Quit obsessing over Google rankings and worry more about getting traffic and eyeballs to your site. If you get the traffic and real visitors, then rankings will

Quit obsessing over Google rankings and worry more about getting traffic and eyeballs to your site. If you get the traffic and real visitors, then rankings will naturally follow. Stop thinking of yourself as a "small-time blogger" and think of yourself as a journalist, a reporter, someone who has a story to tell. Write content that people want to read. Uncover something that people care about. Write something controversial. Use 'social' to get people to see what you write. I've been in your shoes: I was a 'small-time blogger' and just kept uncovering stuff that people care about, articles that people want read, and after hundreds of posts I finally started getting traffic regularly. Then I uncovered something that lots of people cared about and that post of mine hit the home page of HN and Reddit all at the same time. I didn't think my server could keep up with all the traffic. Sure, make sure your site is "optimized" based on SEO best practices. But don't obsess over rankings.