Niche Site Lady - Why I got a manual penalty from Google

A couple of weeks ago I was in Italy when I woke up to this WhatsApp message from my team member...

I shit myself  quickly checked my emails...

There it was.

A manual penalty from Google. Fuck.

It said...

My heart dropped.

Google organic traffic to the site brings in about $50k per month of revenue.

I've always thought that was a ridiculous number for someone working part-time from home.

Was the game finally up?

I continued to read the email...

It said 'Here is an example URL with unnatural links' and pointed to a guest post I'd done in 2020.

Ah-ha, a clue!

Not everyone gets example URLs with a manual penalty so I was grateful for that.

I took a look at it.

As I hadn't seen this guest post for four years since I wrote it, I had fresh eyes. 

I knew that I'd never bought a link in my life. 

But I could see why this guest post might look like I had.

So let me take you back to 2020...

While the world was locked down at home, I was working like crazy on my travel blog.

But, of course, planes were grounded and nobody was searching.

My blog was a year old and had a DR of 0.

So, I thought, it needs a few links, so that when people do start travelling, it will have some 'strength' behind it.

I'm sure we've all thought that when we've owned a site with zero backlinks, right?

I'd heard plenty of people having success by paying for link inserts, PBN links, low-quality spun guest posts and all the black hat methods.

But I wanted no part of that.

I wanted something 'safe'. Something that wasn't breaking any rules.

So, I reached out to a few of the great travel blogs that inspired me and asked if I could write a guest post.

There was no mention of money. No mention of links.

I did one per week for a few weeks.

The posts were very good, if I do say so myself.

This one was 3,000 words about why you should visit Norway.

I love Norway.

I filled the post with my own photos and tips about how to make the most of your trip.

It took me all day.

I included two link backs to my site - one to my homepage and one to a relevant guide I had.

And I thought nothing of it for the next four years.

But, I'll admit, that's not the only thing I did 'wrong', in Google's eyes...

They haven't said this, but I'm pretty sure that another issue that I have is that in 2020, I also did some 'blogger collabs'.

These would fit their pattern of unnatural links for sure.

Let me tell you about those, since I have nothing to hide.

I used to find 'collabs' in Facebook groups.

Someone would say "I'm writing about the best hidden gems in Barcelona, please send me a few paragraphs and an image if you'd like to contribute."

And I would send a photo of a cute little cafe that I loved, talk about why it was great, and get a link to my homepage.

I honestly thought I was helping - because a 'hidden gems' article is better with contributions from 10 people than just one writer, right?

Of course it is.

Likewise, when someone was writing about English castle ruins you can visit in lockdown... I wouldn't expect one person to visit every castle!

But there was a castle a few miles form my house, so I walked there and took photos so I could contribute to their roundup article.

Of course, the article linked to me to credit me as the photographer.

I had no idea this wasn't okay.

Naive? Probably.

But in my defence, the line between what's okay and what's not okay has never been fully clear.

And when SEO gurus are constantly talking about all kinds of shady shit that works for them,

It's easy to think 'if they're okay, surely I will be'.

The last guest post or collab I did was in 2021, so thankfully, the cleanup was pretty easy.

I consulted with an expert, Paul Madden, who was incredibly helpful and taught me a lot.

With the help of his software, Opphive, I went through every single link and tagged it as OK or NOT OK.

It was actually pretty fun!

About 2,000 spam links went in the disavow file in addition to those guest posts and collabs from 2020.

I submitted the reconsideration request and now... I wait.

Has the penalty affected traffic?

A bit, yes.

This graph shows the year on year, with the red line being the penalty.

The organic traffic is now almost flat compared to last year.

This isn't great considering how much new content I've put out and that every one of the older articles has been refreshed and improved.

My plan from here.

I've been saying for a while that I'm moving away from Google traffic.

This is just another big shove in that direction for me.

I'm not comfortable with 70% of my traffic coming from organic search as it currently does.
 

I don't expect Google to be fair. 

If you expect that, you're sure to be disappointed at some point, as so many of us already have been.

I've seen a lot of people spending time on trying to recover their lost organic traffic,

And seeing as nobody has actually been successful, that's obviously not the best path.

Instead, there's more potential with trying to grow new traffic sources.

If you lost your legs, you wouldn't try to 'recover' them, would you?

No, you'd work on building your arms to be super strong so that you can still handle the stairs. Right? 💪 

I don't have time for trial and error with growing new traffic sources.

Instead, I'm learning from the people who are way ahead of me and have already made millions without organic search traffic.

Take Scott DeLong, for example. (Follow him on X)

He's made $20,000,000 from email newsletters, so there's nobody better to learn from.

My travel newsletter isn't doing bad.

It's making me about $7k per month.

I got this far from trial and error over the past three years since I launched it.

But, when I read the playbook that shows exactly what Scott does with his six successful newsletters and why,

I saw that I'm doing so much wrong!

I'm actually a little embarrassed at some of my obvious mistakes.

This week I'm overhauling my lead magnets, my email capture forms, my welcome series, the whole shebang.

And I'm SO excited by the potential.

I feel so lucky that there's someone to say 'here's exactly what you need to do', with real examples.

Now some of you may be thinking...

I don't have an email list yet (or its tiny) and my site isn't getting enough traffic to attract email subscribers.

I hear you.

Luckily, Scott's Million Dollar Newsletter Playbook shows how you can build a profitable newsletter even if you don't have a website at all!

You don't need to be good at writing (ChatGPT can do it for you)

In fact, there are so many thing that you can forget about if you forget about Google.

Even if you don't even have an idea for a niche, Scott offers 10 ready-made blueprints that you can pick up and run with.

Of course, all of this is making me super tempted to start a new newsletter-only brand...

But first, I'm going to 10X my travel newsletter.

Because there's absolutely no reason why it can't bring in $70k per month, now I know what I know.

So if you're ready to pivot along with me, here's how to get started.

NSL

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