen when a user reads this complete guide on how to choose an SEO agency?

Well, he will discover all the tips and tricks on the subject and as soon as he thinks he is well enough informed, he will log off and leave the page

Google Analytics will not only count his visit in the site traffic, but also in the bounce rate since the user didn’t need to click on another page before leaving the site

So basically, this approach increases my users’ browsing time, but the downside is that the bounce rate goes through the roof

I promise to find a solution to fix the situation without changing my style of creating high quality and large content

I will share with you this new solution in my next contents when my site will exceed a new traffic record

1.1.3.2. The conversion rate

As I had to remind you several times, I don’t do advertising campaigns, so my conversion is mainly about people who will subscribe to my newsletter

When we consult the conversion report from Google Analytics, we have 237 people who signed up in the last 3 months

On this graph, we see a slow progression with a peak on February 22nd. Well, the progression is not very perceptible from Google Analytics, so we will use my dashboard on ActiveCampaign

So on ActiveCampaign, my mailing list currently has 832 people on it just from a signup pop up I recently installed on my site

I would also like to add that a few days ago, the number of subscribers was close to 500

But thanks in part to a communication I did on LinkedIn on February 21 and 22, I had a growth spike that generated over 100 new subscribers in just 24 hours

Currently, I’m averaging 11 new subscribers per day to my newsletter. A newsletter that is still small in my opinion, but is gradually growing

I have also set up an automatic notification system on my website that users can always subscribe to. This system will allow these users to be alerted in real time as soon as I publish a new content

As for the progression of this notification system, we went from 510 people subscribed on February 02, 2021 to 706 people on March 4. That is to say a progression of 196 people in 1 month

The system is automatic, that is to say that I do not make any additional effort to encourage people to subscribe

It is on autopilot and people are naturally interested in it, probably because they like my current contents and don’t want to miss my next publications.

It’s also a good sign that the content I produce is of good quality

Speaking of conversion, I also have an eBook store on my Twaino site. And recently, at the beginning of March, I sold an eBook for 10€ to a customer from Quebec

The eBook in question is a 300-page document on the fundamentals of SEO entitled “SEO for beginners” with a checklist offered with the purchase that lists the different steps in chronological order.

Here’s a video presentation on the eBook that you can watch to briefly review the different chapters covered in the book https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7j34Vl6Iio

In February, I also made other sales, 60€ in all. This is passive income that will increase with time

And I plan to get more into creating ebooks to make more passive income. So I plan to release more eBooks very soon to fill my store on Twaino

1.1.4. The types of devices that visitors use to connect to my site

As you can see, my specialty is SEO and my customers are usually professionals

As a result, they connect to my website more from desktops than from cell phones

Here is the data that Google Analytics reveals about the types of terminals most used by my visitors

As advertised

• Computers are the most used devices to connect to Twaino with 69.4%
• 29.6% for cell phones
• And 1% for tablets

That was some data generated from Twaino’s Google Analytics account. Now let’s take a look at what’s happening on the Google Search Console side

1.2. Twaino’s current numbers in Google Search Console

The numbers I’m getting from Google Search Console corroborate the trends I’m seeing in Google Analytics, and here’s what they look like in more detail

1.2.1. Overview of my traffic

On a scale of the last three months, here is how my site’s traffic looks on Google Search Console

Basically, it is a pace that rises slowly but surely with nearly 1,000 clicks obtained on my site in the single day of February 9, 2021 and 51,546 as the cumulative total of all clicks obtained to date

After that, we notice some lows especially between December 24th and January 5th. This is quite normal since it was the holiday period and usually, it sleeps a little in my sector during these periods

There is also a little ping-pong between the weekends and the beginning of the week, which is also understandable since the players in my sector, the B2B, rest on Saturdays and Sundays and the activities resume on Mondays

1.2.2. The keywords for which Twaino ranks on Google

So, a few months ago, the first 5 keywords for which my site is represented on Google were

• Twaino
• Sales funnel
• Google my Business
• Russian search engine
• Keyword counter

With 162 as the highest number of clicks obtained

As of today, the ranking order of the keywords in this top 5 has changed slightly. But what catches my attention the most is the number of clicks obtained this time

As you can see in the screenshot below, the highest number of clicks obtained on a single keyword has increased from 162 to 997

In addition, the number of clicks obtained on the mention of my brand “Twaino”, has also improved and is currently at 691 clicks. A nice progression that proves that my company is better and better known by Internet users

However, seeing an improvement in your click rate does not always mean that you are on the first page of Google. And this is what we will verify with the next metric

1.2.3. Twaino’s ranking on the Google SERPs

To obtain the ranking of a site on its SERPs, Google Search Console offers the “Average Position” section, which, as its name indicates, is the average of the different positions occupied on all the targeted keywords

Twaino’s “Average Position” is 22.4

But hey, we’re not going to lie, this average position data is not very useful because we don’t know exactly which position a page occupies on Google

So we will scroll down the page, to see clearly the position that my site occupies on each of the targeted keywords

As you can see, this data is more useful, we can clearly see that Twaino occupies between the 1st and 10th place on more than a hundred keywords

However, a Google SERP generally has 10 results, including ads. This means that as soon as a user enters one of these keywords on Google, my site will be proposed among the first results.

We will quickly simulate a search with the keyword “Shopify or WordPress” on Google and check all this

Indeed, after the paid result, my article on ” Shopify vs WordPress: Which One Should You Use? ” is in 2nd place

Even better, we have my article on ” Why and How to Write a Guest Article ” which occupies the zero position on the keyword “guest article definition” :

While this is good news and a testament that my branding strategy is paying off, I must not give up. I must continue to work and produce new content, just as qualitative, to be more present on the first page of Google

1.2.4. How many of my pages are present in the Google index?

Before a new content is positioned in the Google search results, it must first be indexed by the search engine. This is an essential condition without which no page can be referenced on Google

That’s why I periodically check this metric and verify if the number of my pages that are indexed corresponds to the number of sites submitted in my XML sitemap

Not surprisingly, there is nothing to report regarding the number of my pages indexed on Google.

This is a proof that my site is in perfect “health” from an indexing point of view

1.2.5. Are my pages adapted to mobile devices?

Although most of my clients are in the B2B business, I always try to offer a better experience on both desktop and mobile devices

If you check the Google Search Console “Mobile Ergonomics” report, you can see that my site has no errors that could ruin the adaptability of my pages on mobile devices

1.2.6. Which sites mentioned “Twaino” in their content and redirected backlinks to my domain?

The “Links” report in Google Search Console allows me to know which other websites have referenced Twaino.com as an authority domain

All in all, GSC counts 1,262 external links, leaving other domains to mine. Well, in all honesty, this is a number that can be improved

And that can be understood since I have not yet fully invested in a backlinks campaign itself

I plan to do so in the future, but for now I’m much more focused on organic traffic and my site’s position in search results.

Also, it must be said that I could well invest in buying external links to boost my backlink profile

But as I had to mention several times, as an SEO agency I refrain from paying solutions and especially those that are fraudulent and aim to circumvent the guidelines of Google in order to improve the visibility of a site on the Net

I have always followed the good SEO practices recommended by the engines for a healthy and sustainable SEO

It is my way to prove my expertise, to show that even without these paid solutions, we can acquire good performance in SEO

This allows me to protect myself and especially to protect my clients from any sanctions that may come from Google

1.2.7. Is my website penalized by Google ?

The purchase of backlinks is not the only practice for which a website can be penalized by Google

The search engine can also issue a manual action against a website if it notices Black Hat SEO practices such as duplicate content, low quality content, keyword stuffing, broken links, etc.

Sanctions can range from a loss of ranking of the site to its total de-indexation from the search engine database

Personally, in the past, my Twaino site has never been hit by a manual penalty from Google because of the ethical SEO strategies I use and that hasn’t changed

In that case, what strategies am I really using?

Chapter 2: What are the strategies to go from 0 to 20,000 visitors per month?

Well, to answer this question, I want to start with this popular quote that says “you can’t change a winning team”

Indeed, why change without reason a strategy that already works and gives encouraging results

That’s why I’m sticking to my original strategy without changing anything, so basically I’m using the same strategy from my first 1,000 visitors to these 20,000 currently registered

In one of my previous articles, written in the same format as this one, I discussed these different strategies that I use on my website. These are my articles how to go from 0 to 1 000 visitors and How to go from 5000 to 6000 visitors

I invite you to consult them to discover the branding I have put in place since the creation of Twaino.

To summarize this strategy, I will divide it into 3 main parts

• The creation of quality and search engine optimized content to feed my blog
• The creation of video content on Twaino’s YouTube channel
• Strengthening my presence on LinkedIn by publishing content adapted to the platform’s format

Of course, for my clients I make small adjustments to this methodology because they are not in the same industry and therefore not necessarily the same type of clients

Even if it is not “technically” a strategy, I also want to share with you my experience with the recent failure of my host OVH

And how my current strategies allow me to weather the storm without major damage.

2.1. The fire at OVH

A few months ago, I switched to a new hosting provider and currently use OVH to host my website Twaino.com.

If you don’t know OVH, you should know that it is quite popular since it manages 3,2% of all websites.

But on the morning of March 10th 2021, a major fire occurred in one of their facilities in Strasbourg, at the Rhine port. Very quickly, 115 firefighters were dispatched to the scene with 44 engines to try to control the fire, it must be said that it is not a small kitchen fire.

So, why am I telling you about it? It’s because my website is hosted in the SBG3 datacenter which is next to the ones that suffered the most damage.

Even if SBG3 is less impacted, it happens that my website will not be accessible in the same way as the others

Indeed, my website is not obviously the only one in the concern. The list is long as underlined by France 3

I have also made a communication on the subject on LinkedIn

So, normally my website twaino.com should stay completely “off” for a long time, at least until the situation is restored

But fortunately, I have been proactive in setting up automatic backups of my site on Google Drive

Even if all my data were not taken into account, the restoration of this backup allows me to have a still functional site, but with some bugs

Currently (March 17, 2021), if you take a look at my website, you will notice that some parts of the website are simply not displaying, like on the homepage for example where my brand logo and a highlight image are missing

In addition, there are many images missing from my content that you will find online at Twaino.com, including even those that appear in Google Images results

For all of you who visited my site during this period, I hope these little glitches didn’t ruin your user experience. This was a temporary version of my site, “degraded” even I would say, far from perfect

But this version will be updated in a short time and everything will be back in order. In the meantime, I’m working locally and I haven’t published any new content since March 9th!

So, how is my website’s traffic status since this incident?

2.2. how did my usual strategies help me keep my traffic?

Although I’m currently with a semi-functional website, my traffic hasn’t been as hampered as I thought it would be

You can see that on the 10th of March in question, my traffic did drop as my website was unavailable for a while

But the next day, my traffic picked up again

My traffic then dropped since it was the weekend and usually my traffic experiences a drop.

By Monday March 15, everything was still back to normal

And the overall trends remain quite constant as I’m running around 20,000 visitors per month

So, why is it that in terms of my statics, my traffic is doing quite well?

Try to guess for a second ? …. Well, it’s of course because of SEO!!!

Indeed, even if part of my website is not accessible, especially the images, the textual content that Google always uses to evaluate my web pages, are still available.

This means that my traffic and my positions have not been greatly impacted in the SERPs

Obviously, if the situation still drags on and I don’t animate my website, my numbers will gradually drop.

But you agree with me that if I was mainly using another strategy outside of SEO, like advertising or Black Hat for example, my situation would have been much more alarming.

Especially since I am currently not taking any action on my website since March 9th. If I were to advertise and stop it, my traffic would be in a very bad state.

2.3. SEO efforts pay off in the long run

This situation I’m going through right now, although dramatic, is a typical example that confirms the fact that SEO is still the best solution for long term quality SEO

And all this reinforces the fact that SEO is a safe bet on which you can base your long-term strategy.

And even when you have difficulties or are absent for a certain period of time, your performance will not go up in smoke overnight.

In my opinion, you can make SEO your main strategy and maybe accompany it with other marketing components like SEA, SMO..

This is the end of my little experiment and the lesson I learned from it..

Conclusion

As I had to mention at the beginning of this content, succeeding to have attraction on a website is not always easy. And this is mainly because of the flood of content that is poured on the web every day

More than 4.4 million blog posts are published every day and 63,000 users search for information every second on Google

The Net is truly a media of the moment where only quality content manages to stand out from the crowd and gain notoriety

Faced with this situation, is SEO really an effective solution to succeed in improving the visibility of a website?

Well, the answer is a big YES! And as a proof I take the performances that I managed to obtain thanks ONLY to SEO despite all the competition that can be noted in my sector

But it must be said that these are not results that can be achieved overnight. By reading my previous articles, you have probably realized that SEO also requires consistency to really bear fruit

As far as my Twaino site is concerned, I don’t intend to stop there. I will continue to focus my efforts in the same direction for more impactful results and even better performance

If you too need to improve your site’s performance for your business to run smoothly, Twaino can definitely help you meet this challenge and get your company’s brand out on the Net

To do this, you can choose to train yourself to improve your company’s SEO yourself

But if you lack the time to learn SEO, you can simply request the services of a specialist to help you achieve your SEO goals

In any case, Twaino agency remains available to help you get more traffic and more visibility on your site

Thank you and see you soon!