30 Days of Blogging Every Day: What I’ve Learned About SEO, AI, and Building a Travel Blog
Thirty days ago, I challenged myself to post one blog every single day for 100 days because I wanted Google to finally notice my website.
In the last month, my traffic increased by 1200%, I crossed 1,000 page views for the first time since launching last year… and almost none of those views came from search engines.
Today makes day 30 and I am proud to say that I have completed almost 30% of my goal.
I haven’t always been this consistent, which makes it even sweeter as I analyze what it took to complete it.
I have surprised myself by how I have been able to consistently not only think up topics to write about; but get people to read it too.
I owe a major thank you to my community on Threads who have been the biggest supporters of my blog.
And although my primary goal was to get my website indexed in Google, only 1 of my views in the last 30 days have come from someone searching online.
Even though it’s only one view, it is still more than the 0 I had before, so it’s also a win. But I can’t help but wonder if targeting google search is the best thing to do for my travel blog.
With the increase of AI, and Google now pulling information from websites to provide summaries when people search for topics, I wonder sometimes if this is the end of indpendent bloggings if you haven’t amassed a large following yet?
I love providing information for other people to read, I love writing to get my thoughts out, but I also want my work to be read.
Not to sound cynical, I just want to make sure I am not feeding a virtual giant that seeks to take from people to line their own pockets?
This is something we see happening everywhere, especially if you have worked in corporate america before, then you know what I’m talking about. The world is changing, and I want to make sure I am on the right side of the changes so I don’t get left behind.
As I have sat with this, I have found myself attempting to get upset that I didn’t take blogging serious years ago when I first said I wanted to. I have to remember, everything is about Divine Timing…. but I can’t deny the fact that more times than not; I feel like I’m late to the party.
Me sharing this isn’t me saying I’m going to stop, it’s simply me documenting my honest feelings as I pour myself into my writing consistently. I don’t want this to be in vain.
But what if something happened to me tomorrow? All of my work I’ve put on the internet will disappear once my annual website subscription ends…. and that’s a benefit to writing on social media platforms (minus MySpace lol). They typically have longevity and your work lives on their websites as long as they are active.
There is a positive and negative to it all when you dig deep into what it all intel long-term.
I will keep going, but I honestly feel I shouldn’t abandon other websites and outlets either. Especially since most of my traffic still comes from there. I still have Substack, YouTube, and Threads to document my journey.
I would love my blog to become a great source of income one day, so I won’t give up. My hopes is to one day earn enough money to turn it into a business where I can hire others to help keep it sustained…. and then pass it down to others who keep it alive over time? You know, like a legacy of writing lol.
Because what do you mean this will all disappear when I leave this earth??