How To Re­vive Your Dead Blog - A Blog­ging Case Study

If my blog were a guy in­stead of bits & bytes, he would have been de­clared dead years ago.

Prop­erly buried, with an ex­tra 3 spade­fuls of sand to make sure he doesn’t come back.

It’s not his fault, of course, it’s mine, the blogger’s fault.

Blog­gers kill their blogs

• by not feed­ing them their daily (or weekly) post,
• by deny­ing them the love and care that your blog needs to grow and be­come strong and healthy.

Take note how I’m sneak­ily putting the ball in your court by shift­ing the ref­er­ence from ‚my fault‘ to ‚blog­gers‘ to ‚your blog.‘

Maybe you, too, are guilty of let­ting a blog die or starve.

Fac­tu­ally this post is about how I’m bring­ing my own blog back to life. But the pur­pose of this post is to show how you, too, can re-boot your blog.

The ‚rea­sons why‘ we should be blog­ging have been beaten to death else­where, I’m not re­peat­ing what has been said so many times. But it’s worth notic­ing that blog­ging as a whole is see­ing a re­vival in in­ter­est, es­pe­cially blog­ging for business.

In the 2013 edi­tion of SocialMediaExaminer’s an­nual SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING INDUSTRY REPORT one of the ma­jor find­ings was that 66% of mar­keters plan on in­creas­ing blog­ging in 2013.

For mar­keters blog­ging is one of the pil­lars of in­bound mar­ket­ing, and – af­ter the Panda and Pen­guin dis­as­ters – blog­ging is the #1 way to build an au­thor­ity web site in your market.

Af­ter crunch­ing some num­bers I’ve es­ti­mated that there are more than 200,000,000 blogs on the internet.

The ma­jor­ity of those blogs is dead; un­main­tained, hasn’t been up­dated for years.

For­tu­nately a blog can be res­ur­rected quite eas­ily, and this ar­ti­cle is the be­gin­ning of a real-time blog­ging case study how to re­vive InternetBusinessMastermind.com (short: ibmm) and turn it into some­thing worth in­hab­it­ing the Blogosphere.

This is a long post, an­a­lyz­ing blog con­tent and traf­fic from 2007 to 2013.

I will point out the “lessons learned” that you can ap­ply to your own blog.

A Blogger’s Jour­ney, Part 1

When I de­cided to put more work into ibmm and to turn it into some­thing mean­ing­ful, 3 months ago, the nat­ural first step was to take an inventory.

• What’s the cur­rent state of my blog?
• What con­tent is al­ready there?
• How’s the cur­rent traffic?
• How have blog and blog con­tent and blog traf­fic de­vel­oped over years?

I reg­is­tered the do­main al­most 7 years ago, on Au­gust 15 2006.

Imag­ine how huge the blog would be to­day if I had posted frequently!

• 5 posts per week would equal more than 1800 posts today.
• And I would have gath­ered a tribe of fre­quent read­ers – some­thing that can never hap­pen if you post infrequently.

The re­al­ity when I started re­viv­ing ibmm a few weeks back was around 300 posts, lots of them very short and not what you’d call an ‚ever­green‘ post.

Imag­ine how suc­cess­ful your site could be if you’d ex­pand it consistently.

How has traf­fic evolved, and how was traf­fic re­lated to what I did with the blog?

Here’s a Google An­a­lyt­ics screen­shot. I’ve added num­bers, and be­low I’ll ex­plain what happened.

#1 The first year of blog­ging 2007 & 2008

I reg­is­tered the do­main in 2006, but didn’t start blog­ging un­til Feb­ru­ary 2007. What got me started was Yaro Starak’s out­stand­ing blog­ging course (un­for­tu­nately not avail­able any­more, it’s the best blog­ging course ever created).

BUT: I lacked con­sis­tency. Some­times I would blog. Then I would stop for weeks, even months. It’s no sur­prise a blog is­n’t get­ting any­where this way.

The first slow rise in traf­fic (just right from ar­row #1 in the pic) was a re­sult of ca. 20 unique posts writ­ten within a few months.

Then I stopped blog­ging completely.

Les­son learned: If you build it, they will come. Al­though not many, at first. If you stop build­ing it … well, of course, traf­fic will dwin­dle. Con­sis­tency is key.

#2 Switch­ing to Word­Press 2008

When I cre­ated the blog I chose a well-de­vel­oped blog­ging plat­form, Serendip­ity, de­spite my fears that it might not stay up to date as well as other platforms.

My fears proved true, Serendip­ity saw lit­tle progress while other plat­forms added up­dates and fea­tures faster that you could type ‚fea­ture request.‘

Serendip­ity lacked the de­vel­oper com­mu­nity and the breadth of sup­port (plugins/themes) that Word­Press of­fers. That’s es­pe­cially true when you’re look­ing for com­mer­cial or mar­ket­ing re­lated features.

So in 2008 I deleted my Serendip­ity blog, in­stalled Word­Press, and never looked back.

Les­son learned: Al­ways chose the lead­ing plat­form, no mat­ter how im­pres­sive an out­­sider- or geek-plat­­form might look. That’s true not only for your blog, but for all the tools you need in busi­ness: au­tore­spon­ders, sales soft­ware, video soft­ware etc.

This is also rel­e­vant when choos­ing a plat­form be­cause it’s free, for ex­am­ple a free au­tore­spon­der. If ‚free‘ makes you choos­ing the in­fe­rior plat­form, you will al­most al­ways re­gret it later.

(The flat line right to the ar­row #2 doesn’t mean there wasn’t any traf­fic, it means, I for­got to add the Google An­a­lyt­ics code to my new Word­Press blog.)

#3 How chang­ing my Word­Press theme killed my traffic

In 2012 I switched to a new Word­Press theme and my traf­fic dropped 40% within days. See the 2 red lines at ar­row #3.

At that time my traf­fic came al­most ex­clu­sively from Google – and the drop in traf­fic re­sulted com­pletely from a drop of vis­i­tors from Google.

Google hated my new blog theme!

I found out that the main dif­fer­ence be­tween the 2 themes was that the old theme had links to all blog cat­e­gories, while the new theme – in its de­fault state- did not link to any category.

(As be­fore, the short span of zero traf­fic sim­ply shows that I for­got to add the Google An­a­lyt­ics code.)

Les­son learned: The in­ter­nal link­ing struc­ture is cru­cial to search en­gine op­ti­miza­tion. Make sure that your most im­por­tant pages, posts, cat­e­gories are linked to on each and every page of your blog.

That’s a sim­pli­fied rule, you can build very so­phis­ti­cated struc­tures, but you get the idea:

A blog that doesn’t pro­vide a lot of in­ter­nal link­ing turns your pages and posts into iso­lated is­lands and pre­vents Google from un­der­stand­ing your site structure.

You’ll lose tons of traf­fic you could, oth­er­wise, have.

Also #3. But wait, there’s more… how con­tent dri­ves traf­fic in 2009

Con­tent 1. There’s a sig­nif­i­cant short time spike in traf­fic around De­cem­ber 2008 / Jan­u­ary 2009, right af­ter the flat line of #2 where An­a­lyt­ics was missing.

This was shortly af­ter cre­at­ing my new Word­Press blog. It cor­re­lates with a num­ber of new, orig­i­nal posts that I wrote for my ‚new‘ blog. I stopped post­ing end of Feb­ru­ary. Traf­fic drops to a steady level.

Con­tent 2. Then there’s an­other, tiny, spike around May and June. This, again, cor­re­lates with a few orig­i­nal posts.

Les­son learned: Orig­i­nal con­tent dri­ves traffic.

Con­tent 3. Mid 2009 I started to con­sis­tently (for the first time) pub­lish con­tent, but it was not orig­i­nal con­tent, and of­ten it wasn’t even ex­clu­sive to ibmm.

Guest posts from Willie Craw­ford and John Delav­era weren’t ex­clu­sive, they ap­peared on other sites, too. To­day, how­ever, lots of those other sites are gone, which turned the ar­ti­cles into exclusives.

And for those still avail­able on sev­eral sites, I find that Google puts my blog on the first spot in search list­ings. Even Willie’s ar­ti­cles on his own web site were omit­ted, while the  copies of his ar­ti­cles on my blog re­main on top.

This kills the SEO myth that be­ing the first to post an ar­ti­cle will keep your ar­ti­cle on top of Google, com­pared to oth­ers who posted the same ar­ti­cle later. Willie cer­tainly posted his ar­ti­cles to his own sites first, be­fore send­ing them to other publishers.

So – even with non-ex­­clu­­sive con­tent - I must be do­ing some­thing right. I’ll keep that les­son for a fu­ture in­stall­ment of my ‚Blogger’s Journey. ‘

#4 How chang­ing my Word­Press theme in­creased my traffic

An­other change to a new Word­Press theme. This time the theme con­tains bet­ter in­ter­nal link­ing, al­though still no links to the categories.

At ar­row #4 we see an im­me­di­ate traf­fic in­crease, al­though from a low traf­fic base it’s not very much.

(And, again, a short span with­out Google An­a­lyt­ics code, but noth­ing to worry about.)

Les­son learned: An op­ti­mized blog theme and smart in­ter­nal link­ing will in­crease your Google traffic.

#5 How con­tent dri­ves traffic

Through­out 2009 most of my posts were the non-ex­­clu­­sive guest posts from Willie and John I men­tioned above.

2010 and 2011 I posted more fre­quently, now with some semi-ex­­clu­­sive content.

What the heck is ‘semi-ex­­clu­­sive’ content?

Well they were about 100 posts that I cre­ated with edited ex­cerpts from PLR e-books. The con­tent was ac­tu­ally okay, and I just ex­panded them a bit to add my own thoughts.

As you can see in the chart traf­fic is slowly, very slowly, climb­ing in 2010 and it sees a stronger growth in 2011. The real vis­i­tor num­bers are still painfully low, but the up­wards trend is clear.

The end of the or­ange line #5 shows the fi­nal sec­tion of those edited PLR posts. Once they were all posted, the traf­fic re­mains al­most the same de­spite no new posts go­ing live.

Lessons learned:

• Con­stant post­ing dri­ves grow­ing traf­fic. Even if the con­tent is not unique.
• When us­ing du­pli­cate con­tent from other sites, be­ing the first pub­lisher does not help rank­ing this con­tent long term. Be­ing the last pub­lisher does not hin­der rank­ing them long term. The first one might be omit­ted by Google while copies re­main in the index.
• What once was non-ex­­clu­­sive, du­pli­cate con­tent has turned into al­­most-ex­­clu­­sive con­tent sim­ply by other sites go­ing of­fline or bury­ing their ar­ti­cles so deep in the archives that Google doesn’t no­tice them any­more. Here per­sis­tance is key. Even if you do a crappy job, if you stay around long enough, you’ll out­live the others.
• Af­ter a long pe­riod of con­sis­tent weekly post­ing the traf­fic will re­main sta­tic for some time even if you stop posting.

#6 Unique ar­ti­cles and So­cial Media

Be­tween #5 and #6 traf­fic is con­stant. This was a phase of not-posting.

Now our case study is get­ting interesting!

April 2012 I started to auto-pub­­lish my posts from my Google Plus pro­file into a spe­cial g+ cat­e­gory on this blog. I have stopped do­ing this, but my traf­fic stats show an im­me­di­ate in­crease in traf­fic. There’s a small, but un­de­ni­able, up­wards trend in visitors.

Apart from those au­to­mated g+ posts I’ve have cre­ated only 3 unique blog posts in 2012 and a hand­ful of short news posts. These are posts that are truly unique. This is what you should aim to cre­ate if you want to build a great blog.

A truly unique blog post means:

• It’s not pub­lished any­where else.
• The topic isn’t one that’s been beaten to death on thou­sands of blogs.
• It’s pre­sented in unique point of view, based on the author’s life ex­pe­ri­ences and in­ter­ests. No one else could have writ­ten it ex­actly the same way.
• They con­tain orig­i­nal research.
• They con­tain orig­i­nal im­ages, il­lus­tra­tions, or infographics.
• They make lit­tle known in­for­ma­tion or brand new in­for­ma­tion available.

This is the most suc­cess­ful post of 2012:

Face­book vs. Google Plus En­gage­ment – You Had No Idea How Bad It Is For … ! [in­fo­graphic]

• 104 Pin­ter­est shares
• 36 Tweets
• 23 Google Plus 1
• 11 LinkedIn shares
• 10 Face­book likes or shares

It’s also one of the most suc­cess­ful posts since 2007.

Only a few link bait posts and very few ‘ever­green’ posts had more traf­fic through­out the years.

These are the sec­ond and third most suc­cess­ful blog posts in 2012:

So­cial Me­dia Crises Out Of Con­trol? In­fo­graphic And Em­pir­i­cal Studies

This is not my own re­search but show­cas­ing re­search 2 other au­thors have compiled.

While the part about Je­re­miah Owyang’s re­search was al­ready widely known, the re­search of Chris­t­ian Faller was al­most un­known to the Eng­lish speak­ing so­cial me­dia world. Like me, he’s from Germany.

I’ve put them to­gether in one in­ter­est­ing post cov­er­ing re­search and find­ings about so­cial me­dia cri­sis over a long span of time.

How to Gain Trust and Cred­i­bil­ity with Af­fil­i­ate Prod­uct Reviews

This is my very unique view of af­fil­i­ate reviews.

It’s the type of post that no one else could have writ­ten in the ex­act same way. It’s the type of post that sep­a­rates true blog­gers from copy­cats and me-too-bloggers.

This is not say­ing “it’s a great post”, it’s only say­ing it’s unique to my point of view and my experience.

Who else, for ex­am­ple, would have mixed the pro­fane topic of af­fil­i­ate re­views with high val­ued lead­er­ship teach­ings from Stephen M.R. Covey?

At #6 we can clearly see an up­wards trend in traf­fic, from only 3 unique posts and some auto post­ing from Google Plus.

Then, at ar­row #3, traf­fic drops due to the new Word­Press theme, and then stays the same due to not post­ing new con­tent un­til April 2013.

Lessons learned:

• Truly unique posts drive sig­nif­i­cantly more traf­fic and get sig­nif­i­cantly more so­cial me­dia love.
• Cre­at­ing truly unique posts is a lot of work.
• Google loves news-like ar­ti­cles (my au­to­mated Google plus posts), they seem to get pref­er­en­tial treatment.

Google Plus, by the way, should get a blogger’s ut­most at­ten­tion. More on that in a fu­ture in­stall­ment of my “Blogger’s Journey.”

#7 The Blog Res­ur­rec­tion Begins

#7 marks the time when I de­cided to put more work into ibmm. It’s April 2013.

This is where my blog­ging case study truly begins.

In the up­com­ing weeks I will show you in de­tail what I’m do­ing, and I’ll share the re­sults I get in traf­fic, email sub­scribers, so­cial me­dia love, and more.

Some of the top­ics of my multi-part blog­ging case study are:

• How to re­de­fine my blog audience.
• How to cre­ate epic blog posts.
• How to use guest blog­ging in a good way.
• How to in­crease so­cial me­dia shares.
• How to build email sub­scriber lists.
• How to use your blog for business.

Now it’s your turn.

If you, too, have a blog worth bring­ing back to life, go and check your stats. See what you’ve done when and what re­sults you got from it.

Then we’ll move on to make a new start and have your blog rise like Phoenix from the ashes.