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Nick Scialli (he/him)
Nick Scialli (he/him)

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On Tech Blogging: If You Write It, They Will Come

This morning I checked the Google Search Console for my personal blog at https://typeofnan.dev. When I filtered to show the past year of search traffic, I was pleasantly surprised to see this trend:

Google search console trending up

Don't get me wrong, ~1,700 clicks over a year is not too much to brag about, but it's clearly trending up! What once started as a modest endeavor to self-document various JavaScript and Typescript musings has become a little bit more--it's a place where others are coming to learn as well.

The moral of the story? If you write it, they will come. Do it for yourself and others will likely come to learn with you as well.

Happy coding!

Top comments (26)

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emma profile image
Emma Goto 🍙 • Edited

I'm not quite at your level yet:

But it's still pretty cool when you see that random people are finding your blog!

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nas5w profile image
Nick Scialli (he/him)

Hmm, that's pretty darn close though. That's about where my blog was 3-6 months ago

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nikola profile image
Nikola Brežnjak

To agree with the author's conclusion, and to show that the opposite is true as well: if you stop actively contributing, the views will go down :(

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pavanbaddi profile image
pavanbaddi

How much time it took you to reach this level and how long you have been blogging.

Kindly share

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nikola profile image
Nikola Brežnjak • Edited

I started Aug 15, 2013 (yes, I know the exact date 🙂)

I think it took me probably like 2 years or so to reach that level. But, as I said, it is as easy to drop after you don't actively contribute anymore.

Btw, these posts may help you too:

Lessons after writing 100 posts
Lessons after writing 200 posts
Lessons after writing 300 posts

Let me know if you have any other questions 👍

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pavanbaddi profile image
pavanbaddi

Great ☺️

How frequently you add posts and how frequently you update them

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nikola profile image
Nikola Brežnjak

At that time I used to post at least 2x per week. Sometimes even more. But again, heh, long gone are those days :)

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pavanbaddi profile image
pavanbaddi

My current rate is 3 times a week and also I update those posts with new content every 5 to 6 months

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nikola profile image
Nikola Brežnjak

Keep at it and you'll reap the rewards later 👍

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pavanbaddi profile image
pavanbaddi

Thanks 😊

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coding_tom profile image
Tom Cafferkey • Edited

Thanks Nick and congratulations on the growth of your blog! How do you decide what to post on here, and what to post on your personal blog?

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nas5w profile image
Nick Scialli (he/him)

Thanks! I cross-post pretty much everything. I'm not sure if that's the right way to do it or not 🤷

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coding_tom profile image
Tom Cafferkey • Edited

Makes sense, get your valuable content and knowledge in front of more people. Keep up the good writing!

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nas5w profile image
Nick Scialli (he/him)

The problem comes when you're aiming to reach the top of a certain niche

Certainly writing will still be a part of your strategy for this, but you might be more aggressive about promoting it and also get involved in things like open source and speaking engagements.

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taeluralexis profile image
Tae'lur Alexis 🦄⚛

Yep this post just beautifully yelled at me to update my blog site lol. Thank you so much for this! I like the day of posting musings about languages you work with. I’m always studying something different and learning something new and should put that out more for sure

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nas5w profile image
Nick Scialli (he/him)

Thanks Tae'lur!

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jcabot profile image
Jordi Cabot

I'm now at over 1000 users/day in my two main blogs (one in English and one in Spanish). The English one took much longer than the Spanish one to reach that number. In fact, it took several years (been blogging about software /design modeling in modeling-languages.com since 2009).

So, it indeed takes time, patience and consistency. Another important pattern I noticed is that both blogs follow the "80/20 rule" (well, more even the 95/5): a few key posts bring more than 80% of the traffic.

This is somehow disappointing (it was never on purpose and I put a lot of attention in many of the posts I write) but at the same time it also tells you that the best predictor of success is to keep trying. You never know if your next post will become one of those and create a jump in your traffic.

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nas5w profile image
Nick Scialli (he/him)

That's really awesome insight and congratulations on those numbers!

I too have noticed that a few of my posts drive the vast majority of traffic. It seems like there are a couple posts that somehow do very well with Google Search placement.

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youssefrabeiii profile image
Youssef Rabei

Firstly congrats on your 1700, I wish you make 10000 this year.
And i was wondering what is it you use it's not Google analytics right??

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lautarolobo profile image
Lautaro Lobo

Ain't Google Analytics but close enough: Google Search Console.

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healeycodes profile image
Andrew Healey

Awesome stuff Nick! I started my blog to keep notes for myself too 😊

I love your site. I also use Gatsby and Buttondown 👍

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dylanjcastillo profile image
Dylan

Congrats Nick! I'm following the same path myself. Hope to get there soon!

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nas5w profile image
Nick Scialli (he/him)

Awesome! I have seen a lot of good results cross-posting form my personal blog to dev.to and linking back. Not sure if you're doing that yet!

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dylanjcastillo profile image
Dylan

Yes, I recently started doing the same :)

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steelwolf180 profile image
Max Ong Zong Bao • Edited

Yeah you really need to start writing for your own niche for anyone who might be interested in what you do for the long term.