How to Maximize Reach of Blog Articles about AI

As AI and data science writers we may not put too much thought into how to maximize the reach of our blog articles. We focus first and foremost on writing high-quality content, then maybe share it on our social media accounts and call it a day. But that only scratches the surface.

In this article I will share strategies for driving traffic to your blog articles about AI that will help grow your audience and maximize your earnings. These strategies will be viewed through the lens of the AI Blogathon running on Skillenai until May 31st, 2025.

How Organic Search Works

Let me share a perspective on blog promotion that drove me to risk $5000 of my own money on an AI Blogathon.

Here is the context to understand my thesis. We first have to understand how organic search works.

1. Organic search traffic is the primary driver of web traffic.
   • This is under threat due to the emergence of AI search, but for now the statement above is still true.
   • Organic search trumps social media traffic not only by volume but also by effort.
   • Social media posts die after a few days, organic search traffic can persist for years.
2. Organic search rank is determined by:
   • a) relevance to the user’s query
   • b) the authority of the webpage
3. The authority of a webpage is determined by:
   • a) the number and quality of links to it
   • b) the number and quality of links to the domain as a whole
4. Given all this, to maximize organic search traffic across an entire website, you need:
   • a) lots of webpages within the website
   • b) lots of links to those webpages
5. It is difficult for one person on their own to:
   • a) write many articles
   • b) have many people cite those articles
6. Most writers have a portfolio of articles that span multiple publications.

Genesis of a Blogging Platform

I learned all the facts above while running a tutoring marketplace business before I became a data scientist (sold to Varsity Tutors). Since I started Skillenai 4 years ago, I have been stuck without a solution to #5.

But then one day after participating in a treasure hunt and feeling the magic of competitive instincts, I came upon a solution. With the right motivation and community, #5 transforms to:

5. It is easy for many authors together to:
   • a) write many articles
   • b) have many people cite those articles

What makes #5b easy is #6 – authors can cite their own articles across their portfolio. And with a community of authors, the community can support each other by citing each other’s articles across their collection of portfolios. When all this activity occurs on a single domain, that domain has #4 firing on all cylinders and can produce tremendous traffic and value.

These types of network effects are how Towards Data Science, for example, grew so big so fast. But now that they’re off Medium, it’s not clear they have the right incentives to continue their dominance. This creates an opening for a new player that can figure out those incentives and build a strong community.

So let’s zero in on the incentives in the blogathon. The competition was designed to award two things.

1. The winner, based on their traffic
2. The community, based on its collective traffic*

*If collective traffic exceeds 100k unique visitors, all articles with at least 10k get an equal share of a $2000 payout.

AI Blog Promotion Strategies

Social Media

Now let’s get back to blog promotion strategies. If each author only posts their own articles on their own social media accounts and stops, the 100k unique visitor threshold is unlikely to be hit. Each article would only get a few hundred visitors this way (based on the numbers from the first 8 submissions), so unless many hundreds of articles are submitted, we won’t hit that collective 100k threshold.

Citations

That’s where citations come in.

I should first note that the Skillenai domain today has very little organic search traffic and domain authority. It’s starting more or less from scratch. So authors can’t expect much organic search traffic to their articles on Skillenai without securing their own citations (backlinks).

So how can you as an author secure citations to your articles? Here are the options, in order of difficulty (easiest first).

1. Start here: Your external portfolio of previously published articles
   • Presumably you’ve published articles on other websites such as Towards Data Science, KD Nuggets, Analytics Vidyha, your personal blog, etc. For all such articles you have control over, find a few where the topic is relevant to the article you published on Skillenai. Then add links from those articles to your Skillenai article.
2. New articles you publish (especially outside of Skillenai)
   • This can be a good option if you don’t have permission to edit your articles that were previously published outside of Skillenai
3. Ask another Skillenai author in our Discord
   • Each author has their own portfolio of articles. Leverage the community to connect with authors and help each other add relevant links to each other’s articles.
4. Use the Citation Helper to research articles similar to your Skillenai articles, then reach out to the authors on LinkedIn.

The best link placements are helpful to the reader and embedded into paragraphs. Use hyperlink text that contains keywords you’d like your article to rank for on Google.

Join!

I will be personally doing some legwork to secure citations to articles submitted to the blogathon, and I hope you will join me in the effort!

And if you haven’t submitted an article to the blogathon yet, you can do so here. Don’t forget to join our Discord server to connect with other authors.