🍩 Good day, Friends!
Who dis? Dis sweet cat is my crazy cat - Goldie. And apparently, he isn't the only crazy living soul in our family.
Count me in 😑.
Last year, I dared to do two crazy SEO experiments. Both turned into disasters. Honestly, I never thought that this would happen. I was very confident that at least one of them will turn into a huge success.
Wrong.
🤯Here Is How I Fucked up Two of my most Successful Niche Websites
Case study #1
I have 3 similar websites. Actually, they are 90% alike—structure, links, content. The only difference is that the articles have been re-written for each вебsite so that the content is unique for each one.
Last year in March, I've decided to merge them into one. My reasons were:
- one domain = less work;
- one domain = higher DR;
- one domain = better authority;
- one domain = less money spend on tools;
- one domain = less money spend on growth.
In theory, I wasn't wrong. All of the above statements are true. In reality, this got pretty fucked up.
Both traffic and revenue were slowly plummeting down. And the reason for sticking with this course throughout the year was that Google needs time to reflect on the changes.
True.
But, after 10 months, I could no longer justify my theory. In the first week of December, I reverted the changes, and each site is now on its own.
Well, a month later, I can report that traffic and revenue are steadily growing. So far, the 3 websites have recovered nearly 30% of their traffic and revenue loss.
In addition to this case study, I want to mention that in 2018 (I think), John Dykstra did something similar with his website fatstacksblog.com. He wanted a domain that sounds more marketing-like, so he purchased a new marketing-like sounding domain. He moved all the content to the new domain, keeping all links and site structure the same. Then he redirected fatstacksblog.com to the new domain. Well, the results were pretty disastrous.
I now believe his words from my experience.
Case study #2
I guess the biggest mistakes we make are always towards our first love(s)😉. And yes, I made a huge mistake with my first love milaonsupplements.com.
Since 2017 I have got myself into minimalism. In 2018 I got a startup job, and I had very little time. I had to work out in the morning, and I had like 15-20 minutes for that. My usual training regime could never have fit into 15 minutes workouts. So I created my own style—minimalist workouts. By the way, to this day, I still follow the minimalist fitness approach.
And because I am а whole-hogger at heart, I decided that I want to delete all articles on supplements (which were ranking pretty high in SERPs) and shift my content entirely towards minimalist fitness.
Well, it turns out that I enjoy reading research and writing articles on supplements and related experiments more than just writing on minimalist fitness. The two topics could go well together. But last year, my mind was, "No, I need to start afresh and pivot."
What the hell was I thinking.
You can't erase your hobby and passion with a single delete button (yes, I experiment a lot with different supplements, especially brain and sports-performance enhancing supplements).
So, I brought back all of my articles. I am re-designing and updating the old content. I've deleted a handful of articles that aren't relevant to the niche. Traffic and ranking are coming back, even that it has been only a week since I brought back the old articles.
And the best part is that I was able to post them again (200 articles❗️) with two clicks: export and import. How? I follow the same structure when building niche websites - I use the same link structure, website architecture, plugins, templates, and page builder. Following a system when building niche sites allows for quick data transfer while keeping formatting consistent throughout the website.
The two takeaways from the two case studies:
- Don't fix things that ain't broken (a tale as old as time, but who to listen to🥴).
- I'll try to be less of a woman of extremes.
🥊Ohh, One Last Mistake
As if the mistakes have no end, huh 🙄?
Last week, I encouraged you to hit reply and ask me any questions related to SEO and Marketing. However, before sending my newsletter, I've changed some settings on my hosting, which resulted in email misconfiguration. If you have tried to contact me, there is a good chance that you couldn't do so.
So here is again the drill from last week. Sorry about that.
Some of my weekly emails go straight to the spam folder for many of my readers. If you are one of them, I will appreciate it if you take the following steps:
1) Mark the email as "It's not spam;"
2) Move it to your inbox;
3) Hit reply and say Hi. Why don't you introduce yourself and let me know if I can return the favor by answering SEO/Marketing questions?
4) Optional: add my email [email protected] to your contact list.
Once again, here is an archive page for all new members for the past emails and stories I've shared. I hope you enjoy them.
Talk to you next Sunday, where I will reveal some details about a new venture I will participate in. It's pretty exciting for the Bulgarian start-up ecosystem.
Own your future, Friends!
Mila 💌
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