April 22, 2024 | Read Online

This site did something 99% of sites don't do

And Google loves them for it

This is one of the most extreme traffic jumps I’ve ever seen:

After analyzing the site for a bit, it’s clear why such a massive jump occurred.

And no, it’s not from a 301 redirect. Or “blackhat” SEO. Nothing of the sort.

In this email, I’m sharing the actual URL for the above site, and exactly why their traffic increased so drastically.

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The site in question is…

Barbellmedicine.com.

This is not your typical “niche site”. But at one time, it was.

Using the Wayback Machine, I reverse-engineered their strategies over the years in an attempt to understand what caused the explosive growth.

Here’s what I found:

Barbell Medicine was founded by Jordan Feigenbaum in 2012, under the name “The Fit Coach”. At that time, it was a simple blog. Jordan offered training and nutrition consultations as well, which he promoted on the site.

thefitcoach site (Barbell Medicine) in October, 2013

By 2014, the site was rebranded to Barbell Medicine, and a shop (selling Barbell Medicine t-shirts) was added.

The shop page in 2015

In mid-2015, Jordan brought on two new strength training coaches and added a “Coaches” page.
Besides new articles on the blog, not much changed in the next few years, except for the addition of a forum in 2018:

The Barbell Medicine forum

In 2019, Barbell Medicine began selling their own branded supplements on the site. They also added “training templates” to the shop. Ecommerce was now a major focus.

And that brings us to today. When you visit the site now, it’s clearly a legit business with lots more to offer than just static informational content.

But remember how it started. It was just a simple blog!

Now that you’ve seen the evolution of Barbell Medicine, let me explain why they’re doing so well:

They’re clearly a real, trustworthy business.
- They sell supplements and workout programs
- They offer coaching
- They put on real-life seminars
- They have a long-running, highly-rated podcast
- They have a forum
- And yes, they have tons and tons of helpful informational articles
It’s not some affiliate blog built by a random dude just to rank ‘n bank. Google considers those sites spam - or at the very least, unworthy of ranking for anything. If you don’t believe me, you stopped paying attention to SEO in September 2023. 😅 (side note, yes you can still find plenty of spammy sites ranking - and very legit businesses not. Google didn’t get it right in many cases).
Going hand in hand with the above, Barbell Medicine has a reason to exist beyond just providing information. I’ve noticed a clear pattern lately: strictly informational sites were disproportionately hit by the latest Google updates - especially if they lacked a social following.
Speaking of a social following, Barbell Medicine has a decent presence on multiple social media platforms. 69K followers on Instagram, 68K subscribers on YouTube, and 15K followers on Facebook. Not bad. Another pattern I’ve noticed lately is that a large social following across multiple platforms is a “cheat code” for surviving updates. It’s not always true, but most of the time it is.
Their content is fantastic. Thoroughly researched (with tons of references), human-written, and truly helpful. If you’re skeptical, go see for yourself.
They stayed in their lane, publishing content on topics their audience likes. They never jumped on any of the latest SEO bandwagons, such as targeting high search volume, easy keywords that are only slightly related to their business (think keywords like “how strong is [celebrity]”).
EEAT (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) isn’t a ranking factor, but it can’t be hurting them any. Their many contributors are all real, and all have fantastic credentials.

With everything that’s going for them - and the fact that the site has been a high quality resource for over 10 years - the recent traffic explosion is long, long overdue.

They finally rank well for tons of huge fitness-related keywords:

Barbell Medicine built a real brand and kept plugging away without seeing much success on Google for 10 years.

Barbell Medicine’s traffic since mid-2015

99% of people would’ve given up long before. 99% of sites aren’t even close to matching Barbell Medicine in quality, usefulness, or expertise.

Google is finally giving them the love they deserve.

Thanks for reading,

Ian

What did you think of this email?

Twas fantastic!

Meh

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This site did something 99% of sites don't do

This site did something 99% of sites don't do

Have you been hit by the HCU or watched your SEO traffic tank recently?

What did you think of this email?

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