Let’s face it, 2020 was not a year like the others and I hope 2021 will bring us some nice surprises. 🙂 Personally, I think it will be a great year for Twaino | SEO Agency with many achievements.
I’d like to take this opportunity to offer you this little recap of the year and conclude with my projections for the year 2021
We will have the opportunity to talk about the following elements
- The evolution of my organic traffic and my positions
- The number of contents published
- The tools I had the opportunity to create on my website
- My certifications and the conferences I had to attend
- My projections for 2021.
So, ready to discover the numbers of my SEO Agency? Let’s go !
Chapter 1: How my traffic will change in 2019 and 2020
To better appreciate my traffic in 2020, let’s take a quick look at my traffic in 2019 for my site https://www.twaino.com/
1.1. my traffic in 2019 vs 2020
Using Google Analytics, here’s how my traffic looks for 2019
I launched my website in April 2019 and waited 3 months before I started getting my first visitors
On December 31, 2019, I had 3,940 monthly users on my website.
With the following numbers for the year
- Users: 11,934
- New users: 11 816
- Sessions: 14 822
- Page views: 23,031
- Number of sessions per user: 1.24
- Pages/Session: 1.55
- Average session length: 1 minute 25 seconds
- Bounce rate: 80.58
- Portion of returning visitors: 9.5
All this from scratch, 8 months ago. And if you want to discover the strategies I have put in place, feel free to check out my series of articles
- How to go from 0 to 1,000 monthly visitors
- How to go from 1 000 to 2 000 monthly visitors
- How to go from 3 000 to 4 000 monthly visitors
- How to go from 5,000 to 6,000 monthly visitors in 2 weeks?
What about 2020?
Still using Google Analytics, here’s how my traffic looks
At the beginning of the year, I had a nice growth until April 2020. That is to say just 1 year after the launch of my website where I reached 10 729 users per month :
Following this performance, I experienced a significant decline in my traffic:
From 10,729 monthly users, I dropped to 6,559 users, a drop of about 39%. This situation has 3 main causes namely
1.1.1. I was less regular in my publications
It was a period when I had to deal with several client files. Therefore, I published less on my website Twaino :
On the image from my back office, you can see that I did not publish anything in April 2020 and that there was only one publication in May. A decrease in the publication rhythm that has materialized directly in my results
Hence the importance of regularity or consistency in SEO, even if it is difficult when you have other issues to manage, such as customer satisfaction.
A drop in traffic that could have been easily compensated by an important advertising budget. A choice that I did not make, because since the beginning, I wish to make my agency grow 100% organically insofar as it is the service that I sell to my customers.
1.1.2. The COVID pandemic and containment
As I’ve had occasion to say, 2020 was a time like no other. And the confinements have profoundly disrupted everyone’s habits, which has materialized concretely on my traffic numbers as well.
1.2.3. The Google update in May 2020
First of all, I would like to specify that it is absolutely not a certainty
Indeed, Google has made an update, in the same month that I experienced my drop. And it must be said that there was a major upheaval in the results that Google offered
And just like me, many people noted an excessive presence of big websites like Pinterest, Amazon, etc.
Hi @dannysullivan… What about Pinterest?? Since the last update many serps are like this one 👇🏻🤦🏻♂️ pic.twitter.com/BbHfellVyK
— Bruno Dangelo (@porteseo) May 22, 2020
And Amazon
The May 2020 Core Update rollout is complete.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) May 18, 2020
Obviously, there are always winners and losers with any update. Since I really wasn’t active on my website, it’s possible that my traffic drop was accelerated by these disruptions.
These are the three different reasons why my traffic dropped significantly
So how did I turn things around?
I went back to the same approach that helped me get my website off the ground a few months ago, which was to focus forces on creating quality content that was truly useful to visitors.
I went from about two articles per month to sometimes more than 2 articles per week. This allowed me to find the path of growth
I was able to reach 15,981 users per month surpassing my last peak of 10,729.
Due to the seasonality of my BtoB business, I experienced a drop in my traffic in December due to the holiday season. I am confident that visitors will return in early 2021.
1.1.4. Summary of 2020 traffic figures
As of December 31, 2020, my monthly traffic was 13,521 users per month
For the year 2020, my traffic statistics are as follows:
- Users: 105,981
- New users: 104,215
- Sessions: 127,128
- Page views: 164,514
- Number of sessions per user: 1.20
- Pages/Session: 1.29
- Average session length: 1 minute
- Bounce rate: 87.11
- Portion of returning visitors: 9
Thus, the evolution between 2019 and 2020 is as follows
- Users: 788.06
- New users: 781.98
- Sessions: 757.7
- Page views: 614.32
- Number of sessions per user: – 3.22
- Pages/Session: – 16.77
- Average session duration: -29,41 %
- Bounce rate: 6.53
- Portion of returning visitors: -5 %
Things to remember:
I got a lot more organic traffic in 2020 than in 2019, with more and more content helping more and more people. I’m confident that this growth is built on a healthy foundation, with a clean SEO strategy that will reveal even more of its full potential in the coming months
Good results to be put into perspective with a number of pages per session and an average session length that have dropped. In other words, visitors spend a little less time on the whole website in general
1.2. 2019 vs. 2020 top traffic sources
For 2019, organic traffic was my main source of traffic with almost 74%
Then followed by direct, social and referral traffic. For 2020, the trend is broadly the same
Organic traffic takes a little more space and social traffic becomes less important than referral.
Compared to the year 2019, we have for 2020
- Organic traffic: +11.37
- Direct traffic: – 6.02
- Referral traffic: – 0.57
- Social traffic: – 4.74
Organic traffic is obviously the most important channel for my website, and this high proportion corresponds to my expectations
Twaino is an SEO agency, I offer SEO services to my clients. For the sake of consistency, it has always seemed normal to me to have an important part of my traffic coming from search engines.
1.3. User behavior on my website 2019 vs 2020
Let’s now take a look at the different metrics on user behavior on my website.
For the year 2019, here are my numbers
You can see that with my users, I have
- Page views: 23,031
- Unique views: 19 288
- Average time spent on the page: 2 minutes 34 seconds
- Bounce rate: 80.58
For the year 2020, I have this:
- 164,514 page views for 145,759 unique views
- 3 minutes 26 seconds for the average time spent on the page
- A bounce rate of 87.11
Without going back to the increase in the number of views that I have already indicated above, it should be noted that the time that visitors spent on my pages experienced an increase in 2020 of 33.77%. This simply means that my content interests visitors who do not hesitate to spend a little more time viewing it.
You have to differentiate this from another completely different metric that I’ve already mentioned: Average session duration. The latter can be represented as the time that visitors spend on the site as a whole
Therefore, the time spent on other web pages is also taken into account for each visitor. This is not the case with the average time spent on the page, which concerns each page individually.
Chapter 2: The evolution of my positioning 2019 vs 2020
This time, I will use Google Search Console to show you my performance in the SERPs by considering some queries for which Google has positioned me well.
For the 2019 numbers, I was surprised to see that I can’t get the statistics since April 2019, the month I set it up on my website
So, you will get the numbers from September 2019 and here they are
- Total number of clicks: 9,130
- Total number of impressions: 904,000
- Click-through rate: 1%
- Average position: 25.7
For the top 10 queries I got the most clicks on
- Twaino
- Blogger
- Sales Funnel
- Russian search engine
- Word counter
- Website mockup
- How to secure a website
- Google my business
- Ubersuggest
- Slider revolution
It should be noted that the brand query, Twaino, was the most popular to land on my website, which is an interesting signal from a branding point of view. The other queries are from articles that I created and optimized.
What about 2020?
The performance has evolved with
- Total number of clicks: 103 000
- Total number of impressions: 8,730,000
- Click-through rate: 1.2
- Average position: 21.4
I would have liked to make a comparison with the figures of 2019, but there are only 3 months that were taken into account by Search Console. To make a comparison by indicating percentages of evolution would be a bit biased in my opinion
That said, we can see a clear evolution in the CTR and the average position. There have also been some changes in the terms that allow me to have clicks
It should also be noted that in 2020, I started tackling much more competitive, and much more conversion oriented SEO keywords. I hope to start seeing results from this new approach in 2021.
That said, I’m gaining more and more spots in the top positions of Google :
I plan to keep gaining them, especially for SEO-related queries.
That’s what Google Search Console is all about, now let’s move on to other elements for the year 2020
Chapter 3: The number of publications on my different channels
In this chapter, I intend to tell you the number of publications I made on my main channels
- Website
- YouTube
- LinkedIn.
3.1. number of contents published on my website Twaino
On my website, I publish articles as well as the videos published on my YouTube channel. They are classified in a dedicated category named “Video”
That being said, I have published during 2019, more than 121 contents including 84 articles and 37 videos. Here are the details according to each month
- April 2019: 13 articles
- May : 25 articles
- June: 11 articles
- July: 48 (37 videos, 11 articles)
- August: 8 articles
- September: 6 articles
- October: 3 articles
- November: 2 articles
- December: 5 articles
In 2020, the number of published content dropped a bit with a total of 117 including 85 articles and 32 videos. Specifically, I have:
- January: 2 articles
- February : 4 articles
- March : 9 articles
- April : 0 articles 🙁
- May : 1 article
- Jun : 2 articles
- July : 10 articles
- August: 9 articles
- September: 13 articles
- October: 12 articles
- November: 36 (10 articles, 26 videos)
- December: 19 (13 articles, 6 videos)
From 2019 to 2020, I experienced a 3.31% decrease in the amount of content published on my website. My goal in 2021 is to publish about 150 articles on SEO.
3.3. Number of videos published on YouTube
In 2019, I published a total of 209 videos on different types of content
- Explanations of concepts
- Tutorials
- Etc.
This was the year I was most active on YouTube with many videos. In 2020, I created much less videos with a total of 22 whose objective was not necessarily to optimize the visibility of the channel
Most of the content was about the numbers I had
With these different publications, I currently have 487 subscribers
This number is probably due to my efforts in 2019 with the creation of hundreds of videos. Nevertheless, it should be noted that my performance is quite positive since I have a click-through rate per impression of 7.6% and the average viewing time is about 2 minutes 27 seconds
That’s why for this year 2021, I’m going to push the gas pedal a little bit in order to have a regular publishing pace.
3.2. Number of LinkedIn posts
Linkedin was a powerful platform for me in 2020 to spread the word about my agency Twaino. I shared with my audience more than 81 posts, in which I shared my impressions as an entrepreneur, and information about SEO.
I also had the opportunity to share my 2020 balance sheet on the platform, in order to be as transparent as possible with my audience about my results.
Linkedin has been an interesting platform for my business in 2020, and I want to continue the momentum in 2021. I also want to continue to do “no-frills” and authentic communications that will reveal both my successes and failures.
Chapter 4: Creating 3 tools on my website in 2020
In 2019, I created a tool that allows web users to count the number of words in their various documents. It is my word counter :
This is one of the pages that get me the most traffic to my website. As I mentioned above, “word counter” is one of the top 10 queries that get me the most clicks.
If you want to understand how this tool works, go to the tool pagethere is a guide just below.
For the year 2020, I have created two more tools including
- The Embed Generator
- The SERP Simulator
- The SEO Audit.
4.1. The embed Generator
This is a tool that I had to present through its guide, as I usually do, and that allows you to generate embedding links. This alternative is excellent to have backlinks when you have a lot of visuals
To use it, you just have to fill the small form
You will then have a code to put below your images, that users can copy and integrate directly into their content. They will not need to download the image before inserting it and you will have in return a backlinks to your site.
Here is my video that presents the tool
4.2. The SERP simulator
When you create a title or a meta description for an article, you usually want to see how it would look in the SERPs. This is exactly what I allow users to do with this toola bit like Yoast does:
The principle remains the same, fill in the title and the meta or insert the URL to have a preview
As usual, there is an article that accompanies and describes its features
Here is a video that explains how to use the tool correctly
4.3. SEO Audit Tool
In 2020, I opted for an automatic solution that allows anyone to do an sEO audit audit for free for his website, in a few seconds
Just insert the link of the website and an email to get a global SEO analysis:
You have access to a large number of elements in terms of recommendations that you can follow
These are the three tools that I have created in 2020 and I think I will create others in 2021. What tools will they be? I’ll keep it a surprise!
Chapter 5: Certifications I earned in 2020
During 2019 and 2020, I took two different certifications that I earned
- QASEO in 2019
- Google Analytics in 2020
5.1. QASEO or Qualification of Aptitude for SEO
The QASEO is a certification organized by the SEO Camp of which I am a member
I wrote my feedback on this certification. The QASEO requires a minimum of preparation and experience, since there are technical questions that even professionals have difficulty answering.
The next certification that is reserved for experts is nothing less than the CESEO. In terms of difficulty, it is far superior to QASEO. I will also give my feedback when I finish with this certification.
5.2. The Google Analytics certification
At the beginning of 2020, I reinforced my knowledge of Google’s most popular tool, Analytics. As a result, I got my two certifications for the beginner and advanced level :
And as you can expect, I accompanied it with my feedback which you can find in this article Google Analytics Certifications
To put it simply, you’ll be taking video lessons and Google demos that will culminate in an exam
You will have a much better understanding of Google Analytics and the features it can offer you, and believe me when I say that you usually only use a small part of its full potential.
Chapter 6: Conferences I’ve attended as a speaker
In 2020, I was invited to several conferences as a speaker
- Les Impériales in Morocco
- Edhec Incubator // Station F
- SEO Camp 2020
Not to mention the Lives on social networks, as well as podcasts.
6.1. The Imperials in Morocco
From February 3rd to 9th 2020, I was in Morocco as a speaker at the event “Les Impériales” which was about “Brand&Tech: How to reinvent yourself?
It was an enriching experience that allowed me to network
I give you all my experience and my feedback in this article Les impériales 2020 de Casablanca : My feedback.
6.2 – Edhec Incubator – Station F
In 2020, I was contacted by the EDHEC incubator team to give a talk on SEO. An interesting moment in which, I could present how to go from 0 to 1000 visitors with its website.
6.3. SEO Camp
For the SEO Camp conference, I spoke about “SEO, Branding and Digital Ecology”. Here is my video presentation
We also had the opportunity to discuss with John Muller, and we can say that he was not expecting my question
Apart from the conferences where I did some networking, I also did some Lives and here are some of them:
6.4. My Lives in 2020
During the same year, I participated in several Lives including
I had the pleasure of participating in Stéphane Truphème’s podcast by discussing with him on the theme: How to Succeed in the Digital Jungle?
Chapter 7: The changes in 2020
Apart from creating tools, I tried to improve my website by doing
- A server migration
- A website redesign
- A logo change
7.1. The redesign of my website
The homepage of my website changed its face in 2020. Here is how it looked, with a nice Revolution slider, but very expensive in terms of speed
Now I’ve replaced the slider with a small GIF animation, with a plant growing out of the computer. The goal for me is to symbolize the power of organic growth, when you’re an SEO gardener like me – ha ha
I also added an element that was not present on the old homepage, the reviews of my Google my business profile
In addition, I improved the website menu by adding more items. At first glance, there is the “Tools” menu and the “SEO Shop” menu. There are also many sub-menus that now accompany “SEO Agency” and “SERVICES”
In late 2020, I added an e-shop in which I want to sell my products on SEO (Ebook / Calculators / Etc…)
Here is my first ebook
With a small description here
And that’s it for the redesign of my website!
7.2. The collection of mails
If you have had the opportunity to use my website recently, you will have noticed that there is a pop up that invites visitors to leave their email in return for my advice.
In addition to this pop up, there is a widget in the contents that also invites to leave an email.
The email collection was a process that I initiated in December 2020. From the beginning, I had a lot of resistance about it, because I didn’t really feel comfortable about asking people for something
Finally, I realized that I could deliver a lot of value to my audience from this channel as well.
With these two elements, I have already started to collect 145 emails.
In early 2021, I’m offering lead magnets to increase my conversion rate
- A list of 144+ blogs to publish guest posts
- A competition calculator
- A video on how to go from 0 to 1000 visitors
- My SEO audit tool.
With this “arsenal”, I hope to get as many emails as possible.
7.3. The creation of ebooks
I started quietly creating ebooks since 2020, starting with SEO for beginners
I am currently working on other ebooks that will be published regularly on my website
There are also other types of content like
- The SEO competition calculator
- List of blogs accepting guest articles
7.4. Server migration for Twaino.com
With more and more visitors on my website, it was important for me to guarantee a good performance, especially in terms of speed to my audience
That’s why I decided in 2020 to move from a shared server solution at SiteGround to a dedicated server at OVH.
I don’t regret having started my twaino site on SiteGround as the customer service was really excellent (even better than OVH in my opinion)
Nevertheless, there were a lot of technical problems that were added in time with SiteGround, especially at the CPU level of my site, so it seemed to me at one point that this hosting was limiting me in terms of performance.
8.0. Purchases & moves
2020 was an important year for me too, as I was finally able to move to a slightly larger apartment. A piece of information that seems anecdotal, but which is very important when you work from home like me.
I also had the opportunity in 2020 to buy a new computer (mac pro). An essential tool to not lose time, and to be able to accelerate my daily efficiency.
For Christmas, I got a rode microphone, which will have for objective to propose a perfect sound for my videos.
Chapter 8: Twaino’s Outlook for 2021 – Conversion
From the launch of my website to today, I’ve managed to acquire a lot of traffic. It’s time for me to move on to the second step which is converting that traffic.
For the year 2021, I am putting in place several elements that will allow me to get the most out of my business.
Here is a video of my projections for the year 2021
In general, I’m sticking with the same logic as I have so far:
- 0 prospecting
- 0 advertising
- 100% Inbound approach that really helps people
- Willingness to be consistent: I sell SEO services, I get SEO results with my own agency
- Deliver maximum value / results to my clients
Let me quickly go over the other elements mentioned in the video
8.1. Income and sources of funding
For my income, I plan to :
- Increase my turnover: +100% (vs YtoY) in SEO services
- Start passive income so that it represents 1/4 of my turnover
- Launch a collection of books on SEO (which I have already started)
- Launching an online training on SEO
As far as funding for all these projects is concerned, I don’t plan to raise money. Instead, I plan to use Twaino’s own funds to launch my various projects.
8.2. My certifications and content creation
Like everyone else, I’m always learning and this year I plan to get the CESEO that I mentioned above.
As for content creation, which is my main tool to get visibility, I plan to
- Create over 150 SEO articles for my blog: I’ve already started with a series of SEO definitions. But rest assured, I still plan to keep the quality up.
- Professionalize my video approach (YouTube) and be more regular by publishing 50 videos
- Create free tools to help people (2-3 tools): I have already created 4 and I plan to add more
- Create more infographics to make SEO less boring with a goal of 50 SEO infographics
- Create a routine to feed my newsletter: 1 email every month minimum
- 1 to 2 posts per week on Linkedin, to keep telling my entrepreneurial adventures.
8.3. The branding of Twaino
For this year 2021, I will start creating a new type of content that I couldn’t at the beginning: My own business cases
As a result, I’ll be doing client business cases to showcase the SEO results I’ve achieved with them
Outside of the business cases, I will:
- Present my service offerings in video format
- Make Twaino an exemplary company in terms of ecology
- Plant more trees, because it’s cool (and it will allow me to look my children in the eye, if one day I have them – ha ha?)
8.4. Building my team
I have my little freelance team that helps me with the creation and publication of my content. For 2021, my goal is to strengthen it and improve my internal process so that everyone is efficient
In addition, I will do a study to investigate the pros and cons of having junior and senior interns within Twaino.
On my own level, I will overcome my blatant disinterest in paperwork.
8.5. A greener, more efficient website
I’ve been working since the beginning to have a website that is fast and ultra-light. I continue on the same way to make Twaino.com as light as possible.
And to stay in a green logic, I intend to identify and implement the most efficient and energy saving web solutions to have the lowest possible carbon impact for my Twaino website!
8.6. Increase the number of my subscribers
Currently, my subscribers on the different platforms are :
- Linkedin: 8K
- Linkedin Page Twaino: 420
- YouTube: 456
- Newsletter: 145
For 2021, I want to continue my momentum, by getting more visibility in a natural way, and therefore without using robots and without buying followers:
- Linkedin : 10 000 followers
- Linkedin – Twaino page : 1 000
- YouTube : 1000 subscribers
- Newsletter : 1500 subscribers
8.7. The various purchases to make
I’ll have to break my piggy bank to buy some good equipment for my videos: Camera / lights (since it costs a lot). This will allow me to improve the quality of the videos I will publish on my channel and that you will probably find on my website.
Most important:
- Buy myself 3 more red Bubba Gump caps
- Continue to reforest my apartment ?
8.8. Personal
My resolutions for 2021 are to
- Start working out (the biggest challenge for me on this list)
- Eat less meat
- Go to Brazil to visit my mother-in-law?
So that’s a big program… ?
And you, what are your plans for 2021?
