Article Summary

Nelson Isibor,, an SEO Specialist,, successfully launched a News website and, within six months,achieved a significant milestone of 200k clicks and 6 million impressions.

This was a solo project, and the following areas were the key focal points: Keyword research, timely and helpful content creation, E-E-A-T, topical authority and technical SEO.

The site was also accepted into Google News and monetized through AdSense while surviving multiple Google algorithm updates without active link-building efforts.

The Problem

Well, this was not a problem. As an SEO Specialist, I am used to helping clients achieve their objectives. And I can never get used to the feeling of seeing my excited about reaching their SEO goals.

Last year, I told myself you are used to helping people achieve their SEO targets; why not set up a personal project and apply your skills?

Read on and see how I applied the following: keyword research, content strategy and development, technical SEO, E-E-A-T, and local SEO to hit this significant milestone in just six months.

Challenge Accepted

I started and developed a News website from scratch to have a strong online presence in a highly competitive industry. Since starting from scratch, I aimed to have at least 1,000 monthly visitors after six months and get the site monetized and accepted into Google News.

Keyword Research

This is where it gets interesting. Regular keyword research does not always apply to News sites.

When a News story breaks, the people in the Newsroom are not thinking of what word they are trying to optimize. They are more focused on getting the News report out. Daniel Smullen, a technical SEO specialist during the day and a dad at night, talks more about it in this article.

That said, however, there are opportunities to create evergreen content due to the short life span of news stories. To write ever-green news content, my main keyword strategy was to target three sets of keywords:

• Informational
• Navigational

•  Publishing non-keyword-focused content. (due to the fast-paced nature of news, this approach is necessary)

I took these keywords, examined their search behaviour, and generated the content outline to target the search intent.

Being a News website under YMYL means I had zero room for error. I took some journalism courses (you will find out why later)

Content & E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, is a concept in Google's approach to evaluating the quality of web content. 

This framework is important to Google as it helps the search engine ensure that the information presented in search results is relevant and comes from reliable and credible sources. 

By prioritizing E-E-A-T, Google aims to enhance user experience by providing search results that are accurate and come from authors or websites with proven expertise and authority in their respective fields. This is one of several reasons I registered for a journalism program with Reuters.

This focus on high-quality, trustworthy content is essential in an era where misinformation can easily spread, helping users access reliable information while maintaining the integrity of search results.

There is a lot of debate on whether E-E-A-T is a ranking factor. I don't care. What's most important to me is that my readers know that this dude has the experience and expertise about what he's writing about. That builds trust with my readers/

• Crafting News Content: I focused on creating Originals high-quality news content that is both informative and engaging. My content was straight to the point. No fluff
• E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness): My approach was to ensure that all content met these critical criteria, which are essential for gaining credibility in Google's eyes.
• Content Structures: Developing structures ensured consistent and quality content delivery.

Content Gap Analysis: I identified and filled gaps in existing content, providing unique value to our readers.

Semantic and Topical Authority

I published at least one article daily for the last six months, crafted to establish semantic and topical authority for the News site. No A.I content. I created a news-gathering pipeline that would deliver an average of five newsworthy reports daily for free. The content was straight to the point, no long story.

Technical SEO

I chose WordPress as my content management system because it's scalable and easy to use.

• Site Speed Optimization: The site was heavily optimized for speed, enhancing user experience and SEO.
• Hosting on a CDN: Utilizing a CDN (Content Delivery Network) ensured faster content delivery globally. I started using a CDN when the traffic started growing.
• Daily Site Monitoring: Regular optimization and monitoring kept the site performing at its peak.

Indexing & "Freshness Algorithm"

For those who are not familiar with indexing, when you post content, Google has to locate the content (crawling), then index it( add it to the list of pages it already has) and rank it ( showing it for relevant search queries).

According to Google,

Google Search uses a freshness algorithm to give you the most up-to-date results.” 

This means that freshness is an important ranking for Google, which means our technical SEO team had to ensure that news content posted was crawled, indexed, and ranked as quickly as possible. Our team achieved that. 99% of our pages were crawled, indexed, and ranked within seconds.

• Importance of Freshness: Given the timely news, we ensured that our articles were quickly crawled, indexed, and ranked by Google. Usually within seconds. See proof below
• Freshness Algorithms: We leveraged Google's freshness algorithms to our advantage

Local SEO (South Africa)

Since the news site was starting, targeting National keywords wouldn't have been wise. So I choose to optimize the content for local keywords first and this turned out to be a good decision.

The Results

Acceptance into Google News

While acceptance doesn't necessarily mean guaranteeing your content will surface, it's more like a seal of endorsement that your content is proper.

200,000 organic clicks in 6 months

Organic clicks from search 66,886

146,647 clicks from Google Discover.

For SEOs, it's a big deal when your site gets Discover traffic. If you don't know what discover traffic is, if you have an Android device, you see several articles Google has chosen for you when you open your Google Home or Chrome browser. That's Google Discover.

According to Lily Ray, Sr. Director, SEO & Head of Organic Research at Amisive:

Google Discover is a product Google launched in 2018 that shows mobile users a highly personalized, AI-driven feed of content from across the web, based on articles and topics they find most interesting. With Google Discover, the user does not need to search for anything. The product is a form of queryless search: the feed of content is displayed based on the user’s interests alone and without any query being entered.

Google Search Performance 6 months

6.95 Million impressions, 83,600 clicks,. The lowest points on the graphs are usually weekends when users tend to search less.

Google Discover Stats for 6 Months

147K Clicks, 1.99M, CTR 7.4%. In case you are wondering why it's fluctuating, Google has advised publishers not to rely solely on Google Discover Traffic.

Monetization

The site is currently monetized via Adsense and clever ads. User experience is very important to me, so I ensured that the ads were not intrusive and that my readers would barely notice them.

The view from Semrush

Estimated number of ranking keywords

According to Semrush, the site is currently ranking for 4,300 keywords

Informational 3,100 keywords @ 52%

Navigational 855 keywords @ 14.4%

Commercial 1,200 keywords @ 19.5%

Transactional 840 keywords @ 14.1%

Google Analytics Report

Between July 1 and December 31, 2023, the website attracted 128,792 users across 162,395 sessions, with the highest traffic coming from direct visits (75,034 users).

Organic search was the second-largest source, bringing in 50,745 users, with notably higher engagement at 44 seconds per session. Referral and organic social channels showed lower user numbers but had a competitive engagement, with referrals leading in events per session at 5.36.

Surviving Algorithm Updates

Without prior notice, Google released core updates to improve its search operations. While other sites were obliterated, Our strategies helped us survive various updates like HCU and others.

Almost every article written won featured snippets for that keyword.

Link building

I deliberately avoided building links; however, some high-domain sites have started linking to the site.

What This Means For Your Brand

There’s an SEO strategy for every business — including yours. Whether old or new

The journey from 0 to 200,000 clicks in six months demonstrates the power and patience of quality content, technical SEO, and understanding of Google's ecosystem.

Due to past experiences or misconceptions, business owners often feel that their company is the exception.

Maybe they think their field is too competitive, or they’re searching for a particularly unique client. That, or they think that SEO might work but that it’d be too expensive for them to stack up to their competitors.

There have also been rumours that Google has a sandbox that prevents new websites from ranking immediately.

I have proven that wrong.

All it takes for your business to succeed is to use the right strategy, target the right keywords, and create the right content. To do that, you need the right SEO partner.

I did it for me, I can do it for you too.

Schedule a free meeting with me.

P.S

Google has said publishers should not rely on discovery traffic ( as you can see from the charts) "as it is less predictable and dependable." So, I also publish evergreen content to ensure a steady stream of traffic. So even if the site didn't have to discover traffic, 60k organic clicks after 6 months is a pretty impressive achievement.