How SEO Helped My Blog Reach 2,700 Monthly Visitors

A year ago, I launched this blog with a simple goal: to share my development experience and build an audience. In the first month, the site had 700 unique visitors. Now, after 12 months, traffic has grown to 2,700 per month. In this article, I'll explain what I did to achieve this, what worked, and what didn’t. If you’re also looking to grow your blog, this experience may be helpful to you.

What I Changed in My Blog

1. SEO Optimization

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a set of techniques that help a site rank higher in Google and other search engines. The better your site is optimized, the more people can find it.

I decided to focus on organic search and improving indexing. Here are some key changes I made:

Added Open Graph (OG) Tags

OG tags make links to your site more attractive when shared on social media. Without them, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Telegram might just grab a random piece of text from your page. With OG tags, I can control exactly how a link preview appears.

Here are the main OG tags I added:

<meta property="og:title" content="Article Title" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Progosling" />
<meta property="og:image" content="https://progosling.com/image.png" />

• og:title – The title of the page as it appears on social media.
• og:type – Specifies that this is an article rather than just a general webpage.
• og:site_name – The name of the blog.
• og:image – The image that appears when the link is shared.

Added a Meta Description Tag

This tag helps search engines understand what a page is about and display an attractive snippet in search results.

<meta name="description" content="Short article description." />

• Up to 160 characters – Anything longer may get cut off in Google search results.
• Should contain keywords to improve indexing.

Set Up Canonical Links

A canonical URL helps avoid issues with duplicate content. If you have multiple similar pages, search engines might see them as spam. A canonical tag tells search engines which version of the page is the primary one.

<link rel="canonical" href="https://progosling.com/blog-post" />

• Google will only index this URL.
• Helps avoid traffic loss due to duplicate content.

Added Robots Meta Tags

These tags control how search engines index pages. For example, you can allow or block indexing.

<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />

• index, follow – Allows indexing and following links.
• noindex, nofollow – Blocks indexing (useful for drafts or login pages).

Implemented hreflang for Multilingual Support

If your site has versions in different languages, this tag helps search engines understand which version is for which region.

<link
  rel="alternate"
  hreflang="en"
  href="https://progosling.com/en/blog-post"
/>
<link
  rel="alternate"
  hreflang="ru"
  href="https://progosling.com/ru/blog-post"
/>

• Improves SEO if you have an international audience.
• Helps Google display the correct version to users.

---

2. Improved Site Navigation Structure

It’s important for visitors to easily find content and not get lost on your site. Here’s what I did:

Added Links from the Homepage to All Articles

• Helps users quickly find content.
• Reduces bounce rate since people stay longer.
• Improves indexing because search bots can easily find articles.

Implementation:

• The homepage now lists all articles.
• Inside articles, I added “Back to Homepage” and “Read Also” buttons.

Eliminated Orphan Pages

Orphan pages are pages that have no links pointing to them. They are poorly indexed, and users can’t find them.

• Added articles to a "Recent Posts" section.
• Linked articles to each other using internal linking.
• Created a sitemap.xml – a special file that helps search engines discover all site pages.

Implemented a Hierarchical URL Structure

Now, URLs logically fit into the site structure.

Example of old structure (not user-friendly):

/article-1
/article-2
/article-3

Example of new structure (logical and user-friendly):

/blog/
 ├── /blog/seo-optimization
 ├── /blog/javascript-tricks
 ├── /blog/nextjs-guide

• More user-friendly – visitors understand where they are.
• Better for SEO – search engines recognize that all posts belong to a blog.
• Deep pages are indexed faster.

---

What Didn’t Work?

Initially, I planned to write articles regularly, but I only published 10 posts in a year. That’s not much, and if I had written more often, traffic might have grown faster. Content is a crucial part of a blog, and without new posts, it’s hard to sustain audience growth.

---

Conclusion

Despite publishing relatively few articles, the audience grew 4x. This proves that even basic SEO optimization and structural improvements can significantly increase traffic.

My plans for the future:

• Publish articles more frequently, at least 1-2 times per month.
• Experiment with different content formats.
• Continue improving SEO and internal navigation.

If you also want to grow a blog, try implementing these tips—they really work!