The Main Struggle for Bloggers Right Now (+ an Invitation)

If you’re a blogger and see the title of this post, you might immediately guess what I’m going to talk about. There’s one main thing big and small publishers and website owners are struggling with right now, and that’s traffic.

It directly affects income, of course, but the issue is the declining traffic, or even the lack of any traffic if you’ve been hit by a recent Google update or just the changes in the way search engines rank websites. And I mean all search engines, how AI tools feature the content on top of the results, which is the case with Google’s AI Overviews, how you may easily be penalized even if you aren’t doing anything wrong. Add to that how less quality and newer blogs are ranking way before you, even though you were on top for years for specific keywords.

Things are changing, and we need to adjust.

You’re not alone.

And the first thing I want to tell you is that you’re not the only one. Almost anyone right now is suffering from this, is confused, has lost trust in Google, and is looking for alternatives.

I also see that most bloggers who teach blogging, like me, are changing their formulas, so to say. And that makes sense. It’s natural. 

What has been working till now may no longer work. The way to rank on Google will be different now. It’s still about quality content, but not so much about on-page optimization anymore.

Old formulas are not bringing the same results anymore. Such as the SEO + Ads formula, meaning that you create many articles targeting keywords that you’ve found using a tool, you optimize them strategically and you interlink them well.

Then you publish them with the goal of ranking them on top of the search results for that extra term, getting traffic to your site, and earning from the ads that you have displayed on your pages.

Technically, you were still creating the content people want, you were satisfying user intent, but let’s face it. The goal was to rank and get traffic and make money. Now Google knows that and doesn’t consider it natural behavior and might not trust your site that much anymore, even if you have the best content.

So what many bloggers are doing now, is to optimize less, and to create people-first content. Not each piece will rank, and most of the content won’t be created with the goal of ranking or to get the green light by an SEO WordPress plugin.

This will result in more natural helpful content being published, and which people will be happy to read, especially knowing how much AI and low-quality articles there are out there now.

But you might be wondering: ‘How would people find that content then, and be able to enjoy it and learn from it?’

Here’s a way.

Authority 

While other search engines still take standard SEO practices as a main factor when ranking, Google is more about authority.

They want you to create content on a topic you have experience with, in a niche you have authority in, and to make it trustworthy. They want to see who the author is, so things like an author bio and a good About page become important again, as well as presence on other platforms and having your name there too.

If you show authority, you can boost your whole website in the search results and increase the chances of all your posts to rank for many relevant keywords even if they weren’t heavily optimized.

This is actually good news because it means real publishers and bloggers who are actually putting in the work and have been around for years will be appreciated. As opposed to new sites with AI content that just want to get ranked quickly and there’s no real person or brand behind them, no sense of community around that platform, and no real experience or expertise is shared in those posts.

For you, this might look like deleting some old posts that don’t add real value, or at least no-indexing them so you block search engines from showing them in the search results. 

This is the moment to also mention the importance of creating topical authority, which means creating high-quality articles around one specific topic that you specialize in the most, and being seen as an expert on it in your industry over time. 

Your backlink profile plays a role in this too, but those links need to be from quality and relevant sites, as you might guess. Don’t just go out there and pay others to link to you, or get easy links from sites in different niches. That doesn’t really help your site’s reputation and your reputation as the author and publisher.

We can also bring back forgotten practices like guest posting. But genuine guest posting – with the goal of sharing your expertise on your main topic on another platform in your niche, and providing value, while also getting a backlink, hopefully a dofollow one.

One nice way to get backlinks used to be HARO, Help a Reporter Out. A platform you could sign up for, for free, and you’d get an email every day with different topics journalists need sources for.

It could be a round-up post with finance tips for a big publications, and – let’s say – they need 10 finance bloggers to share their best advice. Then you could contact the journalist via email and pitch them. And it wasn’t impossible to get quality backlinks from that.

HARO rebranded to Connectively and it wasn’t quite the same, but also now it was just announced that they are closing the platform next month, so that won’t be an option anymore.

Also read: How Angela Makes $10K/Month with Blogging, Pinterest & Selling eBooks

More ways to build authority in your niche

Other ways to show Google that you’re an authority on your topic and can be trusted include:

• testimonials;
• case studies;
• customer reviews;
• list your qualifications and certifications in your author bio;
• inside your blog posts, share your own knowledge and experience with examples and stories;
• cite trusted sources;
• maybe link to research;
• add the necessary elements to the article to support your main points.

Maybe that sounds like general advice to you and nothing you haven’t heard of, but my point here is that we’re going back to these practices. And that with so much AI content and fake publishers out there, it’s nice to care about authority again.

And if you are doing all I just mentioned, that’s great. Keep doing it.

The main focus of the membership in the new year

So, this is what bloggers are currently struggling with, myself included, and what I’m taking action on. With that, this is the direction our membership Fearless Bloggers will be taking in the new year.

More focus on blog traffic, optimizing for other search engines other than Google, and boosting authority. On diversifying traffic, understanding what Google wants exactly but also not losing everything when they release yet another core update. On doing SEO for the new age of blogging so to say, on Pinterest, and alternative platforms that can lead to growing your brand, getting traffic and boosting your income.

I’m making a lot of changes in my blogging business right now, such as:

• a big content audit;
• removing whole categories from my site;
• understanding how other search engines rank articles;
• creating new, original content that’s for people and not for search engines;
• removing some WordPress plugins and replacing them with better alternatives;
• following industry updates and learning how AI search works so I don’t see it as an obstacle, but as an opportunity.

And I have an invitation for you.

The WordPress SEO Boost Challenge

As you may know, I like documenting my journey. That’s basically how I create content.

I learn things, and share them as I go. I share what works and what doesn’t work for me, ways I find to get more traffic, things I’ve learned from experts in the industry, tools that can help you, and just anything that might help you in some way and save you some time and mistakes down the road.

Well, this stage of my business is no different, and the content I’ll create from you in the next months will reflect that. As the membership is the main platform I create content for and the best way to work with me this and next year, that’s where I’ll be sharing anything related to blog traffic. We’re talking about the paid plan of Fearless Bloggers.

And here’s what I’m inviting you to.

If you’re a member already, you remember the Blog Monetization Challenge we did in September. Over the course of 10 days, I shared little-known ways to monetize your website that you can implement right now and without social media.

I also knew that there will be another challenge coming at some point, I just didn’t know it would be so soon. But here we are.

While December – next month- is the month where everyone’s talking about New Year’s resolutions, selling offers one final time to boost your revenue, planning your content for the new year, or just relaxing and taking time off your business, I’ll do something else because we all need it.

We all need blog traffic, we need to boost our site’s SEO, and we need to adjust to what’s happening with search engines and the blogging industry in general.

Whether you’ve lost all your traffic, some of it, none of it but want to stop relying on Google algorithm updates, or whether you’re just scared and want to diversify your blog traffic, this is for you.

In December, instead of another video training I release, and the usual other elements of the monthly curriculum, you’ll learn about 10 different ways to improve the SEO of your WordPress blog. 

I’ll share tactics I haven’t shared before. Some you might know, others not. Some might be quick and easy, others not so much.

And while nothing is guaranteed, the overall effect of this can help you with your rankings (even though it will take time to see that in your analytics results).

But even if not this, it will get you going in the right direction. That looks like:

• diversifying your traffic;
• going beyond Google;
• and yet still following Google’s guidelines;
• optimizing content differently;
• doing a few technical things on your site to allow search engines to understand and rank it better and people to have a better experience on it.

All with the goal to get more blog traffic, and – of course – grow our income. But also to create authority in our niche, produce better content, and not do anything that search engines will penalize us for.

Here’s the link. You can see everything that Fearless Bloggers includes, and you can join us right on time for this challenge in December. It officially begins on December 9th, with the first strategy shared inside the topic we have called ‘Blog Traffic Tips’, and it ends on December the 20th.

You can just join us for a month and enjoy the new content, or you can stay a member for as long as you’d like or even get yearly access to get 2 months for free. This way you’ll be able to keep going back to all the content that’s already waiting for you inside, and be there for new challenges happening next year, and all the other goodies I’ve planned for you.

I’ve also structured the challenge in a way that it’s doable for you. After the 20th of December, there won’t be any new content coming so you can actually spend time with family and take time off from your business if you prefer and not feel like you’re missing out on new updates here.

And if you do feel like blogging, then you can take action on the 10 strategies I’ll share with you. I think that’s a nice balance, and you choose what to do for the rest of December.

If you decide to join us for this, you can also show up for each strategy, like the new posts, leave comments and ask questions. Pick at least one strategy, implement it, and share the results with us afterwards. 

So this is what we’ll focus on next month inside Fearless Bloggers. As a paid member, you’ll still get the monthly income report too, of course. 

And this is a nice introduction to the main direction I’m taking with my blogging business and with the content I create – blog traffic, SEO, optimization, quality content, diversifying your traffic sources, WordPress tips and tricks, etc. Because that’s what all bloggers desperately need in times of so much uncertainty for the future of online search.

That’s what I have for you today. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time.

***

Prefer to listen to this post instead? Tune into the podcast episode below:

Get Updates: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS | More