5 Dumb SEO Myths & Ideas Going Around That Are Really Stupid

Ryuzaki

お前はもう死んでいる
Moderator
BuSo Pro
Digital Strategist
Joined
Sep 3, 2014
Messages
6,244
Likes
13,130
Degree
9
I could name names. I could tell you exactly which SEO bloggers and teachers are perpetuating this nonsense (but I won't spread the poison. If you know, you know.). I can tell you why they're doing it, too.

It fluffs up their case study reports. It decreases the frustration of their students and increases their lifetime customer value. And the failures that arise from it can be blamed on something else. Some of it is flat out vanity. And some of it is simply inexperience and stupidity.

I don't think it's all malicious, either. But I do feel the need to at least point these things out because I'm seeing the "next generation" of BuSo users arriving with these myths and ideas in their heads and it's hurting them. I see a lot of websites, too, from my work with links. This is way more prevalent than you'd think.

Lemme break it down.

1) Content Isn't an Expense


I'm seeing way too many people around the net and even on this beautiful forum writing up their case study reports for the month and having tables like this:

Post PublishedPageviewsRevenueExpensesContent InvestmentProfit
December 2021173,387$10.00$20.00$1,500-$10.00
January 2022163,221$15.00$20.00$1,500-$5.00

I hope you guys aren't paying your taxes like this or you're giving the government way more of your money than they're asking for.

I'm sure you've spotted the issue, which is pretending that since content is an investment into your site that somehow it's not an expense, and thus it doesn't get included in the Revenue minus Expenses equals Profit calculation.

Newbie Thoughts:
"Hey, look, I'm not doing so bad after all. I'm only $15 in the hole, and not $3,015 in the hole!" is what the newbies are thinking. All of this spinning and twisting feels good psychologically but it's a flat out self-lie.​

Blogger Thoughts:
But what the bloggers are wanting the newbies to think is "The site brought in $40,000 this month. I spent $3,000 in VA's and software and hosting. I invested $25,000 in content. My profit is $37,000." They want newbies to be fooled by this misdirection.​

I'm sure their courses and ebooks get more sales when their post thumbnails have $37,000 in huge bold numbers instead of $12,000. I just wouldn't want to take fundamental advice from someone not being honest at the top of the funnel. Makes me question everything else, and rightfully so.

At the end of the day this is really stupid. Content is a marketing expense. For us it's more than that. It's like being a Brick Wall Builder and pretending bricks aren't an expense. Or a grocery store that pretends food isn't an expense. You don't have to knock-it-off, but I wish you would. At least the newbies, who aren't trying to lie to us but to themselves, and are innocently following some blogger's dishonest ideas.

See #5 below for more reasons this is stupid.

2) You Should Pre-Publish Lots of Content


I don't want to say too much here because a lot of this argument also belongs in #5 below. But let me explain the core issue here.

The Past:
Back in the day people would buy a domain for every harebrained idea they had and would add it to their $3 a month shared server so Google would index it with nothing on it (and they would) but a blank Wordpress installation so it would be aging and providing a "benefit".​

The Present:
Somewhere along the lines people got convinced that they could do the same with content (even though it never worked for domains). I'll explore WHY I think people are doing this in #5, but for now let's just say that the logic isn't that dumb on the surface, but if you stop to think about it for even a moment you'll see how disastrous this is.​

Here's the thinking: "I'll order 300 pieces of cheap content for a penny a word at 1000 words each, and when it gets delivered I'll copy and paste whatever is in the Word file and publish it. Or I'll use my 300 credits for AI content. Google will index that garbage and it'll start aging, which is the most important part. Then I'll circle back around and improve it all."

But the person never circles back around to improve the content, because they're lazy and this whole pre-publishing and aging idea was just a cover for laziness. "But I'll see which pieces of content perform the best and work on those the most!"

Here's the issue. None of them will perform and you'll never improve them. They'll sit there with zero on-page optimization, zero images, and zero headers, and they'll never get traffic, and you'll give up on the project and either move on to the next or quit SEO altogether.

Congratulations! Google's systems now think 300 posts on your site are low quality, low effort trash. Your Panda quality score is in the gutter, and to fix it you'll have to improve all 300 posts quickly and wait 6 to 12 months. You'll probably need to Kitchen Sink the whole site, because you know your lazy ass did a lot more wrong in the process.​

Quit being lazy. Here's my philosophy on how to deal with content: I ONLY press publish when a piece of content is perfect and ready to go. Then I never look at it again. That line on the to-do list is crossed off and never seen again. But over in your universe you now have 300 items on your to-do list. No wonder you get overwhelmed and give up.

Pre-publishing is the leading cause of most stupid questions on Builder Society because the pre-publisher fails and realizes they not only have to care about the basics if they want to win, but they realize they don't know the basics because they thought they could ignore it.

The questions are always asked in such a way to validate more laziness, too. "How many images does my content have to have? Do headers really matter? How many posts do I have to interlink to? How many words should a post have? How short can they be?" This is where laziness gets you, right back to square one.

3) Delete Content That Doesn't Get Traffic


The worst set of questions I'm sure all of us are sick of answering on BuSo (that arises out of pre-publishing and #5 below) are:
  • How much of a boost will I get if I delete content? (wat lmao)
  • How do I know which posts to delete?
  • Should I delete a post if it gets no traffic?
  • Should I delete a post if it has no links?
  • How long should I wait before I delete a perfectly fine, high quality post?
  • How do I know if a post is high quality or not?
  • Should I 404, 301, 302, 808 kick drum redirect or what?
The reason this happens is because you dummies pre-published a million English-as-a-Second-Language articles or you used AI Content Spinner v3.0 and now you want to "fix" your site. (Or to be fair, your client did this in the past and you're on a rescue mission).

Some people are in such a tizzy to find a magic bean that they can embed in a silver bullet to shoot at the push-button solution that they never stop to wonder... How is it that they expect to make money by publishing content and simultaneously make money by deleting it? They just saw some random thread about content pruning and how some of us have had success with it, but they don't understand why. They just want that shortcut.

Anyways, back to the core issue. No, you should not delete content that doesn't get traffic, just because it doesn't get traffic.

Imagine this scenario:
You create a link bait post for no keyword in particular. You gather data for your niche, you invent a brand new surprising (barely supported) conclusion from it and present it in interactive graphs, charts, jargon, have references, etc. You email it to 1,000 journalists since you just did their job for them. You put it on Facebook and pay 5 big pages to promote it. You get in on Reddit and it goes to the front page. After three weeks, 2,000,000 pageviews, and 500 new referring link domains, it no longer gets traffic. "Hurrrr, should I delete this post?"​
I don't need to be long-winded here. There are times to delete content, but it has nothing to do with traffic. It has to do with it being low-quality, creating algorithmic drag, and tanking your Panda quality score, which is causing your entire site to suffer.

If your entire site is ESL / AI nonsense, you might as well start over on a new domain and not deal with any of this. But if you have 800 posts and 200 of them were short and low-quality, designed for quick social media promotions, you can proceed as follows:
  • IF the page is obviously low-quality content, THEN
    • IF the page gets good traffic and/or has good links, keep it & improve it
    • IF the page gets neither traffic or good links, 404/410 or 301 it
Notice that all of that depends first upon if the page is low-quality. NOT whether or not it gets traffic. Here are some truth nuggets to consider:

- Traffic is not an indicator of quality.​
- High-quality content is a positive, not a neutral.​
- Relevant content increases topical authority.​
- If content gets no traffic but has links, it's been voted to be high-quality.​

A news site might publish 100 high quality articles a day that never get traffic after a week due to relevancy and freshness decays. They should KEEP those posts because it's high-quality indexation.

Stop indiscriminately deleting content because it hasn't gotten traffic in 3 months or whatever it is you're thinking. You need more experience before you start making these kinds of decisions, otherwise you're literally un-doing progress and moving backwards.

4) You Don't Need Links


I'm not going to go on a big spiel here. If you don't know that the entire Google algorithm is built on Page Rank flow, which flows through backlinks, then I don't know what to tell you. You've been immunized against reality by your favorite bloggers.

I'd venture to say that, in very simplistic terms, the algorithm looks like this:
  • Links = 40% (contextual, relevance, anchor text, authority)
  • On-Page = 40% (topical & keyword, relevance, intent)
  • Technical = 20% (speed, core web vitals, indexation, etc.)
I'm telling you flat out that I think links make up 40% of your success in the SERPs. Imagine a situation where you're #2 for a 1,000,000 volume keyword and bumping up to #1 would double your business revenue and change your life forever. You (at #2) and your competitor (at #1) have perfect on-page and perfect technical SEO. You're also tied on user-metrics and even CTR in the rankings.

I wonder what's left? Where is it that they're beating you? What's the tie breaker? I'll give you a hint. It starts with an L and ends with an inks. But the reality is if you think links don't matter you'll never compete for a million volume search term. And these are the people that did this to you...

Offender #1:
Let me just be frank. The main guy telling you that links don't matter, his main earner is a ~DR75 site. Of course he can publish for low competition keywords and rank for them. "I never cared about links or tried to get them." He did massive promotions early on. I'm not saying this guy is lying. He's very open about all this. It's simply misleading to emphasize how little he cares about links now that he has them all and gets algorithmic credit for them.​

Offender #2:
Meanwhile you've got a course telling students they don't need links on their brand new sites. The excitement around this course is all based on a big site that was built well before the course was designed. This site is ~DR70. Let me get this straight... To replicate the success of that DR70 site, you're telling me I don't need links? Funny there hasn't been a single success after that site and the group is literally falling apart.​

The REASON people are eager to believe links don't matter is because it's hard to earn them, it's expensive to buy them, it's tough to build them, it takes even more links to get the other ones indexed, etc. It's easier to pretend they don't matter. It's the lazy man's solution.

And it's what you should teach your students if you don't want them crying about it and need to keep them excited. It's also why you'll see (and this leads into point #5 finally) people on this forum who've posted 10x the content as others and earn 1/10th the amount of money. That's a 100-fold difference, and a LOT of it boils down to links. That's a lot of money being left on the table.

5) Focusing on the Wrong KPI's


I'm being broad in the title but what I'm specifically referring to is the trend of people who care more about what their public case study (under an anonymous username) looks like than they do about the key performance indicator that actually matters. Wrapped up in this is the bloggers above, the newbies, the course creators, and anyone else worried about "what it looks like" rather than "what it is".

I'm specifically talking about people pumping up their "published posts" numbers while the other metrics go nowhere.

Story Time with Uncle Ryu:
I always tell the story from when I was in elementary school and high school. This one girl was part of the "Cool Kid's Club" and always had nice clothes, purses, backpacks, whatever. But one day a bus driver was sick so my bus had to do two routes. I had to get up early for my route and then we went on the other route after. I remember we rolled up to this single-wide trailer with barely any grass growing in the yard. Everything was dull and drab, colorless, lifeless, falling apart. But this run-down, dying home had three extremely nice cars out front, all neatly washed and waxed. And out comes the girl from the "Cool Kid's Club" trotting down the rickety staircase out the front door, in her expensive, brightly colored clothes.​

The girl was hood rich and had everyone at school completely fooled, including her best friends who would kick her out of the group if they found out the truth. It's not that any of the rest of us cared. It's that SHE cared and her family cared about appearances more than reality.

And that's what a lot of you look like to me lately in your case studies, whether on Builder Society, blogs, wherever. Pretending content isn't an expense and so forth. But this section is specifically about another sin.

This section is about people who are more caught up with "How many posts did I publish this month" than "How much money did I make this month". And the reason is clear. They didn't make much money if any at all, and certainly no profit. So instead they're faking the funk to be in the Cool Kid's Club by emphasizing a metric that doesn't do anything for their wallets.

I told a friend about this observation and he summed it up perfectly: "Which god do you serve?"

I've said it on the forum (even yesterday) and I'll say it again here. I'm here for the money. I build sites for the money. I push advertisements on them aggressively. Everything I do is for the money, so that it materializes into my bank account where it can do physical things in my actual life. It doesn't require lying and faking the funk. Just hard work and paying attention to the metrics that matter.​

The digits in my bank accounts are the metrics that matter. Not "how many posts did I publish". Because, like I said, you'll see people publish 10x the number of posts and make 1/10th the revenue. VANITY METRICS don't mean shit.

And this is how it all circles back around:
  1. People who post a lot of content earn a lot of money.
  2. People who post a lot of content get a lot of attention.
  3. I like money and attention.
  4. I will post a lot of content.
  5. I don't have the means to post a lot of content.
  6. I will take shortcuts.
  7. My posts will be 500 words long and only have 1 image (if that), and I won't stop to interlink to other posts or add external links either, and I'll use headers if they already exist thanks to the writers, but otherwise the title tag is good enough, and I won't stop to build links.
  8. I'm going to use AI content spinners and worse writers to double my content output and let the writers post the articles for me.
  9. I'm going to start "pre-publishing" posts.
  10. I now have 5,000 posts on my site and I only get 5,000 views a month. Time to ask a bunch of stupid questions on BuSo!
It is a very delicious illusion that's been woven inadvertently, for the most part, that lots of content equals lots of money. But what you don't see in these case studies is what kind of work goes into these posts.

I'm lucky. I know all the ancients. I know the guys time has forgotten and I know the new breed. I've been around forever. I'm acquainted with most of the guys I'm trashing in this post and they don't know it's me. I've seen everyone's sites because I've worked on them or helped them with links or just had my ears to the digital streets for over a decade and a half.

I'm telling you now. It's all an illusion. Everything you think and everything you imagine. The guys with big ass sites with 5,000 posts... they did that over a decade of time. Yes, they have links. Their sites are DR70+. Their posts aren't 500 words but 2,500 words each. Their posts have a bunch of images, not one. They have lots and lots of age and topical authority.

These are things you can't replicate by taking shortcuts and racing to the end while being focused on vanity metrics.

But let me also tell you another truth. These guys aren't geniuses or amazing talents. Their sites are butt-fucking-ugly. Some of them still have "Theme By GeneratePress for Wordpress" links in their footers. I mean, to be fair, some of these guys a real idiots too. Couldn't tell you what HTML or CSS is.

So why them? Why are they the guys knocking down half a milly a year on one site without growing some salaried team?

It's them because they showed up to the job and did the work every day for a decade and they didn't CHEAT.
They didn't take shortcuts. They acquired the knowledge that mattered (and ignored what didn't) and put in the work. They used that knowledge instead of ignoring it because it's inconvenient.

They did the on-page optimization for each and every post. They slowed down and interlinked out from each new post and then went back to old posts to interlink to the new ones. They hired the guys to find and add plenty of images. They built or had links built. They did audits along the way, speed optimizations, and so forth.

They sucked every penny of value out of each piece of content.

And they did this over 10 years, not 1 year. Because doing it right takes time. And doing it right brings stability and dependable income. And liquidating dependable, stable sites brings a much different multiple.

Do you think your lazy ass 5,000 posts will earn the same amount as 5,000 meticulously optimized posts will? You know what the answer is.

Nobody cares about your vanity metrics, and the lie won't last long, which is why the team I mentioned above is falling apart. How long can the facade really last? How many months in a row can you brag about publishing 200 posts before people start wondering why your traffic and revenue aren't increasing?

To the real kings posting 200 high-effort posts a month, we salute you.
To the dipshits, please stop acting surprised when your laziness doesn't pan out.

To everyone else... Thanks for reading,
I hope it was fun,
Ryu
 
EPIC post. If there was a commendation above a simple like I would give it. Even though I consider myself fairly experienced, every time I read a post like this from @Ryuzaki I still circle back to my sites with a new angle/something to double check and possibly improve.
 
Last edited:
Thanks Ryu. Motivating post with some killer facts.

When I started my journey "Building an Authority Site to 1,000 Articles" here on BuSo, I was eager to pump out content for the sake of bringing in a ton of traffic and making money with display ads. However, I'm glad I was able to slam on the breaks and reevaluate my project. I made the pivot and focused more on keyword research and publishing more epic pieces of content.

What it comes down to is that we are building digital assets. Create something that has value and others will want it. Traffic is great - but great content and great keywords are actually what makes a digital asset sustainable.
 
But over in your universe you now have 300 items on your to-do list. No wonder you get overwhelmed and give up.
Guilty. I'm currently adding internal links and images in 17X posts—PITA. Imagine doing this at 1000+ posts...
From now on, for each new post, I will 'slow down and interlink out from each new post and then go back to old posts to interlink to the new ones. Then add plenty of images. Build links, or having links built.'
Merci Ryu!
 
Brokerages do not include evergreen content expenditure as a deduction from profit figures when calculating listing valuation.

Thanks Ryu. Motivating post with some killer facts.

When I started my journey "Building an Authority Site to 1,000 Articles" here on BuSo, I was eager to pump out content for the sake of bringing in a ton of traffic and making money with display ads. However, I'm glad I was able to slam on the breaks and reevaluate my project. I made the pivot and focused more on keyword research and publishing more epic pieces of content.

What it comes down to is that we are building digital assets. Create something that has value and others will want it. Traffic is great - but great content and great keywords are actually what makes a digital asset sustainable.
Be careful.

Traffic is not ‘great’ it is the lifeblood of your business. Great content you feel warm and fuzzy about means nothing if it equates to zero revenue and zero traffic.

I would suggest mass quality content production.

Its worked pretty well for me so far.
 
I would suggest mass quality content production.
Agreed. I don't want to give off the impression that I'm against it in the opening post. I'm all for it, but I'm all for not cutting corners while you achieve scale. Posting more at the expense of doing it right is what I'm against. It goes back to the 100-fold revenue difference I mentioned. There's little point in publishing a boatload if it's not getting the spit-shine it needs to earn to its true potential. A person is simply wasting their time and capital doing it that way.

Brokerages do not include evergreen content expenditure as a deduction from profit figures when calculating listing valuation.
I'm aware of Empire Flippers (I think) doing this, which is goofy but it earns them a bigger commission. Every other brokerage I've ever interacted with wants the actual, reality-based numbers. Though I will admit that I've never had an sale where the content costs mattered even though it was explicitly included. Buyers seem to understand they'll be paying for content and that it's all baked into the game, even if they ask for the numbers if you try to leave it out, which I've had happen to friends trying to be slick.

When I started my journey "Building an Authority Site to 1,000 Articles" here on BuSo, I was eager to pump out content for the sake of bringing in a ton of traffic and making money with display ads. However, I'm glad I was able to slam on the breaks and reevaluate my project. I made the pivot and focused more on keyword research and publishing more epic pieces of content.
If the name of the game for you is display ads I would continue trying to publish at scale. I would definitely take care with my keyword research (which can make-or-break your ranking ability) and keep hammering out a bunch of posts. With display ads (and for Google and users) I would just make sure I'm incentivizing users to continue reading and scrolling so they view more ads. If you can "do it right" as you go, then the more content, the merrier!

Guilty. I'm currently adding internal links and images in 17X posts—PITA. Imagine doing this at 1000+ posts...
Yeah, it'd be a nightmare. 170+ posts is bad enough. I publish in batches of 5 articles at a time and run them all across the assembly line together. When I hit the "interlink out" steps and the "interlink in" steps, it's always pretty boring and tedious, but a good chance to catch an episode of whatever show I'm slowly plowing through.
 
Brokerages do not include evergreen content expenditure as a deduction from profit figures when calculating listing valuation.

I'm aware of Empire Flippers (I think) doing this, which is goofy but it earns them a bigger commission. Every other brokerage I've ever interacted with wants the actual, reality-based numbers. Though I will admit that I've never had an sale where the content costs mattered even though it was explicitly included. Buyers seem to understand they'll be paying for content and that it's all baked into the game, even if they ask for the numbers if you try to leave it out, which I've had happen to friends trying to be slick.

Quiet Light Brokerage also does evergreen content add-backs.
 
I'm aware of Empire Flippers (I think) doing this, which is goofy but it earns them a bigger commission. Every other brokerage I've ever interacted with wants the actual, reality-based numbers.

As a seller I struggle to see how this is a bad thing.
 
As a seller I struggle to see how this is a bad thing.
Because of conversion rates and conversion values. The more of these games a brokerage plays that hurts the buyer, the less quantity and the less quality of buyers they’ll bring to the table. That’s less internal competition for sellers.

This is a made up example but Brokerage A that disincentives power buyers may net you a fast sale at 35x with no content deductions. Brokerage B levels the playing field, attracts better and more serious and experienced buyers and gets you a 45x multiple minus the last 6 months content costs. And since you knew you were selling you slowed down your content spend anyways. You come out much further ahead with Brokerage B.

I understand why they’re doing it though. Without inventory none of it matters. Gotta attract sellers too. Many are offloading the broker commission to the buyer now too.
 
Because of conversion rates and conversion values. The more of these games a brokerage plays that hurts the buyer, the less quantity and the less quality of buyers they’ll bring to the table. That’s less internal competition for sellers.

This is a made up example but Brokerage A that disincentives power buyers may net you a fast sale at 35x with no content deductions. Brokerage B levels the playing field, attracts better and more serious and experienced buyers and gets you a 45x multiple minus the last 6 months content costs. And since you knew you were selling you slowed down your content spend anyways. You come out much further ahead with Brokerage B.

I understand why they’re doing it though. Without inventory none of it matters. Gotta attract sellers too. Many are offloading the broker commission to the buyer now too.
I’m not seeing that reflected in multiples on sites that discount content costs.

I think it’s overblown to make discounting content costs seem like shady practice or a practice that will disincentivize buyers entering the market.
 
I think it’s overblown to make discounting content costs seem like shady practice or a practice that will disincentivize buyers entering the market.
I never said it was a shady practice by brokers. I said it's stupid for bloggers to be teaching newbies that content expenses don't count in your P&L sheet, and to be faking the funk in their case study reports for clout.
 
Brokers gonna broker.
Grifters gonna grift.
What’s new.
maybe I’m just to cynical.

Here here lemme give a stump speech on why coaching groups and borkers are a bad idea.

I personally think most people would be better off just pming Mods or other motivated guys that follow up on stuff well in the industry.
Get an Industry opinion of value or a broker opinion of value if they’re really good and you trust them not to have other incentives. In our specific industry replication is just to scaled up to do public listings or even big broker mailing lists.
Some of the brokers are even somewhat reputable and Collateralized enough to back it up. That’s not the problem. buyer lists In this niche are to problematic and prone to just detail fishing.
It’s what they do.

Strategically exposing these easy to replicate content assets to guys with industry experience, cash, and build teams via borker lists is like ice fishing for northern pike with your own dong. It makes regular noodling sound like a fun and safe happy hillbilly family hobby.

Exposing your totally so hard to replicate I can literally order a clone of it and have it done next week via API assets to these lists is California Tier logic. The act of listing damages the listing to much. it’s really been a problem and why I think we don’t see strong valuations based on years.
Its been this way for as long as I’ve been watching.
Flippa sites go up for a niche and a year later the quantity of “keyword results” is quadrupled.

Sell to reputable buyers. We got a bunch of people advertising buying here that know their returns cold. I Genuinely believe you can get a better offer by pointing out you didn’t shop it and damage the earning capacity. If you have something of value you can negotiate earn outs that take advantage of your buyers intended changes and scale. Use your big brain to figure out who can understand and leverage your assets for additional valuation they can share with you as thanks for being so easy to deal with.
Only approach them. Make a short list and disclose how many people you have shared your information with up front.
Fuck everyone else. They can’t possibly pay as much as someone who understands what you do and has the capacity to act.
 
Last edited:
So, for content pruning, you left out one other scenario, all be it rare. If you have a lot of content and they overlap a lot, Google might consider it reverse doorway pages and then omit your site for those results. So, just don't make blog posts that are about "best play station 4 games" "top play station 4 games to buy" "play station 4 greatest games" "best seller ps4 games" etc and etc. Those are all 1 article. In this scenario, those other posts should be deleted and merged into one article about "best ps4 games".
 
@Ryuzaki thanks for writing this.

I've made many mistakes over the years, and humbly admit a few are listed above (#2 and #4). Then I met an SEO, learned what it was, and started publishing only high-quality content on a single site. I did this every single day even on holidays and weekends.

I finally understood what never made sense for years: Garbage in = Garbage out
I went back in interlinked pages/posts.
I added content to drive more value to a piece any chance I got.
I built links until I had traffic and natural links were flowing in, then I built some more (in a niche that's not so easy to build links IMO).

That led to six figures in affiliate pretty much derived 80% by one site before things came crumbling down.

At this point in my life, there is no other way but the right way. Time gets more expensive and scarce as the days go on.

I may not have flipped a 7-fig site, but in my humble opinion, this thread is a gold and wake-up call for anyone thinking of trying to take any shortcuts. Especially if you're trying in 2022.
 
dam I feel like this was written for me.

But, I was wondering you mentioned:
On your case study you seem to say that if the site shows a certain indication of going up then and ONLY then will you spend more money on it. Why do you do this? Why not just spend as much as you can so you can speed up the progress?? Because even if say you spent like 10-20k and you don['t make much, but what if you spend more money on it and it suddenly starts bringing in more money from then on.

You think it's bad to just so say you found a niche and then you just publish AS Much content on it as you physically can with the money you have. (Excluding expenses) The other day I was talking to a few people and some people mentioned loans, would it be a good idea to get loans to fuel a site? The ROI seems to be good if you do things properly.

Also, where do you find quality images yourself? There are many people on the forum who say they have image guy. (Say if I want to not outsource that do it myself, HOW would I get unique images? I already screenshot product images and stuff from youtube videos. Ok so if you can give example, do it in say the "camping niche" for an info article. Sure, I can use a stock photo and edit it with some text and stuff, but that won't make it unique in google's eyes. Now, what I do for my sites is I find a graphic then I put text beside it and I put this under h2's or h3's. A guy who makes like 15k per month (took him 1.5 years to get here and that's his first site) from his site does this same exact thing. If you know a better way, let me know.)

Here's what I think, so I look at people who are earning a specific range and you ask them questions, you just do more than they do essentially. So for example, I personally think the average guy who makes like 1k per month usually writes his articles. You outsource and publish more posts, you have 1 advantage over him. You do better keyword research? You have 1 more advantage over him. The more advantages would mean I would earn more than him correct? Wouldn't you call this a shortcut? Isn't it smart to do this? I asked many people who earn like 5 figures per month from niche sites, they were able to get there in 2-3 years time. (MOST of them don't do link building) And if I do everything they do, I should be able to get there. (Let me know if this is wrong mindset if you think it is.)
 
On your case study you seem to say that if the site shows a certain indication of going up then and ONLY then will you spend more money on it. Why do you do this? Why not just spend as much as you can so you can speed up the progress?? Because even if say you spent like 10-20k and you don['t make much, but what if you spend more money on it and it suddenly starts bringing in more money from then on.
It's not a matter of "ONLY" then will I spend more money. I'm constantly spending money. I was talking about ramping up the spend higher. It's a strategic decision of validation along the way. In this case it would probably be fine to dump a ton of money into it.

But in reality things are constantly changing with SEO and being able to pivot on the fly without having sunk gobs of cash into something that's not going to work is important. It's also important to be planting tons of seeds in advance since time is a huge part of the algorithm too.

It's up to you how you want to play it. But you don't want to leave the realm of making logical, strategic decisions and getting into the realm of gambling. Your last sentence makes me feel like you're getting into the "spray and pray" and hope 1 out of 10 makes up for the losses of the other 9. It can work but it's not how I get down.

You think it's bad to just so say you found a niche and then you just publish AS Much content on it as you physically can with the money you have. (Excluding expenses) The other day I was talking to a few people and some people mentioned loans, would it be a good idea to get loans to fuel a site? The ROI seems to be good if you do things properly.
No, I don't think it's a bad idea. But it's critical to know what you're doing and to be experienced. I've talked about this a ton of times and even in this thread. Shitting out 3,000 posts means nothing if it's not worth Google indexing and ranking.

Everyone's trying to emulate other people's successes but they don't see behind the curtain, so all the details get lost in translation. And success is in the details.

Getting a business loan to fuel a business isn't dumb. It's like you said "if you do things properly." I'm not seeing evidence that many people are doing it properly. I'm seeing evidence that most are cutting every corner they can:
  • I'll have one image
  • I'll not interlink or link out
  • I'll have 500 words
  • I'll spin or use AI content and have an editor
  • I don't need keyword research
If you have a PROVEN method that YOU yourself have executed AND replicated, and you have SOPs in place and a trained team and are ready to fire on all cylinders, then maybe a loan would be okay. You don't want to learn the hard lessons on money that isn't yours that you have to pay back with interest.

Also, where do you find quality images yourself?
You keep asking this. There's completely free and also paid stock photo sites. That's what everyone using. And you can fill in the gaps with taking your own photos or *gasp* stealing and manipulating other photos so they aren't trackable. Don't do that often unless you just have to.

Sure, I can use a stock photo and edit it with some text and stuff, but that won't make it unique in google's eyes.
Yes it will. Adding text, cropping, horizontal flipping, saturation, contrast, brightness, color balance. These are tools to make an image unique in Google's eyes. And who gives a shit. Google never said you had to have unique images. All of the biggest sites on the web are using stock photos and buying the same photos from the same photographers for breaking news, etc. They have zero issues. The image might need to be unique if you want to rank in Google Images, but that shouldn't really be your focus.

Wouldn't you call this a shortcut? Isn't it smart to do this? [...] Let me know if this is wrong mindset if you think it is.
If you mean shortcut as in "cutting corners" then no, it's not a shortcut. If you mean shortcut as in learning from others so you don't have to fail as much so you get to the end goal faster, then sure. It's not dumb, it's basic, sensible strategy. Why reinvent the wheel when you can improve it instead?

I don't ever mean to "get personal" in a bad way. But just based on your postings I think you're seeking way too much validation, way too much inside information. There's a balance and yes, you should ask and learn from others. But there's a LOT of bad information out there (which this thread is about). You won't know what's what until you get in the trenches. It's up to you to take all this info and put it into action and distill it down to what works (and scale that) and what doesn't (discard that).

The game is real simple. Choose a vertical or niche, have a fast loading website, do great keyword research, have good content written, format it and on-page it and publish it with some images, obtain links, and repeat ad infinitum and watch your revenue grow. Every moment you're not doing that, you're spinning your wheels off in la-la theory land.
 
Ok so if you can give example, do it in say the "camping niche" for an info article.
It's not who you asked, but here's what I do:
  1. Get a picture from a stock site like unsplash or pixabay
  2. Flip it, add filters, whatever else using Photoscape
I did the first example on pixabay for "camping" quickly (before followed by after). "After" gets zero image matches for Google Images, but the "before" gets plenty.

aCRYL7R.jpg

UQrR06d.jpg
 
It's not who you asked, but here's what I do:
  1. Get a picture from a stock site like unsplash or pixabay
  2. Flip it, add filters, whatever else using Photoscape
I did the first example on pixabay for "camping" quickly (before followed by after). "After" gets zero image matches for Google Images, but the "before" gets plenty.

aCRYL7R.jpg

UQrR06d.jpg
Thanks but like, look google knows it's not original: (Look at the bottom right. If it's not original in google's eye's might as well not edit the photo.)
53301cc311cadd5e15cb641145335ebe.jpg


Is an IMAGE like this under the header: "Why Are Hilleberg Tents So Expensive?" good or is this too garbage?
507d887cc77fedb92d000add3033d815.png
 
Thanks but like, look google knows it's not original: (Look at the bottom right. If it's not original in google's eye's might as well not edit the photo.)
53301cc311cadd5e15cb641145335ebe.jpg


Is an IMAGE like this under the header: "Why Are Hilleberg Tents So Expensive?" good or is this too garbage?
507d887cc77fedb92d000add3033d815.png
You’re really going out of your way to make things a lot more complicated than they are.

I’m not editing images to trick Google. I’m editing them to make them look a bit better.
 
A news site might publish 100 high quality articles a day that never get traffic after a week due to relevancy and freshness decays. They should KEEP those posts because it's high-quality indexation.
TBH I don't get this. In the content pruning thread where we are discussing this, I thought it was delete any content that wasn't performing/no backlinks, etc, including news posts?
 
TBH I don't get this. In the content pruning thread where we are discussing this, I thought it was delete any content that wasn't performing/no backlinks, etc, including news posts?
The goal is to delete low quality content. While having backlinks and traffic may indicate that a post is high quality, not having those things does not indicate that the post is low quality.

If I had to summarize this, it's all about a Panda Quality Score. I'm thinking about things like "does the past have"...
  • Sufficient breadth to provide context?
  • Sufficient depth to cover the topic?
  • Sufficient word count to do the two above things?
  • Does the content match the intent of the search query?
  • Some images to visually enhance the content?
  • Things like HTML lists, tables, embeds, and other markup Google might consider as "complex and better"?
  • Use headers appropriately?
  • Is the content equal to or better (or different) than all of the content that already exists on the topic?
Pretty much all the basic crap we should be doing anyways. Normal content we produce is high quality, period. Notice nothing there says anything about links or traffic. 99% of the internet probably never gets a external backlink. Should it be deleted?

An example of the one time I felt compelled to delete content was I had a section of a site to house little clickbait "quick distraction" posts that I was pushing on social media. Like how you'd stop to view a video on Reddit for 30 seconds. I'd take videos like that, write 250 words, and publish it and put it on social media. Eventually I needed to go back and delete it all because it was trash. It was worth maybe 2 out of 10 points.

Your typical ~1000 word content produced for SEO is going to be high quality, regardless of whether it got links or traffic. It's going to interlink, receive internal links, support other content, enhance your topical authority and relevance scores, etc. You want that stuff in the index. It's all worth 10 out of 10 points.

If I have 50 posts worth 10 points and 50 points worth 2 points... that's 600 out of 1000 possible points. That's a quality score of 6 out of 10 once you normalize everything. By deleting the "2 point posts" you can raise your quality score to 10 out of 10 once you get the trash out of the index. This helps all the remaining content perform better since this quality score is a sitewide score.

This started as a theory of mine and was eventually confirmed by John Mueller at a private dinner or car ride or something. I posted about it and the transcript here on the forum somewhere.
 
@Ryuzaki - if only I'd seen this post in my earlier years. Oh hindsight...

I always enjoy reading your in-depth posts!

Any chance you could do a rant like this on link building with a few nuggets ;-)
 
The goal is to delete low quality content. While having backlinks and traffic may indicate that a post is high quality, not having those things does not indicate that the post is low quality.

If I had to summarize this, it's all about a Panda Quality Score. I'm thinking about things like "does the past have"...
  • Sufficient breadth to provide context?
  • Sufficient depth to cover the topic?
  • Sufficient word count to do the two above things?
  • Does the content match the intent of the search query?
  • Some images to visually enhance the content?
  • Things like HTML lists, tables, embeds, and other markup Google might consider as "complex and better"?
  • Use headers appropriately?
  • Is the content equal to or better (or different) than all of the content that already exists on the topic?
Pretty much all the basic crap we should be doing anyways. Normal content we produce is high quality, period. Notice nothing there says anything about links or traffic. 99% of the internet probably never gets a external backlink. Should it be deleted?

An example of the one time I felt compelled to delete content was I had a section of a site to house little clickbait "quick distraction" posts that I was pushing on social media. Like how you'd stop to view a video on Reddit for 30 seconds. I'd take videos like that, write 250 words, and publish it and put it on social media. Eventually I needed to go back and delete it all because it was trash. It was worth maybe 2 out of 10 points.

Your typical ~1000 word content produced for SEO is going to be high quality, regardless of whether it got links or traffic. It's going to interlink, receive internal links, support other content, enhance your topical authority and relevance scores, etc. You want that stuff in the index. It's all worth 10 out of 10 points.

If I have 50 posts worth 10 points and 50 points worth 2 points... that's 600 out of 1000 possible points. That's a quality score of 6 out of 10 once you normalize everything. By deleting the "2 point posts" you can raise your quality score to 10 out of 10 once you get the trash out of the index. This helps all the remaining content perform better since this quality score is a sitewide score.

This started as a theory of mine and was eventually confirmed by John Mueller at a private dinner or car ride or something. I posted about it and the transcript here on the forum somewhere.
From what you are saying it sounds like just noindex is not good enough? Those kind of pages should be deleted?
 
From what you are saying it sounds like just noindex is not good enough? Those kind of pages should be deleted?
I'd say it depends. Is the content useful to users? You may want to keep it live and noindex it. As far as I can think at the moment, in any other case, if it's not good enough to keep in the index, delete it or improve it.

The reason is that you still flow page rank out to the pages instead of flowing it to ones that have a chance of performing in the SERPs. You also will waste some crawl budget. On giant sites this matters a lot. Just because a page is marked to not be indexed doesn't mean Google doesn't crawl through it to discover other content and understand the link graph better.

In the grand scheme of things, could you get away with doing it "the less better way", probably. But it's less better. It's not optimized.
 
Okay so if I have a product review article, that product is no longer continued/discontinued, should I draft it?

Also, let's say you have a few crappy articles as support pages linking to a "money" article let's say, but none of these get traffic should one deindex the supporting pages?
 
Back