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I’ve had some abandoned adult blogs that have actually seen increases in traffic.
Just an FYI that I completed a recent experiment where I created a blog with only photos and a few affiliate links, no text content, pretty much what you get on all those Tumblr sites that regularly rank in the top 10. I wanted to see if this Tumblr knock-off would get any traffic and it did not. Then I went back and added text descriptions to the same posts and boom, traffic started coming its way. I just don’t get why Tumblr ranks so well when there is virtually no text and no keywords for Google to track.
“I just don’t get why Tumblr ranks so well when there is virtually no text and no keywords for Google to track.”
I think this is the popularity aspect.
Much like the Tube sites, it doesn’t really matter if you use original content at all if you’re already getting millions of hits every day. Of course, if they actually did use original text on everything then they would get even more traffic. This would probably be proven if there were any data on comparable Tumblr blogs. Those who add text probably do get more attention than those who only post images.Just my take on it. It could simply be that a CEO went through the revolving door of Google (like Amazon and eBay etc).
I do think popularity has a part to play, but I also think the time on site and bounce rate play a big part in it also, alike tubes, people spend 20+ minutes reading through the whole history of a small Tumblr blog if it is in their niche interest. its very easy to setup, no worries about plugins ect, so people can create a niche site on say “Naked Gingers Outdoors”, they can queue posts for a few weeks and let it run… Tumblr is also the ultra under monetized adult picture place online, most of the webmasters there don’t want the money, they just want to share things in the crazy little niches they love… and for most there isnt a directly compatible sponsor to monetize anyway, this lack of affiliate linking could also be the reason that they do well…
My thought is thought that google does not provide analytics for free for no reason, they collect all the info about your site and how people use it, and you can be sure if there is a metric in analytics, google is using it to help rank your site…
Thanks for the feedback on re-issuing old posts.
“this lack of affiliate linking could also be the reason that they do well”
You may be more right than you realize. With very few, or no, affiliate outbound links I think Google sees the blog as information sharing vs profiteering. It would then be more relevant to searches for the terms associated with it, since there’s an assumption that you’re seeking info. Remember too, Google can’t “see” pictures and is clueless on what they contain without the alt and title tags.
@Bec,
You’re very welcome!
Very good point, and I agree.
A good idea is to use heat maps on several formats of post, change things around a little and see how the audience responds to them.
We did this and discovered that many of the links we were automatically adding to the post served absolutely no purpose at all. Most viewers were sticking to the top half of the post, reading the introduction to the content then clicking out to the sponsor. In a lot of cases, half the photos weren’t even being viewed.We also found that while adding videos can improve time on site (for the longer trailers) they were reducing the need for users to click through, therefore no cookie, therefore no sale.
I spent a while adding only one link to posts and even though I had all the data right there in front of me I was still feeling compelled to add more. It’s a problem, many of us have kind of been conditioned to link through on every photo, have a call to action link in the text, put banners in and so on. The reality, when you check what the users are actually doing, is that most of this is only pissing them off and making your site look less credible to them and to Google.
From what I’ve seen inactive adult blogs do best when they’re heavily linked with sites that are active. So my tube site and forum site are still active and heavily linked with my blog site which is inactive. And they’re served from the same IP, etc. So Google knows they form something of a network of sites and since other parts of the network are active, my blog gets a pass. At least that’s my theory. And the theory holds with Tumblr. There’s massive linking between Tumblr blogs so inactive Tumblr blogs should do pretty well. I know my main Tumblr blog hasn’t had a post in 9 months and it still has consistent traffic from Google (not that there’s much traffic, but it’s consistent).
As far as republishing old posts – if you can keep the URL the same, I don’t see a problem. BUT I don’t know how you’d do that with WordPress. Perhaps a magazine-style theme could have a section of “featured posts” that shows a few old posts on the front page.
That’s a good point.
We didn’t change the URL’s on the more popular posts, but we made them more appealing on the old posts which weren’t getting any attention anyway.
It shouldn’t make a lot of difference if you’ve removed date from the WP URL formation. We use categories by site, so nothing really changes in the URL on republishing unless we want it to.
Ah, right. My URLs have the year and month in them (site.com/2017-02/slug). If that weren’t the case, it wouldn’t be an issue.
