My Website’s Best Year Came from a Facebook Ban: The Organic Traffic Boost

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Last year was my site’s most successful year, even with me being banned from Facebook. Ironically, the success came partly from that ban. It forced me to rely on my own website instead of an app I didn’t control. Facebook was the primary way people found my website. With it gone, I revised my strategy, and I did it well. Here’s how a Facebook ban caused my website to do even better, broken down into five simple concepts.

Content Overhaul

One of the first things I did after the Facebook ban was look at my site’s content. What was working? What could work better? What was missing? I found a discrepancy between the number of likes self-help content got versus the true crime news stories.

Although my true crime articles got more views, my self-help content got more likes. A person is much more likely to “like” an article about healing after a breakup than one about discovered remains. Oddly, my readers were more likely to share a true crime article than one about self-help. That put me in an awkward position, since I love writing self-help. But what could I do?

I could write more true crime, and I did. Even so, I wrote only about stories that compelled me. I asked questions like, how did this happen and why? Then, I answered those questions in my articles. I explored beyond the tragedy to help my audience see the failures in systems that are supposed to protect the most vulnerable. The stories were provocative and engaging, but they weren’t everywhere. I needed more exposure, and it came from the most unlikely place.

Share It Yourself

When I first started my site, I would ask my friends and family to share my work on social media, but I wouldn’t do it myself. Neither did they for the most part. A loyal few did. Back then, I didn’t understand that for some, my site was a threat. It was something I had created, and some silently resented that. I wasn’t sharing my work directly because I didn’t want to come off as a pressuring salesman. When I changed my view, I accelerated the growth of users to my site.

I actively began sharing my work across multiple platforms, including TikTok and apps aimed at local community building. Something interesting happened. Articles about true crime took off on TikTok, while heated political articles gained attention on X. The ones about local politics and true crime caught fire on the community apps. I found what to post where. So, I took screenshots of my articles and distributed them where they would have the most impact. This strategy worked well. More people were coming, but I needed them to stay longer. I needed direction and organization.

Embedded Links and Categories

I had articles with similar tragedies or topics, and I wanted to make it easy for my readers to find what they came for. That as the goal, I took screenshots of my articles and began placing them with links in other articles. As a person finished up one story, they were invited to the next similar story and so on. What I created was a rabbit hole not a funnel.

People started reading six to eight articles and clicking around for more. Linking my articles within my own articles had given them a thread to pull. Along the way, they got answers. They also got compelling questions like, how did this happen, and how do we avoid it in the future? This brought out the binge readers, but they needed a place to scroll and rest. They needed categories.

Entertainment, True Crime and Politics were my heaviest hitting topics, so I made them dedicated categories on my site. Readers now had the freedom to scroll articles and choose which ones to read. Because of this, they stayed longer, letting their curiosity guide their clicks. The numbers had gone up, but what did they mean?

Success by the Numbers

The average website brings in 1,000 — 15,000 users a month, so TheReedersBlock.com was by all means a success. But I had other metrics, such as my in-article link clickthrough rate. A successful site sees about 7 percent, but mine was different, in a good way.

About 27 percent of my readers clicked a link for the next article. That’s almost 1 in 3 or nearly 4 times the average. I wanted my audience to read more, and they did. And the numbers weren’t insane to achieve. I just had to understand the numbers broken down.

As an example, 32,000 visitors a year equals roughly 88 visitors a day. The average article can bring in 400 to 800 unique visitors. 80 articles can bring in 32,000 — 64,000 annual visitors. Breaking news can bring in 1,200 or more a day. That’s just under half a million people.

So, the strategy became clear. Write. Publish every three days. (I don’t always do this.) Spend time sharing and resharing content. It might seem counterintuitive, but share I share my own posts on X.

Most times, I get an algorithm boost. This increases engagement and clicks to my content. The people arrived, but I wanted them to leave with something tangible and meaningful. That’s when the spark turned into a wildfire.

The Truth Be Bold Newsletter

The Truth Be Bold Newsletter is one of my main projects. I started it years ago and refined it. My newsletter focuses on highlighting a main story, while dropping meaningful keys for life. The Three Bold Jewels section gives inspirational quotes that make readers think. The purpose of my newsletter is to spread the raw truth, and readers binge download it. They come back for it. So do I.

The Takeaway

Until now, I have avoided using the word “you” because we all have different methods that work for us. I’ve provided a reflection with information you can choose to use and some you might choose to leave behind. That’s the point. What worked for me was compartmentalizing the numbers and sharing my own work. Organizing it with categories kept users around, as well as linking my work within my work. By doing so, I created a rabbit hole of magnetizing content. After a Facebook ban, I was forced to increase my website’s traffic others ways. My website was the fortress. My content strategy was the key.

Jermaine Reed, MFA is an educator and the Editor in Chief of TheReedersBlock. Take time to Subscribe. It helps promote independent journalism and my site.

*Author’s Perspective: Websites are revenue streams, and I didn’t cover that part in the article directly. Google pays sites for hosting ads. For it to be anything more than pocket change, the traffic has to be in the millions. Advertisers will pay for ad placement within content. This too requires a relatively big user base.

Creators looking to make more than a pittance sell their own products, whether those products are bracelets, books or weirdly shaped candles. The purpose is to monetize traffic. The content is the chance a creator gets to make it happen. And the email list is compounding gold. So, if they ask why you publish content, tell them you do it to express yourself. And get wealthy.