My traffic dropped.

Let’s talk blog traffic. And sometimes, not everything is awesome.

Nobody likes to share their own dirty laundry, but truth is… the traffic for Blog Marketing Academy has dropped.

It started around March. And it has been a slow bleed. And as it sits now, BMA traffic is roughly half what it was 6 months ago.

When I look at the various incoming traffic channels, it is clear where the problem lies.

Organic search.

The changes Google has been making have unfortunately adversely affected BMA. And the decline in traffic overall is directly proportional to the decline in organic search results.

We know Google has made some big changes this year. Chief among this is the focus on core web vitals, page speed, page “experience”, etc.

But, we also know that there’s always a general movement by Google to surface higher quality stuff. And, they use a LOT of different metrics to determine what that is. Not only that, with so much content being produced, it forces you to continually raise your game. Especially in my niche. You just can’t rest easy.

All this to say that I’ve begun a concerted internal project to fix this issue. Here’s the bullet points of my areas of focus:

1. Doing whatever I can to increase page speed, including some on-site optimizations as well as a server upgrade. Might need to make some big changes specifically for mobile, too. My desktop scores aren’t bad, but really drop for mobile.
2. Overall increasing my production of new content. This includes more focus on Youtube and putting a video with just about every new post.
3. Doing a full internal content audit to optimize what’s currently in the archives of the BMA. Not only to better optimize for SEO, but to solve the page experience issue page by page.

Over time, there is certainly content on the blog that has become outdated. Not only in terms of links and things, but also even just calls to action. And with all the technical changes made to the Blog Marketing Academy (between membership changes, theme changes, plugin changes, etc.), there are some lagging issues back there.

For instance, last week I fixed one post where (for some reason) every image in the post was repeated 3 times! I mean, I have no idea how that happened. Yet, that means the page not only looked weird, but it was loading up 3 times the assets needed, slowing down all the page scores.

To be honest, this is a bit of a wakeup call for me.

Nothing I’m doing right now is stuff I didn’t know. I just… wasn’t paying it any attention. I was asleep at the switch. Off doing other things.

My content strategy for BMA has been too hands-off. Taking the inertia for granted and therefore not paying much attention. But, that right there is a recipe for problems.

It is like an old-time pilot with thousands of hours in the chair. They can become complacent and stop using pre-flight checklists. Because they’re so used to things. But, then, not using the checklist and skipping the basics can turn around and bite them. Because, they might forget that one thing that eventually leads to an accident. Even experienced pilots need to follow procedure and use their checklists.

When it comes to blogging, I’m an old-time pilot. And I haven’t been using my own checklists.

So, that’s my own “inside baseball”. Just keepin’ it real.

But, I’m going to make the most of this.

It’ll be a big project. It will involve a lot of SEO, both in terms of content but also technical SEO (the geeky stuff). And I have about 800 posts in the blog archives.

So, not only is this going to mean the public content gets more useful, but…

I’m going to use this as an opportunity to create some brand new stuff for PRO members only.

I’m going to show what I am doing to get my own traffic up. I’m going to show my technical SEO changes and other content changes as I do the audit.

I’m going to systematize things, create some new internal checklists for my own business, and I’m going to make them all available to PRO members.

I’ll be making a ton of content. And it won’t all be out in the open.

On a related note…

The current special offer for the lifetime PRO membership is ending on August 31st. The price is going up.

So, lock in the lowest rate right now.

Prices seem to be going up everywhere. And to be blunt, I need to follow suit or fall behind. So, the first price rise will be taking place on August 31st with the current limited-time offer going away. I always said there would be a limit on it, and now you know the limit. So…

Lock in your lifetime membership this week.

And now, I get back to work. 🙂 Got a lot to do.