I Made It to No. 1

I started this blog on June 13 last year.

I Started a Blog! — No Panamera, No Life.

Has it really been more than a year already? At first, I wrote little more than things like “I absolutely love the Panamera!” After plenty of twists and turns, I’ve spent the last few months focusing on what it means to be a Porsche blog. Then yesterday, at last:

I ranked No. 1 in Google for “Porsche blog”!

Thank you so much to everyone who reads this blog, Kansai dialect and all. Of course, there aren’t that many Porsche blogs to compete with, so it’s probably easier to rank highly than it would be for a more common search term. Still, I thought I’d share what I did to reach the top. (If you write an automotive blog, I hope you’ll find some of this useful.)

How the Blog Has Performed Over the Past Month

For context, I’ve published 219 posts so far. As of June 20, 2018, here are the figures for the previous 28 days:

■ Audience → Men: 90.2%, women: 9.8%
■ Age → 18–24: 9.06%, 25–34: 23.77%, 35–44: 29.31%, 45–54: 26.54%, 55–64: 11.32%
■ Language → Japanese: 98.27%, English: 1.73%
■ Average time on page → 00:01:55
■ Bounce rate → 56.52%
■ Traffic sources: Google/organic: 49.67%, Yahoo/organic: 28.91%, direct: 14.52%, Twitter: 2.56%, Blogmura: 0.97%, Facebook: 0.59%
■ Most-viewed post → Test-Driving the New Panamera Turbo Left Me Feeling Thoroughly Defeated
That post is a little over the top, so I’m honestly a bit embarrassed by it. (-_-)

That’s where things stand. I won’t share the actual traffic numbers—it feels a little tacky, even for a Kansai native like me. But apparently, a million page views a month puts you in the top 5% of bloggers, so I suppose this blog is doing reasonably well.

The blog’s traffic started to grow, and it began showing up in keyword searches, after my husband started helping me with the entire operation. Here are the strategies that made the biggest difference.

① Moving from Hatena Blog to WordPress

I originally started on Hatena Blog, but moved to WordPress on April 4, 2018. I think that was a major turning point. The main reason I decided to move was that Hatena Blog limited how much I could customize the design and site management.

By then, though, I’d already published around 150 posts and had more than 100 Hatena followers. I hesitated for a while, worried about the risk of a sharp drop in traffic (or so I’d heard) and the work involved in moving every URL.

But if I was going to make the switch eventually, it made sense to do it sooner, while the blog was still relatively small. So I took the plunge in April. This was the guide I used:

How to Move from Hatena Blog to WordPress: A Detailed Guide to the Process and Important Settings

Traffic did dip temporarily after the move, but it recovered in about a week. The URLs transferred without any problems, too. I wished I’d done it sooner.

② Hosting the Site on AWS

Most bloggers probably use Sakura Internet or a hosting service that comes bundled with a domain. This blog, however, runs on AWS (Amazon Web Services)—the cloud services platform offered by Amazon, the global e-commerce company, to businesses.

Amazon’s servers handle an incredible volume of transactions every minute of every day, and our site loads quickly and stays online even when traffic surges. (Then again, my blog doesn’t get anywhere near that kind of traffic, so for now it’s a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. (-_-))

Site speed is an important factor in Google’s evaluation, and slow pages can frustrate visitors and drive them away. (The only reason I can use AWS despite knowing absolutely nothing about servers is that my husband works in IT.)

③ Using a TCD WordPress Theme

Design matters a lot when you run a blog. But I’m neither a web designer nor a developer, so I decided to leave that part to the professionals and buy a template from TCD, which offers a wide range of WordPress themes.

TCD themes are affordable, polished, and easy for beginners to use. They work on both computers and smartphones, and I think using a theme as designed is often better than trying to customize everything yourself. This blog uses the “Bloom” theme.

It’s designed with women in mind, but changing the site colors and photos can completely change the look. I also considered this one, called “MAG.”

The themes generally cost somewhere between ¥10,000 and ¥30,000.

④ Analyzing Search Keywords

I use Google Search Console to review the keywords bringing people to the site. I don’t do it constantly, but I try to write posts that reflect what readers are searching for. For Panamera-related content, for example, I keep an eye on popular terms such as “test drive,” “delivery,” “fuel economy,” and “Sport Turismo.”

That kind of analysis really isn’t my thing. My brain starts screaming, and I’d rather not overthink it—I want to write about what interests me. So I don’t check the data all that often. (Though I know I really should.)

Thankfully, my husband loves cars and enjoys analyzing data, so he keeps an eye on it and lets me know what he finds.

⑤ Focusing on Quality Content

Rather than repeating information readers can find elsewhere or simply recapping Porsche news, I try to write posts that make people think, “Wow, you researched that much?” or “I hadn’t thought of it that way!” My goal is to create articles that are enjoyable, useful, and genuinely satisfying to read.

I still have a lot to learn about writing. And I can’t produce a deeply researched, carefully crafted post every single day, so sometimes I write something lighter.

Depending on the blog, publishing several short, light posts every day can be a perfectly valid strategy. But that approach doesn’t suit my personality. I can’t hit publish unless it’s something I’d want to read again myself—and something I can confidently tell people, “You should check this out!” For now, I plan to keep up a pace of one post a day.

⑥ Making the Most of Social Media

I write this blog anonymously, so I rarely promote it to people I know. That means I’ve had to start from scratch with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and I’m still figuring out what works.

Social media is gradually bringing more visitors to the blog, and I’m hoping to learn how each platform works and what it’s best suited for by continuing to use them. At the moment, I use them like this:

■ Twitter: Sharing car-related thoughts and exchanging information with fellow enthusiasts
■ Facebook page: Mainly sharing new blog posts
■ Instagram: Posting photos of the Panamera and other Porsches

Of the three, Instagram is the most fun for me. Well-known racers from around the world like and comment on my posts, and photos can cross language and national borders with ease. I’m excited to see where it could lead.

⑦ Blogmura

I’m on Blogmura, too. I signed up for the Porsche category, and I think a German-car category as well. I get a few visits a day from Blogmura, but I don’t put a Blogmura banner at the end of my posts. Encouraging readers to leave my site isn’t ideal, so I use it mainly as a way to pick up a little extra traffic when it comes my way.

For some reason, the blog stopped appearing in Blogmura’s “New Posts” feed after June 13. I’m looking into it now.

⑧ Minkara

Minkara is one of Japan’s largest social networks for car enthusiasts. My husband warned me, “There are a lot of people on Minkara who really know their stuff about cars. I’m not sure this blog will find much of an audience there.” Still, I figured it was worth a try, so I created an account.

I posted a Panamera review once and sent a few friend requests, but the site was so confusing that I couldn’t figure out where anything was or how to change the settings. I gave up. (-_-) I’m not active there now, so naturally, it brings in almost no traffic.

What’s the Next Goal?

Getting to No. 1 in a keyword search once doesn’t mean the ranking will stay there—it can change from day to day. But…

If I’ve made it to No. 1 in Japan, then surely the world is the next goal! (Haha.)

Fortunately, Porsche has fans all over the world. Cars and ownership realities may differ between Japan and other countries, but there’s still plenty that Porsche enthusiasts everywhere have in common. If people around the world start reading this blog, I think it could become even more interesting.

My husband set up TranslatePress, a translation plugin that uses Google’s AI. I’ll keep correcting any awkward translations as I find them, and I hope to bring in more readers from English-speaking countries.

Thank you, as always, for reading—and I hope you’ll stick around!