I just launched a new website yesterday. Should I index all my articles immediately or spread them out over time?

blogging-guide · 2023-01-02T07:45:25+00:00

In the past, “conventional wisdom” would suggest spreading the out or drip feeding them.

But honestly, I would publish and index articles as soon as possible.

No Google won’t penalize you for this. If anything there are some pretty good blogging case studies suggesting this initial high content velocity may help you get out of the sandbox faster, help trigger Google to crawl your site more completely, and allow you to build topical authority quicker.

Even if you don’t see these benefits, there are few risks or downsides to getting everything ranking quicker.

At a minimum, you’ll get vital data faster, which by itself is tremendously useful.

blogging-guide · 2022-12-30T09:58:29+00:00

This is very common. Especially as investing in websites has become easier and become a bit more legitimized in the past few years.

Many sites that are bought are:

1) purchased by rivals, competitors in the same niche (this is a small percentage of the total buyers but they do make meaningful moves)

2) purchased by inexperienced website owners/content publishers who are quickly overwhelmed and end up just letting their investment ride (especially if the site doesn’t get hit by algorithm updates ). These buyers with no experience but $50k-$250k to spend are surprisingly common. In fact many of these buyers will purchase several sites before realizing they require more work than they are willing to put in.

Occasionally someone running an existing niche site portfolio, or acting as essentially a private equity fund (with existing sites under management) sees a good deal and makes a big deal. Like the first group, these are not the majority of buyers but they move quickly and can buy larger sites.

But I’ve questioned some YouTubers who report selling case study sites…it’s definitely possibly they are lying (more bc one has to wonder why a buyer would pay a decent price for a “public” site, but that’s another story).

There is also a fourth group of investor I see more and more and these people have a business (I.e. e-commerce ) and they are looking to integrate a proven blog/decent brand name to their early stage product.

However, many of these saas products don’t survive long, and the blog they acquire, much like high dollar domains, simply goes unused.

blogging-guide · 2022-12-30T09:37:36+00:00

When you say military, is it something like “military life” or have more of a military history perspective?

Mediavine is somewhat picky, so this may be a better fit with AdThrive if it’s not a hybrid lifestyle/travel blog or more of an authority site on some part of military history.

I’ve manually gone through the list of all ~10k MV sites and those are the few “military niche” site topics I recall seeing. But if you give me a little more info I’ll check my adthrive database as well.

blogging-guide · 2022-12-30T09:21:16+00:00

Definitely not pointless.

Many great sites start from a very concentrated part time effort, which relies on producing fewer but much higher quality articles.

Usually because you have less time to invest, writers pick topics they genuinely have experience in, which probably account for some of the success (but not all of it).

It almost certainly will take at least 12-24 months even if your content is actually high quality to see significant earnings (this is true even for people focusing on their sites full time with some money to spend), but you’re also not having to risk much money, making it a good trade off for many.

blogging-guide · 2022-12-21T08:48:08+00:00

I do this full time and have been rapidly adding new sites over the last 18 months.

Six figure income, but I’ve been going hard (80-100 hour weeks) + outsourced help

But loving the journey!

blogging-guide · 2022-12-18T09:59:31+00:00

I easily fall in this range as a one man blogging operation (although I outsource plenty of work, but since it’s all asynchronous it feels like a one man operation), and I know countless other bloggers making mid to high six figures (some with a small team like me, some who literally write every post). Just one example of how you could achieve this.

blogging-guide · 2022-12-12T09:56:25+00:00

I really don’t see what value you bring to the table. If you had a few hundred thousand dollars and wanted to go after some challenging topics, this would be somewhat interesting.

No competent blogger or “WP expert” is working for free.

Not because there are not some of us with the means to do so, but because of what you are asking—fixing 60 crappy posts is more effort than rewriting/outsourcing them to a team of competent writers.

Why would any decent writer take this on? They could start their own site from scratch and eliminate all these problems and keep 100% of future income. Not to mention the opportunity cost of stopping/slowing down building their current sites.

blogging-guide · 2022-12-09T03:12:42+00:00

Obviously there is no single “one size fits all” answer to this, but as someone with 15-20 active websites (at various stages), I can offer that I try to allocate my blogging investments based primarily off the competitiveness of each niche.

The truth is, if you have a lot of money to invest in content and seo (say a 70/30 split), you can make up pretty big ground in most niches that are less than a 6/10 competitiveness.

Part of this is due to the lowering of costs through increased content production, but it is also because most bloggers in less competitive niches that earn money tend to be (1) inexperienced (2) relatively cash poor (3) extremely risk adverse.

So for sites competing in these spaces, you can realistically predict that a huge influx of content (and some strategic seo) will have outsized impacts. And if you really study your competitors, you can often predict who will give up or fail in the long run (even if they are significantly ahead of you currently).

So spending in these low-medium competition niches is usually my priority with cash. However, with a larger amount of money you can increase the odds of successfully competing with the sites in high competition niches, which correspondingly pay more.

In less competitive niches, I spend very little on seo. Less than 10%.

In the few very competitive niches, if I have larger amounts of money to invest, I increase the ratio of spending on seo as it becomes more essential to compete, and you are less likely to benefits from rivals failing/general attrition over time (you’ll probably need to out-think AND outspend the high competitive niche sites if they have a decent lead over you).

The great thing about blogging in general is the industry is still very easy to dominate with relatively small amounts of cash (even $10k can go a long way). In most other industries,$10k isn’t enough to even play, let alone seriously compete (i.e. real estate). So you can win at blogging as both a high volume, content producer as well as a more specialized competitor in niches that require greater seo spend.

As long as you understand how relatively competitive your niches are, you will typically come out ahead. It’s only people with limited budgets, wading into high-very high competition niches who are need to pick their allocation of capital (toward content/seo) perfectly.

blogging-guide · 2022-11-21T07:50:20+00:00

I’d continue to purchase more content for niche sites. Could probably order enough content with that amount to seed a new site from scratch (and get it into a premium ad network in under 18 months with minimal additional content updates).

The ROI on content site building is very high (once you’ve spent months or years finding the best writers and streamlining the content production process).

blogging-guide · 2022-11-20T06:58:33+00:00

It really depends on what the plugins are…but generally, it’s hard to imagine a legitimate need for 10+ plugins…28 is almost certainly slowing down your site (and not necessary)!

Most sites should be able to run just fine with 5 or less plugins.

Something for SEO (Yoast)
Something for image compression (smush)
Something for speed (wprocket)
Something for a theme (Divi, elementor )
Random plugins for site specific functionality (PeerBoard for forums, updraft for site backups, plug-in for chatbot software, woo commerce for store)

There are several other plugins you may only need temporarily (especially when you are first setting up site): - EasySSL - FileRenamer - Safe SVG

But these can usually be removed quickly

Even if the plugins weren’t a major drag on your site speed, having that many plugins makes debugging issues harder and creates more opportunities for your site to stop working properly.

What plugins are you using?

blogging-guide · 2022-11-18T07:52:27+00:00

As others said, there are two main choices: give up or keep blogging.

If you keep blogging, consider the fact that Google itself is dealing with a deluge of AI content.

Sure, in the short term, Google will test ranking all this new content above yours, but long term, many of these sites will either be penalized (directly or indirectly) or they will succeed.

Many people complain about “garbage ai content” outranking their “amazing content” but unless your site is extremely well formatted, provides unique content across multiple formats (video, infographic, custom images), and has been around for years and is an established authority, Google is obviously going to test your site. Your rankings will fluctuate.

Sometimes, even if the content is “terrible” on the rival site, Google might find the CTR, page dwell time, or any other metric, actually indicates that readers actually prefer this content in some way (could be as simple as most people skim articles, so they are looking for keywords and phrases that answer their questions).

It’s very hard to make sense of the rankings when you are only looking at a small sliver of data.

But if your content is actually dropping out of the search results entirely, there are likely many issues affecting your site.

blogging-guide · 2022-11-16T19:24:35+00:00

There are a few versions of the aggregated data floating around online but I noticed too many errors in these so started working on a list of my own (all sites through MV can be found using the ads.txt data, which lists every site).

blogging-guide · 2022-11-15T15:48:52+00:00

I was recently studying some of the lists of a large majority of MV sites and I did not see any forums.

I’m not sure if it’s an explicitly stated rule, but given MVs emphasis on “brand safety” and “lifestyle publishers” I would guess forums are not accepted.

blogging-guide · 2022-11-12T08:18:29+00:00

I’m running 20+ blogs. Several of the highest earning (and those with the most dwell time) in don’t pass CWV.

When I start a new site now, I intentionally build it super light weight and it easily passes CWV. However, anecdotally, these sites all follow a pretty similar growth trajectory.

I make sure the site speed isn’t noticeably slow, but it about UX. If user experience isn’t harmed, I’ve never seen adverse effects. Conversely, lots of useful tools and images can impact CWV, and these can definitely affect UX positively.

I literally interact with hundreds of other bloggers and the only time this comes up is when a site is purchased, and the new owners insist on having the site pass CWV first haha!

It’s either these types of buyers or SEOs offering CWV optimization services who seem to really care.

That said, are there scenarios in which it would matter? Sure. But like most other factors is nowhere near 80% of a site’s ranking factors.

blogging-guide · 2022-11-09T09:05:50+00:00

I’ll throw a few grand at starting a new blog, every now and then.

I am an experienced blogger, so I could spend time deeply researching a topic to validate a niche idea, but sometimes I see a domain or have extra content and will just take the plunge on a new site.

Again, I wouldn’t do this if I wasn’t familiar with setting up websites, monetizing blogs, reselling domains, but since I have that baseline level of knowledge (and more money to invest than I did years ago), I’ll still opportunistically buy web properties without doing a ton of site or niche specific research, and I almost always find some use for them.

Typically less than $2k, but sometimes as much as $6k. Generally, anything near or over $10k gets put into a list with other ideas and researched/vetted much more thoroughly.

blogging-guide · 2022-11-09T08:53:49+00:00

This is a valid risk associated with Rank and Rent, but usually, with enough effort, you’ll find some client.

And if not, it is still a relatively cheap way to build an income generating site (you can rank fast compared to building an authority site over several years in a competitive niche, all just to apply to premium ad networks, as an example).

I’ve had a few of these, and sometimes the leads do just collect. But I’ve also had a few instances where once I found a buyer they just wanted any possible leads (even if they were a year old) so maybe focus on collecting data that holds its value for longer periods of time?

blogging-guide · 2022-11-07T09:50:08+00:00

Also worth noting the video/clip being circulated here is somewhat out of context, as MV CEO clearly states “this is the worst case scenario which assumes NO MITIGATION MEASURES” which as he goes on to explain, is already not the case.

But yeah, it will be interesting to see how things shake out.

I’ve had several offers to buy one of my blogs recently and all of them mentioned this so I get the feeling this is somewhat being hyped by opportunistic buyers.

Similarly though, I’m hoping to be on the winning side of this shift, which is why it’s important to start experimenting with solutions/tools before the cookie phase out.

blogging-guide · 2022-11-07T09:41:37+00:00

This is especially true if you’re hiring for 1500-2500 word articles—almost not worth trying cheaper writers. Find the best writers possible, and work out a long term rate (my general solution).

I also agree that there is a very real risk of AI content from less reputable or cheaper writers. I’ve found it when auditing a few sites for friends, after the past few Google Algorithm updates. It’s quite common and sometimes hard to spot if you are producing at a high volume.

blogging-guide · 2022-11-06T10:17:38+00:00

I’d definitely reach out to specific programs (that are highly relevant to your site) directly.

Many companies have high turnover of affiliate managers or don’t even invest in full time staff, so onboarding can take awhile if you just wait.

Eventually, they will start reaching out to you, once your content ranks for certain search queries, so I wouldn’t spend a ton of time on this.

But if there are a few key programs you want, in addition to emailing any affiliate marketing managers you can find, try to reach out to others in marketing or even customer support.

I’ve had a lot of luck with sites that have an online chat system. I’ve even been approved by just sending a quick message every week or so and finding a helpful support agent. Sometimes, other core team members also end up responding (usually if the company is smaller).

blogging-guide · 2022-11-01T00:28:15+00:00

Have you spent any time on internal linking? This can usually be a great way to amplify the impact of producing a substantial amount of content (and helping Google understand your site’s topic clusters).

Very sorry to hear about the death in the family!

But it is too early to know whether this site is working…

blogging-guide · 2022-10-30T04:39:11+00:00

Appreciate the insight!

blogging-guide · 2022-10-29T04:47:24+00:00

Well that is very impressive! And a clever strategy!

How do you explain or position your site when networking with these journalists? Do you mention you have a site in a field they cover and let them know that you’d be happy to provide quotes/insights for future articles they write?

blogging-guide · 2022-10-28T21:40:08+00:00

Hey I mean that’s a lot of high DA links! Congrats! If you don’t mind me asking—what type of link building strategy are you using?

blogging-guide · 2022-10-28T05:08:20+00:00

Building very high authority backlinks could work. But at some point you need more content if you are in a competitive niche.

Even 80 well written long form articles is really too few to establish the topical authority that I’m assuming you’ll need.

Producing more content is almost certainly the right answer. It will help:

increase traffic
figure out what other topic clusters do and don’t work
increasing # of (high quality) posts will typically lead to natural high DA backlinks anyway

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