From 80 to 8000/m: A Journey of SEO Optimization (Part 1)

Introduction

Hi, this is a greeting from Kevin. I used to work as a front-end engineer at the startup AirCode, and now I've left to become an independent developer.

Here are some SEO tips from my recent work on a X screenshot app called TwitterShots that I'd like to share with you. I will briefly introduce the success story of increasing website total impressions from 80 to 8K/month in 30 days without any promotion. This is the first article, Currently, I am focusing on improving DR and backlinks.

The Beginning

TwitterShots is a screenshot tool I tinkered with in October 2023. Its main function is to quickly capture tweets and share them elsewhere.

I quickly put together a homepage and a feature page over the weekend and launched it. After launching, I immediately submitted it to the tech enthusiast weekly newsletter by tech blogger ruanyf, and it was recommended. That day, it brought in about 300+ user visits, and I gained 6 followers on Twitter because of it.I was surprised and also very happy.

So launch early and expose your product and domain. This might not bring a lot of visitors to your homepage, as it's unlikely to go viral, but it will help search engines index your domain as soon as possible.

If you want to know why I developed this tiny X screenshot tool, you can check out the initial log Changelog v.0.1.0.

Using SEO Tools

I used GSC and SEO AI analysis tools to determine traffic sources. The newsletter traffic was short-lived, and for a long time afterward, due to a lack of promotion and maintenance, the traffic was almost in single digits. In October, I started trying some optimizations. Be sure to connect to Google Search Console; it's useful and free. Through it, you can see the source of search keywords. For example, I found that the main ones were twitter shot, twitter screenshot, X screenshot:

Export the analysis data to find the main keywords, devices, and regions. GSC data is clearly listed. I first optimized keywords with large impressions but small clicks (those with higher rankings can wait), using twitter thread screenshot as an example. Analyzing this was quite challenging, so I also tried developing an AI SEO tool that analyzes and provides suggestions after importing CSV data.

Update Meta, H2, Image, and any other areas you can use

Meta information is very important for search rankings. When you see search results, search engines show the match between keywords and meta information.

Titles are used by Google SEO to organize and explain content. Each title acts as a roadmap, so don't skip levels, like H1 -> H2, instead of H1 -> H3.

Make use of the Alt Title for images as well.

Regarding checking meta information, you can download and use this free plugin SEO-Toolbar from Ahrefs. It helps you check what you might be missing. For example, I discovered through it that my OG image settings were incorrect and that I forgot the sitemap.xml.

After installing it and checking my website, I found several issues:

• The robots sitemap file was not configured

• The social OG image parameters were set incorrectly

• The meta description was too long, among other things

Optimize and Ensure Compatibility for Specific Devices and Regional Users

Identify where your users are accessing your product.

If many are using mobile devices, quickly ensure compatibility and a good user experience on mobile. For example, I noticed many users from the Arab region were visiting but leaving quickly. After analyzing, I realized they have a right-to-left reading habit, so I fixed it with a new version.

Make good use of Google's People also search for.

I found that when searching for SEO tools, most people look for Free SEO tools. So, I added an "it's free" badge on the homepage, and when users search for Free xxx, it has already risen to second place.

When you're unsure how to build your keywords and long-tail terms, Google's People also search for is a great reference.

Improve your website's DR and increase backlinks

DR, also known as Domain Rating, generally means the higher your domain's "authority," the better.

Getting backlinks from other quality websites is the only way to improve your website's domain rating (authority) score.

Make good use of the free SEO tool for testing DR provided by the Ahrefs website-authority-checker. I will write a second article later on how to improve DR and increase the number of backlinks, so feel free to follow me and stay tuned.

I recently took the time to read some of the articles they published at Ahrefs SEO. If you're a beginner like me, I highly recommend you check them out; they offer a lot of insights.

Submit your sitemap and create as many related pages as possible

To let Google Search know your site's crawling rules and paths, you need to create a robots.txt and sitemap.xml, and include as many pages as possible. For this, I am adding changelog and blog pages.

Stay patient keep building

All of these optimizations won't show immediate results, so the most important thing is to stay patient and keep building, trusting that SEO improvements will pay off.

I am currently working as an independent developer.I am a full-stack developer skilled in creating AI applications and building landing pages. If you have needs in this area, feel free to contact me. I am happy to help.

If you find this helpful for your SEO optimization, feel free to follow and connect with me. Stay tuned.

• X @0xinhua

• Hashnode: Kevin Wu