How Kurt Schmidt Gets 40 Million Monthly Pageviews With This Google Discover Strategy

Can you imagine publishing a 500-word article and receiving 5.5 million pageviews within a week?
That's what happened to Kurt Schmidt in May 2022.
His team published an article about Johnny Depp and Pirates of the Caribbean at the height of the divorce trial, and the article took off.
But that wasn't a freak occurrence. His site, Inside the Magic, covers all things Disney and averages 45 million pageviews per month.
This is possible thanks to Google platforms - particularly Google Discover.
Kurt joins Spencer on the podcast to bring us a masterclass on creating engaging content that Google rewards.
Kurt is brilliant. The site, the t-shirt he wears in the interview, and the helpful advice he's generous enough to share are all evidence of this.
He's a banker who bought a site that was declining in traffic and turned it into the behemoth it is today in only 5 years. He did so by thinking outside the box and using technology to help make better decisions.
For example:
They increase their CTR by analyzing what's working on Facebook and KZbin to create more engaging headlines and featured images.
They use SEO best practices to then keep visitors on the page by creating meaty content that satisfies the readers' interest.
Then they go a step further, combining their knowledge with the latest machine learning and AI tech to continuously test and improve results.
And how they do this at scale is where the magic happens.
It's a valuable and motivating interview with tons of great insights. Enjoy!
Topics Kurt Schmidt Covers
* How Kurt got into the online business world
* Acquiring a site
* The ups and downs of growing a business
* Getting out of hard times
* Using engagement metrics on Facebook to see what's working
* Their team's compensation structure and how it's evolving
* The unique pay and bonus structure they use to incentivize authors
* Historical and current traffic breakdown
* The recipe for creating engaging, shareable content
* How to get traffic from Google Discover
* Best practices for optimizing titles and images
* Headline best practices
* Where they source images
* Tools they use to a/b test and improve their work
* Their content production process
* Their simple solution for managing their seemingly complex pay structure
* The pros and cons of clickbait titles
* Marrying human knowledge with AI tech
* Optimizing news content for SEO
* Revenue breakdown
* His view on whether this strategy is transferrable to other niches
* And a whole lot more...
Links & Resources
Inside The Magic - insidethemagic.net/
VidSummit - vidsummit.com/
MarketMuse - www.nichepursuits.com/marketmuse
Skimlinks - www.nichepursuits.com/skimlinks
Grammarly - www.nichepursuits.com/grammarly
Chartbeat - chartbeat.com/
True Anthem - www.trueanthem.com/
Sponsored by Link Whisper - www.nichepursuits.com/iifk
-You can learn more about me at and get additional website tips at: www.nichepursuits.com
-You can learn about optimizing your site with internal links using a WordPress Plugin I created right here: www.linkwhisper.com
-And finally, if you are interested in buying or selling content or affiliate websites, my partners and I may be interested here: www.nichepursuits.com/motioni...
Thanks for watching and please subscribe to my KZbin channel by clicking here: www.nichepursuits.com/youtube

[@seoleaders]

Wow, going on the ahrefs stats I am guessing $400k a month site there. Awesome interview , what a story

[@Yarrney]

I agree. Must be +/- 50k of that.

[@eal1]

I wonder if he got hit by the Dec 5th Google algo update. I sailed through all previous ones but got brutally nailed by that one just last Friday a few days after the roll out

[@Yarrney]

@@eal1 what did the 5th focus on?

[@PatrickFletcher]

Awesome interview guys!

[@nram1]

The numbers are impressive. It's not easy to find a website with so many clickbait headlines and slow loading. There are so many of the articles written by people who don't know about Disney or the other theme parks. But any search for Disney related stuff, they seem to show up on page 1 so they must be doing this right.

[@livingbreed]

Can we get a tour of the books on your shelf and which you recommend? Thanks

[@ufozencom]

i had some surprising Google Discover traffic and it was really nice. When I sold the site, the new owner didn't listen to what I was doing with it and his traffic with Discover tanked. :( Not what I wanted! Eager to see this video!!!

[@javamochafrap]

At 44:11 he mentions something like Chart Read. What is that and where can I find it?

[@evan00783]

At the 31:47 mark of the interview, Kurt mentions an AI image tool - Is it Coretex? Do you have their link handy?

[@metaversenft]

7x multiple on 12 months of revenue or profit? What was profit?

[@eal1]

How much do you spend on hosting with a setup like that and who do you use?

[@MaschiTuts]

Two questions please, Spencer. Do I understand it correctly that he actually takes the pictures from Disney itself and then just edits them a bit in Canva? If yes, I deem this as extremely risky and I am really surprised that he did not get in trouble for it if that is what they are doing. Secondly, do you have any idea about where they actually get all these news from that they are writing about? Also, thanks a lot for this episode, it was really interesting for sure!

[@MaschiTuts]

In fact, I have now double-checked this. So they simply write Credit and then write something like Netflix or Disniey or os. I am still surprised that this is not causing issues because I generally you would still need to have the permission to use the media/picture/photo which they obviously can't have for all these types of images/photos that are used in the articles, hmmm.

[@lavoroduro]

Impressive

[@swagnexttuber-boombeach7092]

How to get google discover traffic?

[@OverflowCafe]

Did he share his current revenue numbers?

[@niche-pursuits]

He did not want to publicly share his revenue numbers, but he shared them with me privately. You can get a guestimate based on traffic numbers and typical RPM ranges for display ads.

[@thelawgang]

great video. My wife is a writer and would love to contact Kurt about writing for him and his websites... can you let me know how my wife can contact Kurt. thanks pat

[@dr.albertroland]

Passive income does have a way of liberating people, i remain eternally grateful to Mrs Katherine Haley and her company for their efforts that got me to this point, finally payed off my mortgage and all my debts, what more could I've asked for.

[@laurenodonnell5889]

You invest with Mrs Haley too? Wow that woman has been a blessing to me and my family.

[@Alexwilliamskenneth]

I was skeptical at first till I decided to try. Its huge returns is awesome. I can't say much.

[@dr.albertroland]

@Tara Coldero You can communicate with her on telegam with the user name below

[@dr.albertroland]

investwithhaley💯

[@TB-zt6hs]

Scammers scam job

[@sreejang]

He doenst say anything real about google discover. good i sped up the video.

[@SebastianPappG]

The site looks like trash lol

[@barebones5884]

This person says nothing at all waste of time watching

[@AndreyDraganov]

How much does this website make per month?

[@EngineeringFun]

About 1 penny per visitor. If he gets special sponsorship deals from Disney, it could be more.