Nextbop.com:
SEO Building in Public

I started Nextbop.com in 2009 at the age of 23 and ran it as a successful jazz blog without any SEO for a decade.

In 2019, we stopped publishing new content and the traffic eventually dropped to near zero. Then in December 2022, I decided to use it as an SEO playground.

Nextbop hasn’t been a priority, so updates have been sporadic and results not particularly impressive, but I’ve now decided to build it in public as an additional motivator and a way to showcase my SEO work and possibly for others to learn from.

October 30, 2024 Update

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nextbop building in public october 30

Traffic is at an all-time high since rebuilding the website, although nothing to brag about. We did almost 5K clicks in the last 28 days, slightly under the previous 28 days. Below are the 10 pages with the most clicks and Semrush keyword rankings.

nextbop building in public october 30 3

The question now is: Where do we go from here, and how do we grow traffic with the least amount of work possible?

Looking at the Search Console data, the click-through rates really aren’t amazing. I think for a lot of those keywords, we’re competing against a lot of established publications, while people probably don’t know Nextbop. But one of my favorite quick wins when working with any website is to re-optimize the meta titles and descriptions of the 50 pages with the most organic traffic.

Next Step: Optimize meta titles and descriptions of top 50 pages

November 1, 2024 Update

nextbop seo building in public nov 1

Traffic is slightly down from the last update.

Started updating the metadata. Usually, when you update pages, there’s always a slight dip before the optimization takes effect.

Decided to shorten all the article descriptions on the website’s homepage for better UX and less text, and reordered all the articles on the homepage in order of organic traffic.

November 2, 2024 Update

nextbop building in public november 2

Still losing traffic, but not really worried. When you start playing with a website, it’s always one step back, two steps forward.

Created new NYC Winter Jazzfest page.

November 7, 2024 Update

seo building in public nov 7

Still losing traffic. Apparently jinxed myself with this building in public thing…

Created new Jazz Festival Calendar page + interlinking.

Deleted a bunch of posts / pages that haven’t gotten any traffic in the last year + fixed resulting 404s.

Rewrote Best NYC Jazz Clubs page.

Fixed some Page Speed issues.

Redistributed link juice from backlinks.

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