Increase Your Page Sessions with SEO!

For so many of you, getting enough pageviews and sessions to get onto a large ad network is one of your top goals! And for good reason! It allows you to have income coming in every single month, and you get to focus on creating awesome content on your blog. Today we're chatting with Stephanie, the author of the blog Stephanie's Sweet Treats, and she is sharing tips on to increase your page sessions enough to quickly get onto Mediavine!

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:

"I always do my keyword research first. I tend not to make a post without doing keyword research. Because like I was saying before; when you don't do your keyword research it's just like throwing it out on the internet and hoping for the best. Versus when you do your keyword research you can be intentional!"

Discussed in this episode...

Why is Figuring Out Your Target Audience Such a Big Deal?

Finding your target audience is such a strong marketing tactic no matter which business you're in! In Stephanie's case, she needed to figure out what type of recipes her audience was excited about because that's the whole point of having a food blog. In order to be intentional with the recipes she was putting out, she needed to figure out who her audience was.

A way she was able to do this was to visualize her "ideal reader". Who were they as a person? For Stephanie this person is Amanda. She's in her late 20s or early 30s. She has two kids and she loves to bake, but she's not very good at it. She loves it though and loves to make decadent types of desserts. Creating this specific avatar in your head of who you're creating content for is so extremely helpful! Be really, really specific about things. What do they do for a living? Where do they vacation? What is their favorite way to spend a Saturday?

This may feel a little crazy at first, but the data doesn't lie! After a while of visualizing and writing for 'Amanda', Stephanie's audience (the people tagging her on their socials, making her recipes, and her blog) were exactly her target audience! The people she was attracting were who she had already been creating content for. When we put out the content for the audience we want, that audience is going to find it!

What Does it Mean to Optimize the Back End of Your Website?

Stephanie can speak specifically about food blogs, but everything changed for her when the back end of her blog was optimized. This has a big part to play if you want to increase your page sessions. Google wants to make sure people will have a good experience on your site, so things like site speed and navigability make a difference!

First, Stephanie used the Feast plugin. Feast also has five free themes, geared toward food bloggers, that are optimized in a way to make your site fast and easy to get around. It was easy enough that Stephanie was able to do everything herself!

She also uses WP Rocket to help even more with page speed. This took her page speed from a 22 to the high 90s.

What is the Difference Between Pageviews and Sessions?

Page views are when one person goes to multiple different pages. You're going to have a much higher amount of page views!

Page sessions are one user on your page. It's the one person on multiple pages of your blog, and that is what MediaVine pays attention to. It's also what Google Analytics tracks.

Stephanie's Favorite Keyword Tool to Increase Your Page Sessions

Stephanie had been using the free version of SEMrush, which gave her ten free searches a day. After an SEO guru tipped her off to Keysearch she has never gone back! Not only is it significantly cheaper than the paid version of SEMrush, Keysearch uses Google data for all the keyword research whereas most alternative tools use third-party data. So you get more accurate keyword research information through Keysearch!

Also Discussed:

• What are Google web stories, and how do we use them?
• What made Stephanie decide she really needed to focus on growing the pageviews on her blog?
• Should we focus on growing our social media or upping our page views first?
• How Stephanie went from 10,000 page sessions a month, to 50,000 in a matter of 2 months!
• Ways to stay creative while also always starting with keyword research.

 

Resources Mentioned

• Shift
• The Profitable Blogger Society
• stephaniessweets.com
• Feast Plugin
• WP Rocket
• Eat Talk Blog Podcast
• The Blogger Millionaire Podcast
• Keysearch Use code KSDISC for 20% off!

More about Stephanie:

Stephanie is a full-time decadent dessert food blogger. She started her food blog in January 2020 and has grown to 100k Instagram followers and has grown to 180k page sessions on her blog!

• Check out Stephanie's Instagram
• Follow her on Pinterest