How I Continued To Rank Through Google's Updates

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Updated 2 months ago

Hey there WAers. I have written a few blogs here recently about my issues resulting from the recent Google updates - i.e. I got smoked!

And as a quick recap, I got hammered, sulked, threw my toys out the cot, burned my laptop (not really) and swore I was never doing this again.

I even threw a site up on Flippa and offloaded it (I will write a post about that one later in the week as it only just sold yesterday).

I then composed myself and here we are...

One site kept working though

The whole time that the above was happening however, I had one site that actually kept growing - despite my lack of interest. In fact, when I created it, I went down a petty little path of "screw you Google, I am not doing anything SEO wise that you like".

I haven't chased backlinks, I haven't posted regularly and I haven't really monitored keywords. All I did was the basics on each page:

1 internal link
1 external link
Meta descriptions etc.
Video ( on most)
Keywords in title, heading and first paragraph (although these were not really researched).

As time went by, I noticed something surprising in that in spite of the fact that I wasn't really posting to it regularly, or even updating anything, it wasn't losing ground in the rankings - in fact, it actually rose a little.

Even more surprising was that whenever I did decide to add a post, it got a little jump as well.

How?

My belief on this is simple. In spite of my refusal to try and keep Google 'happy', I think I may have inadvertently wandered into their area of website acceptance in other ways. These were:

Keep the niche simple and helpful
Write from the heart and keep it personalized

That's it, that's all I did.

The site is about me using a pellet smoker where I write about the cooks that I do and the products and equipment that I use. All of the photos are original (i.e. no stock photos) and as it is a small niche, I am appealing to a small, yet passionate audience.

And I further believe that if I did put in that extra effort, which is what I am doing now, then it should by rights start to grow even further.

Earnings?

In terms of earnings - which let's face it is why we do this - I am only running it with Amazon links at the moment and there is no advertising on the page.

Earnings to date: $25.01

Which is not much in the grand scheme of things but again, it proves that the process I am undertaking is working - so all I need to do now is put the work in.

In time I will add more affiliate programs, set up a Google Adsense account for this site and I am also building a YouTube Channel (66 videos, 611 hours and 123 subs to date) for advertising revenue there as well.

Have I used AI?

One of the sites I had that got smashed was almost completely AI written so in this case, I have kept its use to a minimum (so much for my sticking it to Google - haha). I mean for the recipes I have used AI ( after all, there are only so many ways to write them) but for the inputs and outcomes, it is all me.

That is not to say I haven't used it as a base for some of the buying guides, but again, only for the product outlines themselves. I have made sure to write all the info about what a product is and how it should be used from my own perspective.

So, How can this help you?

If you are someone starting out and want to build a site that will grow and earn money, then based on my experiences above, these are my recommendations:

Narrow your niche - you can of course exp-and it as you go, but for now, keep it to a narrow but targeted audience.
Write from your own experience. This doesn't mean you have to be an expert, if you are discovering or trialing something, talk about that and what you have found. You will be surprised how this can resonate with your readers.
Do the basic SEO on every post - as per my steps above.
Try and be consistent - as above, my site is working in spite of my inconsistency - imagine if I increased my work here.

And that is it - do that first and once it starts to gain traction, then you can expand out to social media and the like.