Last Updated on January 10, 2022 by James McAllister

By: James McAllister

23 Comments

If you’re new to blogging and you’ve already published a few posts, you may be wondering – when does the traffic start coming in?

As a matter of fact, one of the most common frustrations that new bloggers face is this. They publish quite a few articles on their new sites, excited for their audience to start building. Except, after waiting weeks or even months, their blog is still a ghost town.

Don’t worry – this doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s anything wrong with your website, or even the approach you’ve been taking with your content.

In this article, we’re going to cover how many blog posts you need, before you start receiving traffic. Then, we’re going to cover how you can speed up the entire process, and get visitors coming in more quickly.

So James, What’s The Magic Number?

There isn’t one – however, most people should at least be seeing some organic traffic from Google, after around 15 posts and two months of your website being online.

This number is high enough to ensure you have a good mix of keywords to potentially compete for, and long enough for Google to have properly indexed your website by now. If you’re currently beyond this point and still aren’t receiving any Google traffic at all, there may be something wrong with your strategy – perhaps targeting keywords that are too competitive, or writing articles on topics that nobody is searching for. We’ll discuss more on how to properly target keywords later in this article.

Note however that these numbers are only a set of guidelines. Some websites may start ranking after only 3 posts, whereas websites in very competitive niches might struggle for traffic even after 50 posts or more, if they’re not actively building backlinks to their articles.

Remember that Google’s priority is to ensure that they are best serving their users. This means that they display legitimate, quality search results for each search that is made.

Early on in your website’s life, Google has a hard time judging whether or not your website is legitimate, a giant spam farm, or even downright malicious. They learn over time by studying your website, and using a variety of signals to help judge where your website should stand.

The problem? Without existing visitors, this is very difficult.

Google also looks at other factors, like the topical relevance of your website. This is why it’s so important to cater your website to a specific niche. If Google can recognize that you’ve published 15 articles on coffee for example, it’s more apparent that coffee is the area that you specialize in. This may help you rank above other websites that focus on a huge variety of beverages, but have also yet to receive any of these other signals that Google’s looking for.

When it comes down to it, there are a million and one reasons why blog articles may or may not be ranking, so all that we can do is work to maximize our chances.

Let’s look at a few things that can help blog articles rank faster.

1. Set Up Google Search Console

If you haven’t done this already, you should probably do it now.

Google Search Console is a suite of tools that Google has released for website owners, which can help them to pinpoint any issues that prevent their site from being indexed by Google. It also provides some insights as to how your website is performing, which can be useful in the beginning stages.

By setting it up, you can answer some important questions. For example, you’ll be able to check whether or not your pages have even been discovered by Google yet, or whether they’re ranking at all.

Example result after inspecting a page in Google Search Console

Pages may in fact be ranking, but be showing up on page 7 where nobody ever searches.

Or, in the example above, they may be indexed and even ranking well, but could do better by fixing the issue that Google’s notifying us about.

By paying attention to warnings and data available inside of Google Search Console, you’ll ensure that there are no technical issues impacting your website’s ability to rank.

2. Track Results With Google Analytics – No Alternatives

Google Analytics is far more accurate, than other free analytics plugins like Jetpack.

I would even go as far to say that Jetpack is useless for tracking real, human visitors.

Therefore, if you want to monitor how your articles are performing in search, you’ll want to make sure that you’re using Google Analytics.

Fortunately, setting it up is easy, and instructions are available on Google’s website.

3. Target Low-Competition Keywords, With Search Demand

More often than not, this is the step that causes people issues.

If you want to succeed with blogging, you can’t just write about whatever you want. The large, exciting topics that tend to pop into our mind first, are usually the same ones that all of the other bloggers (with much bigger and more authoritative websites) have already written about.

You’re free to write about these later, but realistically speaking, you’re just not going to rank for these keywords when you’re just starting out.

Never forget that every keyword is a competition. You are competing with every other website that has written something on the same topic.

Some of these websites have been around longer, have more visitors, and have more positive signals that demonstrate to Google that the website should be trusted and valued.

This means that in the beginning, you should only focus on keywords that all other websites have ignored.

This means that when you do a Google search for the keyword, the front page isn’t full of articles already published on it. While a few might be okay (you can still get decent traffic if you rank in position 3 for example), you don’t want the the entire first page to be filled with competing articles.

Note that pages from websites like Reddit, Quora, or niche forums may be able to be overtaken with a full article, even one from a new website.

If you can find keywords that are both receiving a decent amount of search volume each month, while also having few to no competitors, you are practically guaranteed to receive Google traffic for those articles. This is why keyword research is a skill of its own, and is right up there with ‘good content’ in terms of its importance.

For details about the exact keyword research strategy I use on new websites, be sure to check out my blogging course by clicking here.

4. Bite The Bullet. Build Backlinks!

For many niches, building backlinks is a necessary evil.

It’s something that very few people actually enjoy doing, yet it will often make more of an impact than simply producing more content will.

In fact, good backlinks can lift up your entire website in pretty incredible ways!

In case you’re unfamiliar, backlinks are simply a link back to your website, from other websites on the internet. They are one of the most powerful signals to Google that a website is credible and should be paid attention to. The more quality backlinks that your website receives, the more authoritative and trustworthy it will appear in Google’s eyes.

There is a direct correlation between links to a page, and where that page will rank on Google.

For competitive queries, many of the top spots will have backlinks built to them already – making it very difficult to compete with them unless you build your own.

By the same token, active backlink building can take otherwise small websites, and help them rank in top positions even for very competitive keywords.

In fact, some people’s whole strategy is to rank a few key pages that they know will make them money – their entire website is supported around ranking one key page at a time.

I call this the ‘competitive link builder’ strategy, and you can read more about it (and the other main blogging strategies) by clicking here.

5. Pay Attention To What Works

Finally, as soon as you start receiving any traffic at all, it’s important to pay attention to what’s worked for you – then repeat it.

If certain topics are doing better for you than others, continue fledging out articles in those areas until you have nothing left to write about – then move onto the next one.

Google the primary keywords that you’re ranking for, and look at what websites you’ve managed to outrank. Is it possible that you could outrank them for other pages too? What types of articles do they tend to write about?

Instead of chasing something entirely new, repeat what’s working as long as you can.

Remember, the goal is to maximize the amount of traffic you receive, with the least amount of effort. This means crafting your content around keywords that you’re more likely to rank for.

Because regardless of how great your content is, it doesn’t mean much if nobody ever sees it.

Conclusion

If you’ve been blogging for several months and your search engine traffic is nonexistent, you may consider changing your strategy.

While it’s normal for blogs to take 6 months or longer to begin receiving steady traffic, you can expedite the process by targeting easy keywords.

For more information on how to build profitable blogs, check out my blogging course by clicking here.

To your success,

– James McAllister

About the author 

James McAllister

James is the owner of JamesMcAllisterOnline.com. He started his first blog at the age of 11, and has since gone on to start several successful businesses. In total, these businesses have sold hundreds of thousands of units and have touched millions of lives. Here on JamesMcAllisterOnline.com, he shares his knowledge that brought him to where he is today. If you want to connect with James, follow him on your favorite social networks!

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    1. Hi Lisa, absolutely!

      It’s all about supply and demand for the most part. There are other important factors though, like the E-A-T factor for markets like health or wealth.

      I’ve run sites that got 10x as much traffic with 10x less content… without building any links at all. In other niches, you may have to spend thousands of dollars to rank for a keyword that brings you only a few dozen visitors per month.

      Some niches do gain links more easily (either naturally or through actively building them), but this is less importance in my opinion than the supply and demand factor. If you are having trouble building links in a niche, chances are the competition is too. Besides, by tying related topics together, it is possible to gain links from sites that are in other niches and may give them more freely. For example, a golf site could gain links from a parenting blog by guest posting articles such as ‘How to teach your kids to golf’ or ‘How to help your kids enjoy golfing’.

        (Quote)
      James McAllister recently posted…How Many Blog Posts Do You Need Before Traffic Comes In?My Profile

  1. Hi James

    Excellent review of the behind the scenes tactics that bloggers need to employ.

    Nobody wants to take all the time necessary to analyze and. track their blog’s success and traffic sources, or build backlinks or do good keyword research.

    But those are the things that make the big difference!

    Thanks for this great info.

    -Donna

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    Donna Merrill recently posted…How fast can I achieve online business profitMy Profile

    1. Thank you Donna!

      I remember when I had my second blog, about iPhones and iPads. Way back then you didn’t have to be nearly as strict about these things, as long as you used some common sense and at least tried to craft articles around topics people were searching for. Even phrases that are now extremely competitive could be easily ranked for.

      Today, it’s the data-driven approach that yields the most reliable results for sure!

        (Quote)
      James McAllister recently posted…How Many Blog Posts Do You Need Before Traffic Comes In?My Profile

  2. Hi James,
    I am quite new to blogging and have read through this post twice with great interest. I believe that I have gained some very useful information from it. I was particularly interested in the section around building backlinks and targeting low competition keywords with good search demand. I will take this onboard going forwards and will definitely be visiting your blog on a regular basis.

    Regards,
    Peter

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  3. Hey James,

    Thank you very much for the insightful article. I have a lot to learn from you about blogging and driving traffic to my blog. So, please write more like this.

    However, I should say that I'm a pretty lazy person and I couldn't publish more than 20 articles on my blog for about 2 years. But, I got some organic traffic after 15 articles, and one of my articles still doing really great (Affiliate link on that article earn 350 $ every month).

    I just wanna say that, targeting some low and medium competitive keywords and build a healthy relationships with a few bloggers via comments are the only work I have done for my blog.

    Hope, your readers get some inspiration from my story but, please don't be lazy as me.

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    1. Hey Nirodha, that’s fantastic to hear! Great job.

      One of the approaches I take with my websites is to do something similar to that – get a few important pages making money, then use the money those pages make to reinvest back into the site. This could be either to hire content writers for the site, invest in promotion, etc.

      The day a site becomes self-sustaining and no longer requires me to operate at a loss (if paying others) or writing the content myself, is something I love to celebrate.

      I’m excited to see things continue improving for you in the future!

        (Quote)
      James McAllister recently posted…How Many Blog Posts Do You Need Before Traffic Comes In?My Profile

  4. Hi James,

    Thanks for the great advice. I have set up Google Search Console for a previous site but haven't done it for my current one. I really should get on that. Also need to step up my keyword research. I tend to get caught up in the writing and the rest(all the technical stuff) tends to take a back seat.

    SharlaAnn

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  5. Excellent content, especially for beginners like me. I have also been trying to study some things about SEO. I'll take a look at your course. Thank you for the tips.

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  6. SEO is the way to go. I worked for many years on paying for my traffic but the end it all comes down to getting exposer for your keywords. It just takes time and I have learned to work on a couple of projects because the one is not a promise you will get indexed, ranked and a bunch of traffic flowing in.

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  7. Hi James,

    It was such an insightful resource! As a blogger who constantly pushes people to set up their blogs, I have been asked this question countless times. I never had any solid answer until today. I really appreciate you sharing relevant information about this underrated topic, I think now I will have a concrete answer along with a backup resource to help anyone who asks me this. Thanks for such a great share, I really look forward to reading more of your amazing resources.

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  8. Great post James! Let me tell you.. nowadays it is so hard to focus on things that give you delayed gratification – and I think blogging is one of them. I used to be always very impatient and was always thinking "when will my blog start receiving finally some traffic" but now when I look back it's absolutely absurd haha. That time could be spent on writing instead! Anyways, great article!!

      (Quote)
    Tom Caklos recently posted…4 Main Differences Between Good and Bad PresentationMy Profile

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