Hi guys!
This is the very first of the SEO Success Story series where I seek to bring to light some successful case studies of creators who’ve implemented SEO strategies and made it work! I hope that this series will continue to inspire and motivate you, creators, to keep hustling and that SEO is achievable to everyone!
For the very first of the series, I’d like to welcome Fiona from Travelling Thirties. She’s been on board with me since day 1 and I cannot be prouder of her for how far she has come!
What is your blog about?
Travelling Thirties is a travel blog that largely focuses on Europe and Australia travel as well as general travel tips and resources.
When did you start your blog?
I originally started my blog in July/August 2019 with no idea what I was doing and then I went travelling for four months and ironically, I didn’t work on my travel blog while I was travelling.
I let my blog fall to the wayside until February 2020. On the 17th of March 2020 I decided to start taking my blog more seriously.
What is the goal of your blog?
I started my blog to share my travel tips and resources to help everyday people find the confidence to travel the world.
Whilst that is and will always be the primary aim of my blog, my long term goal is to turn my blog into a proper side hustle and then eventually, a full-time job.
What did you use to struggle with on your blog?
Besides knowing where to start and how to set up the blog, bringing traffic to my blog was and is the biggest challenge.
What prompted you to decide to invest in a course?
Having no idea where to start with SEO. I have been working on Pinterest to bring traffic to my blog and while this does bring in traffic, it is not passive traffic.
I knew that I needed to target keywords but I had no idea how to properly find keywords and keywords that I had a chance to rank for.
After attending one of Isabel’s webinars, her SEO course seemed like an “easy” way to learn about SEO. From the outset, the course seemed like it was for beginners but with room to grow once you have learnt the basics.
Struggling with traffic? Book a FREE 1-on-1 consultation call with me!
What results have you seen since working on the course?
Old posts
After going through the course, I re-optimised one of my old posts and immediately it started to perform better on Google. It is now consistently ranking on the second page of google. I need to make some tweaks to it to get it to rank on the first page.
New posts
I have had a few posts that have been posted in the last month or two that have had some traction on Google.
I posted this post on the 29th of July and by the 31st of July, it was getting a couple of clicks from Google:
This is an example of another post that I posted on the 7th of August and two days later, it was getting seen on Google:
The impressions that I am getting on new posts are still very small but it is much better than how my posts were doing 6 months ago. It is my aim to re-optimise my old posts based on what I learnt during the course as well as create new posts!
How has the course changed your blogging strategy?
Since completing the course, I take the time to do keyword research and I no longer do SEO according to the Yoast plugin.
I am now using Rank Math in conjunction with Keysearch to help find appropriate keywords. I have also started to put more focus on attaining backlinks to my blog and have increased my DA from 4 to 8.
Biggest takeaway from taking the course?
The biggest takeaway from the course is the importance of Keyword Research and targeting many smaller keywords than big competitive keywords that are targeted by big bloggers and companies.
I have also started to place more importance on SEO in the hope that it will begin to drive passive traffic to my blog.
