Fundamental Blogger vs. Technical Blogger

[MarketCaptureConsultin]

As you may know, there are quants and there are value investors. Quants crunch numbers and rely on technical analysis to make their trades. In contrast, value investors focus on the fundamental value of businesses before investing.

It seems like blogging has diverged into similar factions since the late 2010s. The quant equivalents are constantly trying to beat the algorithm to rank high while the fundamental bloggers will focus on providing value while letting Google figure it out for them. There is a bit of both with every blogger. Even Ricky Kesler and Jim Harmer of Income School who based their entire course on value-blogging discuss SEO practices to some degree. I would like to know which side you lean more towards in 2021? Do you believe a majority focus on SEO is better or should one think from the reader's POV and let the algo figure discovery and ranking part?

 

[Dark Sky]

As you may know, there are quants and there are value investors. Quants crunch numbers and rely on technical analysis to make their trades. In contrast, value investors focus on the fundamental value of businesses before investing.

It seems like blogging has diverged into similar factions since the late 2010s. The quant equivalents are constantly trying to beat the algorithm to rank high while the fundamental bloggers will focus on providing value while letting Google figure it out for them. There is a bit of both with every blogger. Even Ricky Kesler and Jim Harmer of Income School who based their entire course on value-blogging discuss SEO practices to some degree. I would like to know which side you lean more towards in 2021? Do you believe a majority focus on SEO is better or should one think from the reader's POV and let the algo figure discovery and ranking part?

Ricky and Jim, brag about never buying backlinks, and then they get 100,000 to their website in a few days. They are the biggest scam of all. A giant walking contradiction to trap beginners who don't understand backlinks.

 

[MarketCaptureConsultin]

Ricky and Jim, brag about never buying backlinks, and then they get 100,000 to their website in a few days. They are the biggest scam of all. A giant walking contradiction to trap beginners who don't understand backlinks.

I believe their info products are overpriced. But if you mean backlinks to their blogging course site, then the backlinks might be due to their affiliates. However, if a few of their publicly claimed blogs like Camper Report have that kind of backlink volume, then that's definitely sun.

In either case, Dark Sky, if you were to divide effort by percentages, would you go 50 - 50 on value and tactics or would it be a different division? I would put 10% in tactics and 90% on reader-engagement.

 

[pepeneo]

ur overcomplicating something as simple as making a blog
"I would put 10% in tactics" tf is that?
"90% on reader-engagement " there are a lot of ways of increasing user engagement, some write"engaging" articles while others make u navigate several pages to get the info,, or u can simply lock their browser so they never leave...

 

[Dark Sky]

I believe their info products are overpriced. But if you mean backlinks to their blogging course site, then the backlinks might be due to their affiliates. However, if a few of their publicly claimed blogs like Camper Report have that kind of backlink volume, then that's definitely sun.

In either case, Dark Sky, if you were to divide effort by percentages, would you go 50 - 50 on value and tactics or would it be a different division? I would put 10% in tactics and 90% on reader-engagement.

Don't believe them mate, they buy backlinks like no tomorrow and say they are "natural" their entire audience is beginner SEO's who don't understand backlinks.

I can't answer that as I wouldn't divided it into those groups.

I put everything into content/backlinks. That's all that's needed. Content for the user, backlinks for the algorithm to get the content too the users. Everything else is just a bonus, like design and social media presence ect.

 

[MarketCaptureConsultin]

ur overcomplicating something as simple as making a blog
"I would put 10% in tactics" tf is that?
"90% on reader-engagement " there are a lot of ways of increasing user engagement, some write"engaging" articles while others make u navigate several pages to get the info,, or u can simply lock their browser so they never leave...

Ah yes, put one sentence on each page and make the user click through a 1000 slides. Very engaging. I meant writing engaging content.

 

[tazarbm]

From personal experience I am telling you that backlinks are ultra mega super important. I mean, for non-authority sites and blogs like ours. Because if you are amazon, sony, or whatever you don't have to lift a finger (probably) and google will love you.

Last year I have created a website in which I targeted a low competition niche, full of mom-and-pop type of websites on the first page for most of the keywords that I targeted. There were a couple authority websites in that niche every now and then (especially for keywords with high search volume and e-commerce types of keywords) but I never cared about those sites. They could all stay there at #1 getting 1000s of visitors per day and I would have been happy occupying any top ranking spot between #2 and #6. That was my goal, for which reason I have only targeted the absolute easiest (according to the keyword research tool that I used) keywords, some of them with only 30 or 40 monthly searches, and no buyer intent whatsoever.

So I targeted these 10-20 low competition keywords, I created 5 topical pages, each page with at least 1000 words (sometimes 2000 words) of content, with optimized images, sub-headings, bullet points, visually appealing content split into table of contents and all that crap. These things alone - oh, also EMD domain name which was also aged (albeit expired for several years before I had purchased it) - and also the fact that for some of the keywords there have been some forums and pinterest URLs ranking along with the mom-and-pop (poorly optimized, bad looking) types of websites that were ranking in that niche (arts and crafts niche). And my content had also been MUCH higher than the norm, as well, most of the sites barely having 500 words of content, with some of them only 50-100 words LOL

So anyway, based on all of these things you could say that I have struck gold and that google should reward me with those delicious rankings and organic traffic because I was so handsome and such a good guy for not trying to manipulate their rankings by building backlinks, and because I only provided "high quality content" like google wants.

Two months later after creating the content and making my site live (also indexed by google, ALL of the URLs have been indexed) do you know how much organic traffic I have received from the almighty google for being the good guy? Yep, a whooping ZERO traffic! ZERO, nada, ziltch! That's how google rewards "high quality content".

After 2 months of frustration and getting sick of playing by google's rules I have started building backlinks and while the backlinks didn't do anything good for my website (probably that I've purchased bad backlinks from spammed websites) at least my site had started showing up in top 100 for some of the keywords. Not for the keywords that I've built it around, but some of them, which had been good news somehow because prior to that I haven't seen a single top 100 ranking, and a single visitor.

So, this should answer your question about letting the algo do its magic or forcing it to do its magic.

 

[Nut-Nights]

Technical blogging sounds much better, if you want to create a fast and good income source, you should be focusing on ranking with good content.

 

[MarketCaptureConsultin]

From personal experience I am telling you that backlinks are ultra mega super important. I mean, for non-authority sites and blogs like ours. Because if you are amazon, sony, or whatever you don't have to lift a finger (probably) and google will love you.

Last year I have created a website in which I targeted a low competition niche, full of mom-and-pop type of websites on the first page for most of the keywords that I targeted. There were a couple authority websites in that niche every now and then (especially for keywords with high search volume and e-commerce types of keywords) but I never cared about those sites. They could all stay there at #1 getting 1000s of visitors per day and I would have been happy occupying any top ranking spot between #2 and #6. That was my goal, for which reason I have only targeted the absolute easiest (according to the keyword research tool that I used) keywords, some of them with only 30 or 40 monthly searches, and no buyer intent whatsoever.

So I targeted these 10-20 low competition keywords, I created 5 topical pages, each page with at least 1000 words (sometimes 2000 words) of content, with optimized images, sub-headings, bullet points, visually appealing content split into table of contents and all that crap. These things alone - oh, also EMD domain name which was also aged (albeit expired for several years before I had purchased it) - and also the fact that for some of the keywords there have been some forums and pinterest URLs ranking along with the mom-and-pop (poorly optimized, bad looking) types of websites that were ranking in that niche (arts and crafts niche). And my content had also been MUCH higher than the norm, as well, most of the sites barely having 500 words of content, with some of them only 50-100 words LOL

So anyway, based on all of these things you could say that I have struck gold and that google should reward me with those delicious rankings and organic traffic because I was so handsome and such a good guy for not trying to manipulate their rankings by building backlinks, and because I only provided "high quality content" like google wants.

Two months later after creating the content and making my site live (also indexed by google, ALL of the URLs have been indexed) do you know how much organic traffic I have received from the almighty google for being the good guy? Yep, a whooping ZERO traffic! ZERO, nada, ziltch! That's how google rewards "high quality content".

After 2 months of frustration and getting sick of playing by google's rules I have started building backlinks and while the backlinks didn't do anything good for my website (probably that I've purchased bad backlinks from spammed websites) at least my site had started showing up in top 100 for some of the keywords. Not for the keywords that I've built it around, but some of them, which had been good news somehow because prior to that I haven't seen a single top 100 ranking, and a single visitor.

So, this should answer your question about letting the algo do its magic or forcing it to do its magic.

Oh wow. Thank you so much for this. Really puts into perspective the value of backlinks.

 

[Dark Sky]

Oh wow. Thank you so much for this. Really puts into perspective the value of backlinks.

My best advice to you is, see the effect of backlinks for yourself. To do this, create a blog with about 30-50 posts, make sure the keyword research is good.

Track the rankings of each keyword in a rank tracker.

After 6-8 months, start sending powerful backlinks, and you'll see the rankings fly. This will show you how weighted backlinks are for rankings, it's very unfair, but it's the best system google has at the moment until they develop a better system for determining good content.

At the moment they have got quite good when it comes to the top 10 SERPS at determining who has the best content without backlinks as they can use metrics, but this is clearly not possible to use metrics outside of the top 10 because no one clicks on page 2, so they realistically don't have any metrics to use.

That's where backlinks come in. They use backlinks to see who should be in the top 10, then they decide which of the top 10 the visitors like the most. Obviously it's more complicated than this, but that's the jist of where google are at the moment.

So to clarify, you realistically need backlinks to get to the top 10 rankings, then good content will get you 1st position. Always exceptions to the rule, but this is the general rule.

 

[RankWriter]

The technical part should be less when compared to the finding traffic and bringing user engagement to your website. It is as simple as that. There is no point on building a technical blog and uploading high-quality contents without even getting a few readers to your site. It all depends on your marketing knowledge.

 

[blackbeans]

Can't it be BOTH?

I use Income School's philosophy when creating content since SEARCHER INTENT is crucial BUT I also use surferSEO, semrush, and RankMath. Last I checked, the IS guys aren't big fans of tools like Semrush.... Still, I suspect they use it or are at least influenced by it.

What gave it away?

Their video analysis of niche sites where some dude is printing out profiles of sites and Hamer and Kesler give their opinion.