SEO for a new site: getting to 25,000 pageviews

25,000 monthly pageviews is a useful target for an ad-funded site. It's Raptive's current minimum, as long as at least half your traffic comes from the US, UK, Canada, Australia or New Zealand (Search Engine Journal). With mostly US readers, it's also around where a site can clear Mediavine's $5,000-a-year revenue bar.

It breaks down into smaller numbers too. A hundred articles at 250 pageviews a month each gets you there. That's a much easier goal to work toward than one viral post.

Pick a topic you can cover completely

"Sourdough baking" is easier to become the best source on than "food". Choose something narrow enough that 50 to 100 articles could cover it properly, and broad enough that people search for it every day.

Look at what already ranks

Before you write, search the phrase you're targeting and look at the first page. Is it step-by-step guides, lists, comparisons, calculators? That tells you what searchers want. Write that kind of page, and make it clearer, more complete or more current than what's there.

Link articles into groups

Write one broad guide, for example "Sourdough for beginners", and link it to the specific posts around it: why a loaf comes out dense, which flour to use, how to revive a starter. Link those back to the guide. Readers can find the next useful page, and search engines can see how much of the topic you cover.

Start with specific questions

A new site won't outrank established sites for broad terms. It can rank for specific questions that fewer people search for and fewer sites answer well. Each one brings in a few hundred visits, and they add up.

Show you've actually done it

Google's guidance on helpful, people-first content asks whether a page provides "original information, reporting, research, or analysis", and whether it shows first-hand expertise. In practice that means your own photos, your own tests, your own numbers, and an author page with a real person on it.

Improve what's already working

Search Console shows the pages that get impressions but few clicks, and the ones sitting on page two. Improving those is often faster than writing something new: a better title, a clearer answer near the top, a section that was missing.

Get the basics right

Pages that are fast and work well on a phone. Titles and descriptions that match what people search. Clear URLs and internal links with descriptive text. And a sitemap submitted in Search Console, so Google knows about every page.

Publish steadily

Two good articles a week for six months will usually beat fifty rushed ones in a month. Search traffic for new sites tends to build slowly, so keep going.