How I Went From ZERO to 19,828 Visitors In 3 Months Flat!

Note to the SEO Rebel Community: To every single person who’s ever interacted with me in the comments on my posts up until this point, I’ve mentioned you by name in this post and I’ve linked back to either your website or social profile in the “Blog Commenting” section of this case study update. Read on to see why and thanks for your support! 

Boy oh BOY!  It has been one heck of a month and a half (well, actually about two months). YES… I know, it’s been a minute since I’ve posted a traffic case study. Don’t judge me, I’m only human, lol.

So much has gone on over these past couple of months, I don’t even know where to begin.  I have so much to catch you up on and tell you about. I’m excited to share some awesomenews with you and some pretty stellar results! I hope you’re ready. 

This post will serve as my catch all update for everything that has gone on with me, my business and my traffic since my last case study report. If there’s something that you’ve been wondering or had a question about in regards to some of the changes that’s taken place, this post will more than likely have the answer.

So saddle up partner, here we go!

The 411…

As I always do in my case study posts, I want to take a quick minute to give my new subbies the 411.

If you’re just joining us, WELCOME! I’m so happy to have you and I invite you to stick around with us.

To bring you up to speed, this here blog is only 3 months old. I just relaunched my blog at the end of September and boy did I have a blast doing it! And, I still am. 

My whole goal for this blog is to build up my traffic using only high leveraged traffic strategies and social media… NO SEO, period. Thus the recent rebranding and name change of my blog to “The SEO Rebel” (more on the rebranding in a bit).

This blog has quickly been whipped into shape, and it’s still being whipped as we speak. 

In the first 34 days of relaunch, this blog generated 8,500+ visitors …Usingnothing but free marketing strategies..

Now, that may not be the most outrageous results out here, but I’d say that’s pretty darn good. Especially for a brand spanking new blog.

I’ve been chronicling my progress through what were weekly traffic case studies, which are now as the title reads, monthly traffic case studies (more on that in a bit too).

The purpose of my traffic case studies is to provide a step-by-step blueprint that you can implement on your blog and in business to produce the same results I have, if not better. These case studies are about as transparent as it gets, so I truly hope that you’ll be able to take away at least one golden nugget to start conjuring up a traffic tsunami in your stats.

Oh, and if you want to get the full story about my feelings towards SEO, you can check out this post here. 

A quick personal note

On a more personal note, it has been brought to my attention by my dear fellow blogger, Ana Hoffman, that many of you have no idea I’m currently in college.

A few weeks back Ana shared an excerpt from this blog post on her Facebook Fanpage and I noticed that she shared a link to a blogging scholarship on her wall as well.

As you can imagine, I was totally stoked about this (and about her sharing an excerpt from my post, as you’ll see as you read on). I commented on her post thanking her for sharing such great information. She responded saying that she didn’t realize I was in college and she was pulling for me to win the scholarship. That’s when I realized that many of you probably didn’t realize that either.

So, FYI, I’m in college! 

I’m currently attending the University of Phoenix online full-time to get my Bachelors in Marketing Degree. I just re-enrolled in college in October as well, during the relaunch of this blog, so I have a lot on my plate. Which brings me to my next matter… the frequency of my traffic case study posts.

Because of school, work, and other personal obligations, what I thought were going to be weekly traffic case studies will have to be monthly traffic studies (or possibly every other month).

Don’t “Boo” me too loud! 

As I’ve mentioned before, it takes a lot of hours to write these in depth case studies (anywhere from 8 to 12 hours). Because it takes so much time, I’ll be only be able to do them on a monthly or every other month basis. It’s just too much to try to do them on a weekly basis, plus try to keep up with school and work.

Of course, I’ll still be releasing at least one jam packed post a week updating you with the latest traffic tips and tricks. So if you’re not already, make sure you subscribe here so you’re kept up to date.

Okay! Is that everything on the personal front? I believe so.

Now! Let’s get down to business 

Alright, so I made my first post on this blog on September 24, 2012. Since that date, I’ve published 18 posts that are currently live on this blog (not including this post).

Here’s a collective rundown of my results from these 18 posts combined (Please note that these numbers are rough estimates):

• 8,412 New Unique Visitors
• 575 Facebook Likes
• 217 Facebook Shares
• 226 Retweets
• 44 Google+1’s
• 248 BizSugar Votes
• 85 Comments
• 378 New subscribers
• 10 New Relationships with Influencers
• 20 Natural Blog Backlinks

Here’s a recap of my results as reported in my last case study:

• 444 New Unique Visitors
• 270 Facebook Likes
• 103 Facebook Shares
• 47 Retweets
• 7 Google+1’s
• 43 BizSugar Votes
• 22 Comments
• 38 New subscribers
• 3 New Relationships with Influencers
• 7 Natural Blog Backlinks

In  my last case study I had 8 live posts. So since then, I’ve added 10additional posts (not including this post).

Now, here’s a snapshot of the results I’ve gotten since my last traffic case study:

• 6,643 New Unique Visitors
• 146 Facebook Likes
• 73 Facebook Shares
• 109 Retweets
• 25 Google+1’s
• 116 BizSugar Votes
• 63 Comments
• 316 New subscribers
• 4 New Relationships with Influencers
• 4 Natural Blog Backlinks

Pretty cool, right?

But wait! There’s more…

If you’ve been following me since the relaunch of my blog, then you might’ve noticed quite a few changes. There’s been several of you who’ve emailed, Facebooked  and Twittered me asking about my new brand and blog design.

If you’re just coming in on this, here’s the scoop…

Before this blog was The SEO Rebel, it was The Bus Ridin’ Internet Marketer (a mouth full right)? I thought so too, which is one of the reasons I changed my brand/blog name. I feel that The SEO Rebel is much easier to say, plus it’s catchy don’t ya’ think?

(I won’t go into all the details of my previous brand in this post. if you’re interested in knowing the story behind my previous brand, just let me know in the comments below).

I actually started off calling my weekly link roundup “The SEO Rebel Roundup” while I was still using my old brand name, then one day I thought… “why not just change your whole blog to The SEO Rebel?” After all, rebelling against SEO is the whole angle of my blog anyway.

Thus, my new SEO Rebel brand was born!

The new design for my blog came after my new brand name, of course. This blog currently supports the Flexibility wordpress theme. Before, I was running the Twenty Ten 1.3 theme. Although the Twenty Ten theme was incredibly simple for me to use and customize, it didn’t do much to aid me in turning my traffic into subscribers – plus the look was rather outdated.

The free version of the Flexibility wordpress theme is pretty cool in the way of customization and the huge feature opt-in box has been great for increasing my blog’s conversion rates.  There’s a free and paid version of this theme. I’m currently running the free version so I can’t speak on the paid version. However, the free version is kicking butt for me so far, so I’d definitely recommend it.

I’m sure I’ll change up my theme again in the near future, but for now I’m happy.

Okay, shall we move on? :)…

Traffic sources

Since my last update, I’ve explored some cool new traffic sources. I was feeling a little edgy  and I actually decided to venture into the paid side of traffic generation (I’ll go into more detail about my experience with that in a bit).

So here’s the current traffic sources that I’ve been actively implementing:

• BizSugar
• Blog commenting
• Social media (Facebook/Twitter)
• Guest blogging
• Forums (WF/SME)
• Paid WSO’s (Warrior Forum Special Offers)
• Ad swaps
• Building and leveraging relationships with influencers

This list hasn’t changed too much, but as you can see there are some new pawns on the traffic board and I’m excited to have added them to the game.

Also, since my last update I’ve installed Google Analytics to my blog to get a more accurate view of my traffic stats. Yay me! And thanks to Ilene Smith for further suggesting that I do so.

It’s important to get as accurate picture as possible of whats going on with your traffic. I only use 3 tools to keep track of my stats – Google Analytics, Jetpack, and the traffic stats shown in my Cpanel (you can see screenshots of those further down in this post).

Even though I don’t fully understand the stats jargon, these 3 tools give me a pretty good idea of where my traffic comes from and what I can do to improve my results.  So, I’m pretty happy with them.

Let’s get started with my favorite traffic source…

Traffic candy

If you’re not aware by now, I’m a raving fan ofBizSugar.com. When I say this site is traffic gold, I mean it! In fact, I’m proud to say that I’m officiallyapart of this traffic brigade.

What do I mean? Get this…

If you remember from my previous case study in October, I was a featured member of BizSugar and became Contributor of The Weekwithin only one week of joining their community. I was completely stoked about this; I mean my excitement was through the roof!  It was an incredible opportunity to get some crazy exposure and traffic, plus I was totally honored to have been asked to be featured by such a prestigious site.

Well, the day before my feature was scheduled to post BizSugar’s editor and Chief Moderator, Heather Stone, contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in becoming a moderator for the site… did I mention my feature post wasn’t even live yet?!

Talk about someone that was elated! Lol. I was literally dancing around my room doing a full fledged touchdown boogie! You would have been falling over with laughter had you seen me. 

Of course, I accepted the offer and on October 23rd I became an officialmoderator for one of hottest traffic rockets around. Score! Lol.