Shitty Blogs vs. Authority Sites for SEO

This one’s been bugging me for a long time. I’ve done authority sites in the past and I’ve done quick blogs for one keyword. For someone who’s planning on diving into SEO, this could be a real dilemma.

SEO requires a lot of patience and results aren’t quick. So picking the right strategy is key if you want to rip the profits in the future. In this article I’d like to discuss pros, cons and something from my experience doing both ways to help you decide better.

Shitty Blogs – Easy Quick Cash?

Nope. Lol. Everyone’s been talking about how you can make easy money, rank highly in search engines within weeks with a tiny blog with 3 posts or shit like that. Well, from my experience this doesn’t work so well. It does to some extent though… Let me explain.

The key in this game is doing more than one blog and most likely you’ll find success. I’d suggest focus on 4 or 5 and try to get those ranked in top 10. You know the research behind these blogs right? Pick a low competition keyword and focus all your efforts on it. If you’ve followed the Google Sniper course (pretty good), that’s what the guy does all day long. He picks keywords with competition of 14,000 to 20,000 when entered with quotes. Makes sure the keyword gets at least 3,000 searches a month on Google when searched in “phrase match” (although it’s buggy now and sometimes shows the same volume as broad match, so you can use exact match). He uses Google’s keyword tool. And then makes a 3-5 post blog with disclaimers and such to get that “sniper site” ranked high in engines only with social bookmarks and videos. Well I tried it and it requires more than that really. I usually end up on a second page and it’s hard to move from there. I bought some shit pyramid links, social bookmarks, .gov/.edu links and still positions barely move up. So if you think you can get even the least competitive keywords (which are tough to find now) ranked highly with no effort, think again. However, I must say that out of 4 or 5 blogs, one gets to the top 10 or top 5 even and then you can get traffic and commissions. But it’s not easy, so you need to work on building links.

Authority Sites – Are They Worth the Hassle?

When I talk authority sites, I mean 6 months to years of development and not weeks here. How big is the “authority site”? Depends on the niche. In weight loss, you may need 2,000 pages of unique content. In other micro, sub niches you may only need 10.

With authority site, you pick a market and write posts, pages around specific keywords. You won’t rank as high as those cheap blogs devoted for that one specific keyword, but you make up for that with volume of content you have. I have done 3 or 4 authority sites in the past and now they bring me consistent profits each month. It’s a good feeling. And no Google updates worry me, because I have unique and quality content, lots of it. So these sites are “algorithm-update-proof”. But they require dedication. If you don’t hire anyone, and at first that’s what you’ll be doing – writing content yourself, then pick something you have at least moderate interest in. Otherwise it’s going to be a pain to write lots of content on a subject that makes you sick in the morning when you wake up.

Research other authority sites in your niche and see how they structure their pages, categories, blog, etc. Copy their model and start working on it yourself. Make goals, like write 2 posts each day. Or if you can only work on weekends, then 5 posts per weekend. That’s 20 articles a month. Continue that for a year and you have a steady website after one year. 2, 3 years and Google will give even higher weight on your site.

You can pick a niche with several affiliate products or go for more obscure one for Adsense money. One small authority (10-20 page)Adsense site can make you $20, $100 a day. Build several and enjoy the life.

The Verdict?

I go with authority sites. More benefits compared to shitty blogs. But you could do both actually. Why not start one bigger site and at the same time keep testing small blog sites for quicker cash and see how it works out? That should be your next project for SEO. Don’t got for the low hanging fruit only as it may seem too high for you anyway. Better find a niche that has some money in it and keep on building a decent website. You’ll thank yourself years later, trust me.