Grow traffic by 100k

[t2van]

I'm not a journey thread person, in all honesty I don't need to do it either. But in the interest of helping the forum I thought eh, why not.

Currently within work I'm looking to give myself something to do (not that I don't have tons going on - I do) I like targets and challenges. I'm not really sure where it's come from either but I thought hey let's just give this a go.

So my plan is to grow organic traffic by 100k

First off we get a ton of traffic anyway. WAY more than what the tools estimate we get, my personal feeling on tools they are only as good as the information they have. The more competitors in your niche sign up and the more access you give them to WMT the better they are but that's another thing totally. There are "keywords" we rank for currently that claim to only get 0-10 searches a month but in fact they are more like 5k+ in traffic! So hey ho.

Now I could just cheat. I have money, resources, staff and the ability to just get someone else to do this for me. BUT I'm not going to do that. This is on me.

Often we see people say they don't have time to do things, busy, or it costs money.

Well I'm really busy and I probably have no time to do be doing this and I could and should just delegate it to a staff member it would be soo much easier, but no. People moan about money, about time and energy I got my own thoughts on that so time to shut up and put up. I'll give this a go.



Outline

Ignoring my thoughts on tools for a moment.

I'm using SEMrush to track the organic traffic the score it gives me is what I'm going to be using to add 100k. So if it says my traffic is 1k by the end of this id like monthly traffic to be 101k and so on. I'm cheating a little as I already know what the score is - you don't. Don't worry though I'll share it when I start.

Growth will be measured using the free tool, not WMT (Web Master Tools) this is all about altering what that SEO tool says about the website.

It doesn't matter if any keyword I target only has 100 visits if that's what the tool claims, then that's fine in theory it should just add 100 to the monthly visits. If it brings in more than that great. All I'm interested in is the tools monthly estimate increasing.

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Rules

No help. Just me.
No PPC
No Ads nothing like that.
No finding links - IF links come then great.
No social posting
Nothing externally off site.

Now this is a little tricky because we do have things on going day to day like social posting, newsletters and so on. I can't stop that as it would harm the company. But there is no ads going on at all, I'm not looking to take a spike in traffic as a win this isn't what this is about.

But in the interest of this thread and the journey I'm not doing anything other than create additional content.

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Journey Goal

Reach 100k additional traffic. I'll be honest I'll be fine with getting close to half that, but I'm aiming for 100k.

Let's see if I know my shit and I'm as good as I know I am

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Method

Research and write.
Pure old school make content.

I don't think this is dead, there will be allowances of course if you think something will bring in X traffic then I'll be assuming there will be Y drop off due to AI it's going to be.

But that's the rub we all got. I'm not worried.

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The start

1st September.

I'm just writing this out now. No research will be done until then the 1st is when the clock starts ticking.

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Timeframe

12 months.

Yup 1 whole year. No churn and burn. Take it slow, make it work. In an ideal world id like to see growth climb 25k every 3 months or so but seeing how I do. The end goal is September 1st 2026

 

[t2van]

Ok so just a working day away. This is where SEMrush has my "organic" traffic at a pathetic 11.5k* with apparently +37% growth**

So this is the only metric I'll be following, not going to use search console or share that info. Just that one box there. The aim is to get that to show 115k+

I'm not paying for it, I'm just using the free daily tool to show stats.

Will share the organic traffic box at the end of each month.



I'm personally excited for it as this will be a public case of does going after long hanging fruit work or have any impact on that tool and it's results. Do the results of "Keyword traffic estimators" actually tally up. i.e if I hit no.1 for a KW with 1000 search volume, do I add 1000 to that score and so on. I think we all know that's not the case.

Let's see how much effort and time it actually takes...



* Can assure you we get way more than that BUT that's not what this is about.
** I think that +X% stat is based on the previous day as it fluctuates ALOT

 

[roydan]

I think that the +% stat is last 30 days vs previous 30 days. It fluctuates so much because it's based on two metrics that are updated in random intervals:
1. Ranking per country
2. Search volume per country
Both are updated in intervals they don't share (search volume from Google's API and positions whenever they check these keywords on SERP) so even if only one keyword was updated yesterday, is can potentially create a big difference.

I'm excited for this journey! Best of luck!

 

[t2van]

I think that the +% stat is last 30 days vs previous 30 days. It fluctuates so much because it's based on two metrics that are updated in random intervals:
1. Ranking per country
2. Search volume per country
Both are updated in intervals they don't share (search volume from Google's API and positions whenever they check these keywords on SERP) so even if only one keyword was updated yesterday, is can potentially create a big difference.

I'm excited for this journey! Best of luck!

Yeah, that might be right.

I can never work it out as some days I've seen it jump to 90% then down 50%+ the following. It's so random.

That's why I don't hold much faith in these tools I think if your in a super high end niche, say finance,e and there is a ton of big companies tied into that software sharing loads of WMT info and whatnot, then the free tools are much more accurate. At least that's my take on it.

Come Monday (or at least 1 day next week) I'll share the start of a plan

 

[t2van]

Ok so Monday 1st September 2025

I'll start by saying I don't normally write for "keywords" or tools but I figure that's all everyone sprouts on about so let's start there and see what happens.

So anyone can do this I've started a new Ahrefs subscriber plan and Chat GPT so my outlay so far is £27 inc VAT for Ahrefs and whatever GPT is $20?

Biggest pain in the backside with the subscriber plan is you can't export keywords so that's going to be "fun" to work around and problem solve.

I'm in the gardening sector. Those who know me or want to know more can DM to find out exactly what I do (I may not share, though it depends on how active you are here and or if I like you! )

My base thinking for this I want to hit 100k additional search traffic based on tools so if I break that down into articles that get 1000 searches a month:

100,000 / 1000 = 100 articles

That's 100 articles I need to rank and need to make sure they rank. It's not going to be that easy so if we go for 100 searches a month:

100,000 / 100 = 1000 articles

Little bit more doable. I don't trust the data from the tools so I suspect some of these terms (knowing my industry) will get FAR higher results than they are estimating but it's all to do with fudging the free tool traffic esterimor so hey ho.

There will also be a good % of that traffic lost due to your ranking possition and of course any AI results that come up for it. So I think aiming for 100 searches doesn't give me much freedom or room to operate. I think I'm going to go with 300 as my target traffic number.

So:

100,000 traffic goal / 300 = 333 articles

333 articles / 12 months = 27.75 (lets round up and call it 28)

I need to be publishing 28 articles per month

That's writing 7 per week.

I can do 7 that's 1 a day? Easy enough?



First thing I done was put my main "keyword" into Ahrefs and then filtered that search volume to 100-500 searches per month:

Bit shit to be honest

It's given me 9 and we rank for 3 of them already (in no.1 spot the rest are in the top 15) starting to wish I never bought the tool now.

Now I'm starting to run into my first big problem:

The site is already ranking and does really well both as a business and with traffic. I already rank for a ton of terms. I could focus on "improving" the content but I don't really belive in that method whats working is wroking and the old, if it's not broken don't fix it applies. If I start heading for traffic which we have ignored in the 0-10 range that's going to be a possible 10,000 articles 833 a month or 208 a week. I got a job and life I can't dedicated that much time to doing that.

Plus there is a fine line of what I can produce that does not already tip toe on what's out there now currently.

Personally this is where focusing on a keyword tucks you up. I've only entered 1 (our top level keyword) and I'm already starting to feel deflated.

Using the main keyword Ahref also has search questions that people ask. That gives me 442 questions to work with BUT only 12 of those has 20 or more search traffic per month infact the top question has an estimated search volume of 1. Maybe if I combine all of those I'll get someplace?

Yup a whopping 600 searches per month COMBINED. Shit.

It's easy to see why IMers get pissed off with the low hanging fruit suggestions. There is nothing there to work with and I got my 1 keyword.

Yeah I could explore others but I'm now feeling lost and unmotivated, id rather turn the console on and sit on the sofa...

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Looking at the site I need a new plan.

I can't focus on my products everything is broad.

Think of it this way. If I sell paint and my categoreis are Red, White, Yellow paint and so on. If I only sell Ruby Red, Scarlet Red, It's hard to target those specificlly because the search will be so small it's not worth it. Well maybe starting out it could be but for me it's not.

note: this is how I started all of our exact match product types we tend to rank 1-3 for it does well but your search efforts will be low BUT you end up finding a highly transactional customer so startin off it's not a bad idea just for me - I'm passed this point I've been there and done it

So I got 37 main categories I can focus on, 6 specific categories and 24 ish products that I can target.



My first category search

Gives me 42 keywords I can target all with a search of 100-1000 per month

Those 42 keywrods give me a combined search volume of 10,000 per month!


My second category search

Gives me 41 keywords I can target all with a search of 100-1000 per month

Those 41 keywrods give me a combined search volume of 8,900 per month!


My third category search

Gives me 58 keywords I can target all with a search of 100-1000 per month

Those 58 keywrods give me a combined search volume of 14,000 per month!


So do some basic maths Mean (average) = 10,999.67 (about 11,000) Lets assume 11,000 thats

37 categories x 11,000 = 407,000!

There blown my aim out of the water and I got far more content to work with than I planned. Now I'm feeling a bit more possative about the whole thing than just sat here looking the main money keyword and feeling deflated thinking there is nothing I can do.


Next post I'll share how I'm going to go about putting all of this together. It's probably a long enough read as it is

 

[t2van]

Ok so now the biggest issue is this basic Ahrefs exporting is going to be a bloody nightmare!

note: not sure how it works on the PC but on a MAC you can do different kind of screen shots one is a crop cut of anything you are looking at so this will make my life a little easier CMS +SHIFT + 4 is a lifesaver vs the print screen (all I know about doing screen shots on windows!)

Chat GPT to the rescue and I can put her to work doing some other things at the same time.

A real cheap and nasty prompt works well here:

Can you take these screenshots from Ahref and turn the data into a spreadsheet

I just need the KEYWORD column and SV column

Double check your work to make sure the keyword and SV line up correctly.
Make sure there are no duplicates.

THEN in another tab in the sheet please group similar keywords

Now if you wanted to be super fusy for your own project, you could copy in the Intents as well and filter things around that. I'm not worried about doing that.


I like spreadsheets because once I've done one topic I can fill it in with a colour to know to skip it. Or it's done.

My third category as mentioned, had 58 keywords. I don't really want to be creating 58 articles, so asking GPT to group them allows you to create a more detailed document to target all keywords. I'm sure you are aware of that, I don't want this to be a writing thread or lesson.



I now have 8 grouped categories I can use.

And then a "general info" that GPT suggested for me, which consists of 6 additional topics.

So for 1 category, I've gone from 58 singular articles to 14! A little easier on my workload.

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So that's my plan.



I don't really want to sit and do this screenshot and GPT all day.

I'll do each category as I get some free time. If money was a factor for you or you had a free trial, I think screenshotting and copying to GPT would take a good 4-8 hours (a full day) you can cancel your subscription, ask for money back or not spend a penny if it's a free trial.


Next thing now is to get writing. I'm not going to share that.

I'll update this next time towards the end of the month and keep updating in short bursts moving forward with general progress.