Ep 54 Facebag !!

Theory of Content

We’ve been traveling and Amber celebrated her 40th birthday, but we’re excited to get back into the swing of things. One of the things that happened was a core update. Some people said it reverses BERT. Josh says, “If you’re focusing on updates as a site owner, you know too much about this stuff.” Whether or not you’re affected, you just have to make more content.

“It really is about evaluating who is outranking you,” according to Amber, and then “making sure you’re offering the same or better. It’s just that simple.”

Josh says, “It’s true… Google does giveth. It’s wonderful when traffic is coming. And, Google does taketh away.” It’s almost scriptural, or at least it’s just “good blogging.” He says, “You have to have a wide swath of keywords that your site ranks for.”

Amber says, “Right, if you spread out the traffic that you’re getting from them over multiple posts, then it doesn’t necessarily matter that you lost one.” She says, “You have to back up your theories as to why your traffic has dropped with data.” We see lots of talk about losing everything from a Google update, but if you look at the data (compared with prior years), you might be pleasantly surprised.

How are we feeling about the latest update? Are you noticing it? Let’s dig into the Facebag…

Facebag:

Andrea Howe | howewelive.com/

Good morning! Question about old non-food related content. Years ago I used to be a DIY blogger, and I had some decent performing DIYs – some are still #1 on google. In an effort to move primarily to food though, I buried them in my site and haven’t touched them in 5-6 years. My goal for 2020 is Mediavine. I’m wondering if I should bother trying to update and optimize all of those old posts to get better traffic and help me all around, or should I just move on and focus on food? The problem is, I don’t even know a thing about DIY SEO, so I’d have to do some research. Here’s an example of an old post that is still #1 on google. I have lots of others like this that I could update and push out.

Comments in thread:

Dahn Boquist If you’re ranking #1 for a post then I don’t think you should update it. However, I don’t see any reason you shouldn’t have DIY and food on your site. If you’re ranking for the painted heart jeans, then maybe you could easily rank for similar keywords like “DIY painted jeans’ pocket” or “DIY painted jean jacket”. Also, look in your Google Analytics to find the keywords you are ranking on. You might see some keywords in your GA that you rank for, but you do not have a post that directly addresses the query. Don’t box yourself in. If Google wants to rank you on keywords, then do it! To find keywords in your GA, click on “acquisition” then “search console” then “queries”.

Jennifer Rue McLellan | plussizebirth.com & plusmommy.com

LOVE the show and I tell all my blogger friends about it!!! First time joining the group to ask a question.

Can you max out a niche?

Nearly nine years ago, I started blogging about plus size pregnancy at plussizebirth.com. At the time sites on this topic were all major health organizations that only talked about the risks. I talked about how to have healthy outcomes, shared stories, where to find clothing, and other resources back when it was taboo. My site took off fast, and I became certified as a childbirth educator – blogging changed my life!

Now plus size pregnancy is far more mainstream and I’m proud to be the “expert” with an endorsement from the National Institutes of Health (so I have two .gov linkbacks) and links from the media including the New York Times. I’m with Mediavine (thank you – game changer ).

BUT I’ve pretty much hit all the top keywords in my niche that are possible to rank for (many of the clothing keywords are too difficult). Now I’m writing for really small keywords. I just don’t know if that’s a good use of my time as I blog full time and am the breadwinner for my family. I need growth! I’ve optimized all old content and have done all the things.

I’ve started a second site plusmommy.com with a podcast to be more “plus size mom lifestyle” – so the possibilities are endless and I’m already with Mediavine (though this site needs a lot of TLC).

Do I turn all my time to this newer site? Plus Size Birth is my baby and I’d still love for it to be able to grow more. Is that possible? I need to pick your brilliant minds!!!

Thank you so much!

Rebecca Swanner | LetsEatCake.com

Hi Amber and Josh! Thank you so much for taking the time to do this podcast. I listen to it in the car during my hour-long commute, and it makes the time fly by. Who knew learning about content could be so much fun!

Here’s my question. I run a humorous women’s lifestyle site called Let’s Eat Cake (yes, Josh, it used to be a baking blog and we have some yummy chocolate recipes!) and I have a few posts that aren’t showing up in google for the KWs I’m going after… at all. One is for “peppermint bark recipe” and one is for “thanksgiving puns.” I have my google set to show me the first 100 search results, and they’re nowhere to be found. The peppermint bark was once on page 30, but after my last tweak it seems to have disappeared entirely. To me, these posts look optimized so I can’t figure out what’s wrong. My other pun and recipe posts rank, so this seems weird. Thanks for all your help looking into this. Can’t wait to see what you think.

The two links:

https://www.letseatcake.com/peppermint-bark-recipe/ (updates on Dec 14 + Dec 28) and

https://www.letseatcake.com/thanksgiving-puns/ (published Nov 12)

Best,

Rebecca

Kelli Shallal | www.hungryhobby.net

So, back in the day, I used to syndicate my content to Food52. Now I have a recipe that is being outranked by Food52. Should I remove it? The food52 result is on page 2 and I’m on page 3. The query is vegan protein pancakes, just in case that matters.

Jessica Scully | HolyCityCrossFit.com & PaleoScaleo.com

Once you’ve devoured all available episodes of TOC, what’s the next podcast in line that you go straight to?

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