How a Niche Blog Reached 5,000 Views a Month

In December 2018 I suddenly started baking sourdough, was thoroughly taken with it, and baking became a habit. At first nothing rose and very little went right, but as the loaves accumulated they slowly got better and tasted better, which was a real pleasure.

Then 2020. The pandemic nobody saw coming, and my son at home without the routine he was used to — I could feel my nerves wearing thin. Wanting to release some of the gloom of not being able to travel or go abroad into something more positive, I decided to publish the days of baking as a blog. The very first post on Sourdough & Kitchen went up on 15 April 2020. Since then, through busy stretches of work and a house move that left gaps in the posting, it has taken about a year and a half to reach 5,000 monthly page views. Roughly 1,800 people now visit Sourdough & Kitchen each month. Thank you, genuinely.

The blog in outline (as of end of September 2021)

Title: Sourdough & Kitchen
Content: How to raise a sourdough starter, recipes for many kinds of sourdough bread, and recipes for the dishes that go well alongside a loaf.
Started: 15 April 2020
Posts: 63
Page views (30 days): 5,349
Users (30 days): 1,771
Total page views: 48,627

How the traffic moved

Looking back at the traffic: from the launch in April 2020 through August, visits grew steadily. Then from September 2020 until around April 2021 came a long plateau just short of 3,000 page views. That was because from September 2020 my work interviewing artists around the country got busy and I could not update the site. And then in February 2021 I moved from Hyogo to Fukuoka, after which there was a stretch where I had no room to bake at all.

I could not resume posting until July 2021, but traffic began climbing again around May. I am not entirely sure why. Since the growth came through Google, I suspect the long run of states of emergency kept people at home and more of them started baking bread.

In July I was finally able to start updating again. Alongside publishing new posts, I revisited older ones for SEO, made corrections, and adjusted the structure of the site a little. Traffic, which had been just short of 4,000, climbed sharply through August and September, and finally cleared 5,000 monthly page views — the goal I had set at the start.

The Google Discover exception

Having cleared 5,000 this month, looking into where it came from, there was a sudden surge of traffic via Google Discover at the start of the month.

そもそもGoogle Discoverって何？って感じですが、Google Discoverとは、Googleアカウントにログインした状態でのWebやアプリ内での検索行動にもとづいて、関連性の高いコンテンツを表示させるモバイル向けのサービスらしいです。スマホで「Googleアプリ」や「Google Chrome」、ブラウザで「google.com」を開くとTOPに出てくるおすすめ記事、これらはすべてDiscoverの配信先となっているようです。

On this site it seems that the coffee bread post was picked up at the start of the month, and that single post accounted for a good deal of the growth. According to Google, no special tags or structured data are needed for Discover; content qualifies automatically as long as it is indexed and meets their content policies. So this is not something you can count on. A capricious gift from Google, let's call it.

Most-read posts

各記事の個別のアクセス数を見てみると、63記事の内上位10位までの記事で、全体の60%以上のアクセスを稼いでいました。1番アクセスを集めたのは、「How to start a sourdough starter with rye and whole wheat」のページでした。やっぱりサワードウ・ブレッドを焼くのにまず苦戦するのはスターターを起こす部分なので、色々試行錯誤する中で、こちらのページを見てくれているのだろうと思います。そして、動画入りで、サワードウ ブレッドの生地の生成から焼成までを解説している、「Basic Sourdough Bread: A Step-by-Step Recipe」が2番目にアクセスを集めています。どちらも、このサイトを始めたごく初期の頃に書いた記事なので、長く多くの人が読んでくれていると思うと、とても嬉しいです。この2つの記事を参考にしてもらえれば、一応はサワードウ・ブレッドを自宅で焼けるようになるはずです。

Something that surprised me by how much it is read: the post on "Sourdough in the Height of Summer". Sourdough is fermented at room temperature, so how to control fermentation through the hot months is evidently on everyone's mind.

sauerkrautI also publish recipes that are not sourdough, but they do not draw much traffic. Growing that side of things is one of the things to work on.

Search keyword analysis

現状では、当サイトへのアクセスの80%はグーグル検索経由のモノです。キーワード検索の現状を見てみます。意外なのは、「サワードウ」というワードのみの検索からの流入より、「サワードウ  スターター」という組み合わせの検索からの流入の方が圧倒的に多い事です。しかし、表示回数をみると、「サワードウ  スターター」の組み合わせより、「サワードウ 」のみでの検索の方が倍近く多い事がわかります。それを考えると、もう少し「サワードウ 」と検索した時に上位に表示されて、さらにクリックがされる確率が上がってくると、随分アクセス数も変わってくるだろうなと思います。そうしたことに気づいて、6月の半ばぐらいに、過去記事のタイトルやリードテキストに手を加えて少し改善を試みていました。

これを見てもらえれば、手を加えて以降、7月以降、「サワードウ 」での検索順位が上がり、クリック数も増えています。まず、この「サワードウ 」と検索する人はどういった事を知りたくて検索したのか？という事を意識して、タイトルとリードテキスト書いてみました。

What is sourdough bread, exactly? Flour, water and salt — that is all it takes to bake it. A very simple bread, and a deep one. I was completely taken with it. This site covers how to raise a sourdough starter, how to bake many kinds of sourdough, and the recipes for the dishes that go well alongside a loaf.

What comes next

Having cleared the original goal of 5,000 page views, the next is 10,000. For now, getting the post count towards 100 feels like the way there. If I can write five posts a month, perhaps I can report reaching 10,000 in six months. I am thinking about some new directions too, and I will write about those here. Do bake some sourdough with Sourdough & Kitchen open beside you.