Last updated: September 24, 2025 \u00b7 9-minute read
I committed to writing one post per week for 12 weeks on this portfolio site \u2014 a React SPA with no CMS, no SSR, no Next.js metadata magic. Every post lives as a string in a TypeScript array. The entire blog is client-rendered. By conventional SEO wisdom, this should be a graveyard.
It isn\u2019t. Here\u2019s what actually happened.
The Posts
| Week | Post | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | I Replaced Lovable | Insights |
| 2 | Claude Code Memory MCP | Tutorials |
| 3 | HTML-to-Video Agents | Experiments |
| 4 | Aceternity vs Magic UI vs shadcn | Insights |
| 5 | Trigger.dev Background Jobs | Tutorials |
| 6 | 5 Design Inspiration Sites | Insights |
| 7 | Refero Styles Experiment | Experiments |
| 8 | TestSprite AI Testing | Tutorials |
| 9 | Top 5 MCP Servers | Insights |
| 10 | OSINT with Sploitas | Experiments |
| 11 | Video Pipeline Build | Builds |
| 12 | This post | Insights |
Traffic by Post Type
Tutorials consistently outperformed everything else. The CloudStream guide and the $300 AI Credits post each pulled 4-6x the traffic of the average insights or builds post. People bookmark these. They come back.
\u201cHonest review\u201d posts had the longest tail. The Lovable replacement post started slow but kept getting traffic week after week. Posts that take a clear stance have legs because people reference them in conversations.
Builds and experiments were the weakest performers for traffic \u2014 but strongest for credibility. The TalkDrive post didn\u2019t get huge traffic, but three people reached out directly about collaborating. The Hugging Face Spaces post and PrivacyThink writeup function more as proof-of-work than traffic drivers.
Social Distribution: Reddit vs X vs LinkedIn
I cross-posted every article to three platforms. The results were not even close.
Reddit: 8x the click-through of X/Twitter. Tutorial posts on relevant subreddits (r/webdev, r/selfhosted, r/privacy, r/ChatGPT) consistently drove the most qualified traffic. A key insight from Ross Simmonds\u2019 talk on Reddit\u2019s influence on search confirmed what I was seeing \u2014 Reddit is now a dominant force in how people discover content, especially for technical topics.
The nuance: Reddit rewards specificity. A post titled \u201cHow I Replaced Lovable with Three Tools\u201d performs better than \u201cMy Design System Journey.\u201d
X/Twitter: high impressions, low clicks. Thread summaries got 2,000-8,000 impressions per thread. But click-through hovered around 0.3-0.5%. X is a brand-building channel, not a traffic channel. As one Reddit thread on r/buildinpublic put it: \u201cYour customers are not scrolling Twitter looking for someone\u2019s revenue milestone. They\u2019re googling their problem.\u201d
LinkedIn: negligible for this audience. Posted every article. Almost zero engagement for technical content. LinkedIn works for enterprise thought leadership. It doesn\u2019t work for \u201chere\u2019s how to pipe HTML through HyperFrames into an MP4.\u201d
SEO Learnings
Internal Linking Is the Highest-ROI Move
Every post on this site links to at least two other posts. The Lovable post links to the Antigravity post and the AI Credits post. The CloudStream guide links to the Drive migration post. And so on.
Over on r/SEO, a thread confirmed this: \u201cInternal linking is one of the most underrated SEO tactics for new websites. It helps Google discover pages faster, understand topic authority, and distribute link equity.\u201d
My site has no external backlinks worth mentioning. The only reason Google finds and ranks individual blog posts is internal linking. Every post is reachable from every other post within 1-2 clicks. This is especially critical for a client-rendered SPA where Googlebot has to work harder.
Sitemap Strategy for a SPA
Since the blog is client-rendered, I generated a static sitemap.xml that lists every post slug. Google can\u2019t execute JavaScript to discover client-side routes \u2014 the sitemap is the only way crawlers find individual posts. Basic but essential.
Timing Doesn\u2019t Matter as Much as I Thought
I published every post on Wednesday mornings (IST). The theory was that US readers would see it Tuesday evening, Indian readers Wednesday morning, European readers Wednesday midday. In practice, the day of publication had almost no correlation with traffic. What mattered was the subreddit I posted it to and whether the title was specific enough to stop someone scrolling.
What Post Types Performed Best (Ranked)
- Tutorials with concrete steps \u2014 CloudStream, AI Credits, Drive Migration. 4-6x average traffic.
- Honest tool reviews with real alternatives \u2014 Lovable Replacement. Slow burn but consistent monthly traffic.
- Experiments with surprising findings \u2014 OSINT footprint, Antigravity 2.0. Shareable because the results are interesting regardless of whether you\u2019re a developer.
- Build stories \u2014 TalkDrive, Video Pipeline. Low traffic, high credibility.
- Philosophy/career posts \u2014 Sales Agent, Why I Build. Lowest traffic but most personally satisfying.
What I\u2019d Do Differently
- Write more tutorials. The traffic data is unambiguous. Tutorials with specific, copy-pasteable steps are what people search for and share.
- Post to Reddit more strategically. Not every subreddit for every post. Match the post to the single best subreddit and write a Reddit-native title.
- Start building an email list from week 1. I didn\u2019t, and now I\u2019m relying entirely on algorithmic discovery for return visitors.
- Double down on internal linking. The best distribution strategy for a solo builder is writing useful things and linking them to each other.
The Honest Takeaway
Twelve weeks of consistent blogging taught me that the \u201cbuild in public\u201d meta-narrative \u2014 the revenue screenshots, the milestone threads, the \u201cday 47 of my startup\u201d posts \u2014 is mostly noise. What actually works is writing the thing someone is googling at 11pm when they\u2019re stuck on a problem.
The CloudStream guide works because someone is googling \u201cCloudStream repos not working.\u201d The Lovable replacement works because someone is googling \u201cLovable alternatives.\u201d The OSINT experiment works because someone is googling \u201ccheck my digital footprint.\u201d
Write the answer to the question. Link it to the other answers. Post it where people ask questions. That\u2019s the entire strategy.
The full post archive has everything, and the Projects section has the things I actually built instead of just wrote about. The Lab has the experiments that didn\u2019t make the cut but taught me something anyway.
No tools were used to game traffic. Analytics from Cloudflare. Cross-posting done manually. Not affiliated with Reddit, X, or LinkedIn.
Originally published at ansaribilal.com. I write about AI agents, indie builds and developer tooling — more posts here.
Top comments (0)