Blogging is a Frustrating Mind Fuck
Running my Nomadic Backpacker blog is a (sometimes) a frustrating mind fuck. The never-ending quest for 'traffic'. And Google, you are doing me no favours!
I am a small-time blogger. I have to fight against the Top Dogs for the top spots on Google search results. It is clear that Google does not care for the likes of me.
As a travel blogger, I am up against Wikitravel, TripAdvisor etc etc, with their unlimited budgets. Me, I am trying to stay afloat on the occasional donation.
Every time Google has another wet dream (algorithm update), my hits plummet, and it takes a week to recover.
I have been at it for more than 2 years. I know how to optimise the SEO to help me rank on page 1 of Google Search Results.
And more recently, Google Search Console is not crawling or indexing my pages. I have had the same strategy and it has always worked before.
I publish my post and later I submit a sitemap, myblog/sitemap.xml and later I submit the new page as a URL INSPECTION.
My pages were getting indexed, within 10 minutes. Now I have a backlog of more than 10 posts (later posts still not appearing) 'discovered - currently not indexed'.
As a travel blogger, I am up against Wikitravel, TripAdvisor etc etc, with their unlimited budgets. Me, I am trying to stay afloat on the occasional donation.
Every time Google has another wet dream (algorithm update), my hits plummet, and it takes a week to recover.
I have been at it for more than 2 years. I know how to optimise the SEO to help me rank on page 1 of Google Search Results.
And more recently, Google Search Console is not crawling or indexing my pages. I have had the same strategy and it has always worked before.
I publish my post and later I submit a sitemap, myblog/sitemap.xml and later I submit the new page as a URL INSPECTION.
My pages were getting indexed, within 10 minutes. Now I have a backlog of more than 10 posts (later posts still not appearing) 'discovered - currently not indexed'.
And I have a load of pages, 'Crawled - currently not indexed'. Some of these are pages that should, in theory, be great for SEO, yet I have lost out on traffic and potential followers/donations.
Do I need to run Google Ads? Do I need to pay them? Answers on a postcard, please.
There are hundreds of blogs out there, what makes mine special over all the others out there?
I run unique content, I only blog about places I have been. I am not copying anything. In fact, it is essential for me that, when running guest posts, that the content has not appeared anywhere else before. I don't what to be penalised and I don't want people who ran the same content, weeks before on another site to be penalised either. Yup, in case you didn't know, Google doesn't like duplicate content, although fake sites seem to do quite well on running copied stuff.
It is a never-ending game of seeing what works.
My new My Top 3 Favourite Countries series where I feature other travellers, has produced good results. By this I mean, traffic has sky-rocketed.
My mate Phil has a huge online following on Facebook. I tagged him when I posted his top 3 on my Facebook. And all his friends saw it and clicked. Traffic hit the 230 mark. Unique users in a 24 hour period.
Yet I did the same thing with 2 others who I have featured and the amount of traffic was almost negligible.
And while blog posts entitled Top 3 are grand for SEO and the clickbait community, people and Google loves this shit. Top 3 this, Top 6 that, 4 reasons why, How to do this, how to do that, it ain't doing me any good when Google doesn't index my pages.
Blogging is not easy. Making money from blogging is not easy. Anyone who tells you it is, is lying. Maybe it was easier back in 2010, when I should have started running my blog. Now, it is mostly a frustrating mind fuck.
But where there's a will, there's a way.
Do I need to run Google Ads? Do I need to pay them? Answers on a postcard, please.
There are hundreds of blogs out there, what makes mine special over all the others out there?
I run unique content, I only blog about places I have been. I am not copying anything. In fact, it is essential for me that, when running guest posts, that the content has not appeared anywhere else before. I don't what to be penalised and I don't want people who ran the same content, weeks before on another site to be penalised either. Yup, in case you didn't know, Google doesn't like duplicate content, although fake sites seem to do quite well on running copied stuff.
It is a never-ending game of seeing what works.
My new My Top 3 Favourite Countries series where I feature other travellers, has produced good results. By this I mean, traffic has sky-rocketed.
My mate Phil has a huge online following on Facebook. I tagged him when I posted his top 3 on my Facebook. And all his friends saw it and clicked. Traffic hit the 230 mark. Unique users in a 24 hour period.
Yet I did the same thing with 2 others who I have featured and the amount of traffic was almost negligible.
And while blog posts entitled Top 3 are grand for SEO and the clickbait community, people and Google loves this shit. Top 3 this, Top 6 that, 4 reasons why, How to do this, how to do that, it ain't doing me any good when Google doesn't index my pages.
Blogging is not easy. Making money from blogging is not easy. Anyone who tells you it is, is lying. Maybe it was easier back in 2010, when I should have started running my blog. Now, it is mostly a frustrating mind fuck.
But where there's a will, there's a way.
