The title might seem like clickbait, but trust me, it’s not. Creating and scaling a blog in 2024 feels impossible.
Sure, a particular community might disagree, but if you ask them which blog they built and how much they actually scaled it, you will most likely get silence as a response.
It is easy to talk about someone else’s website, but when it comes to real numbers and proof, very few can back it up.
I started Replay Jutsu this year in March with a slogan “Your go-to spot for everything that makes you hit play, rewind, and level up.”
It was meant to cover entertainment and gaming because well that is my thing. I have been an entertainment junkie and a gamer since I was 7, with my first anime being Naruto and my first movie being Harry Potter.
Yep, I went with two niches in one blog not ideal for a new and small site. But big pubs do it all the time, so why not give it a shot?
When I launched the blog, I started writing about the games I played and the mangas I read.
A lot of big games were dropping around that time (Have already discussed this in another article), and Jujutsu Kaisen was super hyped up during the Shinjuku Showdown Arc, Sukuna was wrecking sorcerers.
After Gojo’s death, there was not anyone strong enough in Shinjuku at that time to stop him.
So, it wasn’t too hard for me to grow the blog because I knew exactly what people were curious about.
I believe if you have got real hands-on experience with something. whether it is gaming or reading manga, you do not need tools like Semrush or Ahrefs to research a topic to write on.
If you play a game or follow a series, you already know the questions people are asking. Writing from experience is for the readers, not the search engines.
Researching keywords and creating topics from those keywords is actually writing for Search Engines.
Within 2 months, I scaled my blog to 100k+ visitors/month, feel impossible? It is actually not if you actually know what people are curious about as I mentioned above.
From April to July, my traffic stayed between 50k-120k. (ahref and semrush can’t confirm that but my GSC and Jetpack stats can).
It was going well, the trend was upward and I was actually hopeful, that maybe the August Core Update was not going to impact my website since it was new and the content was fine too.
Plus, my guides were shared multiple times in the Steam community for various games.
When the August Core Update rolled out, my website tanked overnight—about 60% of daily traffic just vanished, mostly from tier-1 countries.
Since I am in a tier-3 region (Pakistan), my rankings looked fine when I searched it from my side. My top keywords still showed up on page one, which made no sense.
Then, I checked Google USA, and those same keywords had dropped to the 6th page there.
That is when I realized the decline was in some regions, it was actually a global ranking issue for higher-tier regions.
Google launched a helpful content classifier back in September 2023. And it was baked into the core systems, I am pretty sure because of this negative classifier or whatever people are calling it, this region base ranking issue is because of that.
I made a rant post on r/SEO about the August core update and alot of publishers came forward about how Google destroyed their small websites with these updates.
But as usual, SEOs started blaming the ads on my website, that I have more ads than content, the typical reasoning that most SEOs who don’t understand how editorial websites work give.
If you show them sites that are ranking well even with the ad units worse than a pirated movie site, they will simply dismiss it by saying they are an established brand even though alot of established brands are seeing a huge decline with these updates as well.
Besides, how does being an established brand make it okay to do anything, write paraphrased content, and still rank? Why is this normal? Also if I don’t appear on the SERPs how am I supposed to become a brand?
Won’t go into detail but you can read the thread below!
After Google’s August Core Update, someone suggested me, stick to one niche on Replay Jutsu and focus only on anime since my anime content still ranked occasionally.
So, last month, I deindexed and deleted most of my gaming articles, thinking it might help. But nope it didn’t work.
The unannounced updates kept hitting my site. Now, even my older anime articles have dropped to the 6th or 7th page on Google (basically the graveyard). In tier-3 countries, though, the rankings stayed the same for most keywords.
Why Starting a Blog in 2024 Is a Bad Idea?
After the August Core Update, I started two new websites to see if it is actually my content or updates just hate small sites now.
I created a tool-based site, (anime database) and a blog, both started thriving. However, after a month the blog site I created started facing the same issue and completely stopped ranking in tier 1 countries. While the database site is somehow still fine.
It is not even about the site anymore. Google updates now seem to treat every blog like spam, no matter how good the written content is.
Getting hit by an update feels inevitable, and you don’t even need a core update for it any random unannounced update can mess up your rankings.
I even created a new gaming blog this month before the November Core Update. It wasn’t even 10 days old.
I uploaded 20 old articles from Replay Jutsu, the ones I deleted and deindexed. For a bit, the site got a huge traffic boost. But then the November update rolled in, and this new site got hit too.
Honestly, I don’t care about those other sites Replay Jutsu is what matters to me. I have given my heart to this blog, writing, and publishing over 500 articles.
Every single one is the result of my hard work. Since I make sure to publish before anyone else, whether it is a review, recap, or release date, I have had to give up my work-life balance completely.
There are a few mangas that literally no one else covers except me. Now with zero competition, my articles should easily rank on the first page, right?
No. Thanks to whatever penalty Google put on my site, those posts are stuck on the 2nd or 3rd page.
Meanwhile, Bing actually gives me the snippet for those topics. One search engine sees value in my work, and the other buries it.
I recently debunked a rumor about Spy x Family and covered the release date of the upcoming chapter. It was delayed, then delayed again.
While sites like Pinkvilla and Sportskeeda covered the first delay, they didn’t update their articles with the second delay.
I posted the correct info, yet Google still ranks them higher, even though they’re spreading misinformation.
My article gets buried on the 2nd page while they stay on top Google seems to favor bigger sites over giving users the right info.
Big Pubs, Spam, and AI Paraphrasing
A lot of big publishers like Hindustan Times, Times of India, and Sportskeeda also cover anime content.
These are high-authority sites, and no small pub can compete with them, no matter how good your content is.
Google keeps boosting them more, even though they cover everything from regional news to anime and K-pop, they are basically content farmers and content producers and with each update, they benefit more.
They can find trending topics and publish articles quickly. Even if you post something two days earlier, they will still outrank you, no matter how good your content is. It’s just the way the game works now.
It has been this way for the past few years, however, you still had a chance before because you appeared on the first page before.
After the September Helpful Content Update, Google made it almost impossible for small publishers to rank on the first page.
Whatever traffic we were still getting, Google started ranking Reddit posts instead of our content, plus they released the AI Overviews as well.
So, even if you are not directly affected by an update, you will still notice big traffic losses due to the Reddit boost and AI summaries taking over.
It feels like no matter what you do, the playing field just keeps getting tougher for smaller sites or you can say they have made us substitutes in the game, we are looking at the game from the bench now.
Now it may look like it is completely fine to target multiple niches since they have writers from different niches, but in my space “Anime”, these big publishers do not create a single article on a single topic instead they create multiple on single topic and take multiple spaces on first page.
Then they syndicate the content on MSN, Yahoo, etc, so the first page belongs to them completely.
Check below, on the keyword “Chainsaw Man 185 Release Date”, two articles from Sportskeeda show up and two articles from PinkVilla show up.
You can easily cover speculations and release dates in a single article, I know because I do that, I don’t go around publishing multiple articles on a single topic.
One Esports shows up twice, same article shows up twice on the serps. I mean how is this fair, it feels like Google is sending them free traffic, this spammy behavior is actually getting loved by Google’s update.
They all show up on Google Discover, Top Stories, and Google News as well, they are allowed to do whatever the hell they want.
Now you will be thinking, how much is an anime release date article gonna drive traffic to a blog anyway?
46.2K from a single release date article and it is actually because of Google Discover and Top stories.
They publish two articles before the chapter and two or three after the chapter releases, so they are driving 100k+ traffic from a single chapter and that is weekly. Meanwhile, we, small publishers, are here stuck with ranking at the bottom of Google’s 100th page.
Now let’s talk about AI paraphrasing and the website I love the website (not really, I hate it), ComingSoon.
Their entire anime content is based on AI-paraphrasing, and stealing from other publishers, and yet somehow they rank even above the high authority sites like SK, etc.
I visit sites every now and then, and I came across ComingSoon’s release date article on a chapter of Blue Lock, I was reading it, and I was like, wait a second… why does this recap sound so familiar, I realized this is actually my recap which is paraphrased using GPT.
The wording was so off it made me cringe. Nobody in my space wants to read GPT-generated content like that.
At least Paraphrase using AI like it is not obvious. Stealing my recap and then paraphrasing it using AI and their article is ranking above mine! How is that helpful?
— Masab Farooque (@MasabDF) October 9, 2024
Even a newbie can figure out that ComingSoon is stealing my recaps and using AI to paraphrase them. pic.twitter.com/qbbrrqxTFy
Then I went through some of their articles, turns out the latest Blue Lock Chapter-related articles were paraphrased from my site.
Using my content, they were ranked #1. I publicly reached out to them on X, and they apologized and told me they fired the writer.
Then after a month I came across another article, same thing happened again, another writer GPTd my content and outranked me.
This is the third time I have caught @comingsoonnet stealing my guides and outranking me, at this point it does not even seem unintentional!
— Masab Farooque (@MasabDF) November 5, 2024
The article is then published on their own blog and Yahoo as well. pic.twitter.com/EoNtEVgMKr
And it is not just ComingSoon, their content is syndicated on Yahoo, MSN, etc and they take about 3-4 spots.
So helpful content is actually spamming on a single topic using AI, and publishing it on big sites, I completely understand Google, I do, enjoy those bucks while they last!
The funny thing is, the writer didn’t even know where Blue Lock is actually published. They kept throwing in the same paragraph about VizMedia and MangaPlus, even though the manga is actually from Kodansha.
After I tweeted about it, they stopped mentioning those platforms and cleaned up their articles.
Now, they just copy the synopsis from Kodansha and add the release date. And this is the type of “quality” Google is boosting these days.
Negative Classifier and Regional-Based Penalty
One good thing that came out of these updates is that a lot of medium and small-tier publishers now know each other. Unlike before, when everyone would mock small sites, there’s more of a united front now.
We no longer buy into claims like “HCU happened because of ads” or “HCU happened due to technical SEO issues.” Those arguments just don’t hold up anymore.
Back to the topic, at first, after the August Core Update, I kinda thought that this regional-based penalty was actually on my website and a few others only, as I ranked the same as before in tier-3 but in tier-1, it was the issue, I was not ranking at all.
Turns out, most of the sites that were hit by the updates are still ranking really well in tier-3 countries but nobody looks at traffic from tier-3 countries since ad revenue is nothing compared to tier-1 countries.
For example, let’s take Gamers Heroes website and their recent article on Stalker 2, “All Fast Travel Locations In Stalker 2”, Search this keyword, and the article is ranked at #7 in tier-3 countries but in the USA the same article is ranked at #22.
There is a classifier placed on our websites, which does not let us rank in these regions at all, if our content is so unhelpful why are we still ranking in tier-3 countries?
The website I mentioned above, the owner has a YouTube channel of 270k+ subscribers, and his guides are loved by his audience.
If his audience finds his guides helpful. How come Google does not and why the hell is this classifier affecting the whole site?
Final Words
I really hope they start showing us some love, but it doesn’t seem like it will happen anytime soon.
Google’s algorithm updates mainly benefit big publishers, while the rest of us are stuck hoping that one day Google admits their algorithm is flawed.
Recently, there was an invite-only summit for some independent publishers, and you can check out their blogs to see what they had to say about it. I’m mentioning them here, as they’ve been vocal about the situation.
