Search Project 2024 - Is It Even Worth It?

[Zach]

I've been in ecommerce (focusing on paid media, not seo) for quite a few years, but I want to start a business around a passion project of mine and it happens to be once that is pretty big with search. People looking for local information on the topic. I wanted to know your guys' thoughts around the viability of this project from a search perspective.

For purposes of this post, I'll make up that my site is about rock climbing locations + community. And what I want to do is index all the best places in the world to rock climb. Each page has a map, dedicated information about the rock climbing site, and more.

I've seen the SERPs in my space for this, and they are ridiculously bad. Not just "bad content" it's like sites that are literally broken. Stuff that looks like it was made in 2004 and forgotten about. I think it's a case where Google just doesn't have anybody to rank for this stuff. Meager pickings. It's clear this particular space is not filled with tech-savvy web operators.

My business idea has a large variety of traffic-acquiring plays, and SEO doing listing locations would be a nice piece of the pie. The competitors look awful. This excites me. I think I can make a premier experience and lead people down the funnel further to become a member of my site. It's a long-term evergreen niche I happen to love.

I'm gassed up about this project, as it's a passion of mine I know a lot about, and I can put my full stack of media skills into it, I could work on this project the next 10 years and be happy as a clam......HOWEVER - there sure is a lot of doomsaying on this site about the future of SEO/Google/AI. I realize SEO takes forever, and the posts on this forum make me feel like my project is about 10 years too late for sizeable SEO gains. You guys make it seem like AI is just gonna wipe the SERP clean and/or already has. Everything I've worked for will succumb to an answer box that AI answers. I am reconsidering my game plan to not include SEO as much of a traffic source target, and will not put much marketing energy into acquiring G traffic.

Do you think starting my website concept right now with a goal of gaining decent SEO traffic is just too uncertain?

 

[Steve Brownlie]

Do you think starting my website concept right now with a goal of gaining decent SEO traffic is just too uncertain?

Because you're actually passionate about the niche and would enjoy working on it, not just trying to spin up some thin keyword based 'authority niche site' that is just built to rank but nothing else actually useful to the users you have more of a chance of succeeding than most - particularly if there isn't much competition. You're interested in creating something real that you actually want to run as a business.

You're right though that SEO shouldn't be your only play - but that's where your advantage of actually liking the niche comes in.

You wouldn't be upset if you hosted a podcast with interviews with prominent climbers and adventurers.

You wouldn't be upset to interrupt your climbing vacation with some footage for your youtube channel.

You wouldn't be upset chatting to your members/followers/fans in the internet's biggest climbing discord channel etc.

You wouldn't be upset if your newsletter takes you ten hours a week to compile - reading readers letters, looking at their photos and videos to include - actually trying out some products and sharing funny stories about them etc...

When SGE eventually does come in your podcasts, and videos would be part of the 'experience' most likely delivered to users asking those questions and looking for multimedia. Your expert articles would be cited more often by the AI etc - it's going to be one slot a lot of the time or 3 maybe if they go the more Bing route - so being one of the 'best 3' is going to matter enormously. Best might not be defined by SERP position anymore and the ranking factors this new experience uses might take a lot of learning as it rolls out but it will still involve some kind of SEO-like work. Maybe just across loads of platforms and with different techniques than we're used to today.

ie what you're talking about is building a real community around a site and all your other content all over the web here not just spinning up a spam site with loads of 'best places to climb in X' articles written by freelancers who barely know the inside of their local climbing center let alone anything about outdoor adventure.

 

[bernard]

It sounds like a perfect situation for an SEO play to me. You're passionate about it and it is underserved.

Don't misunderstand what you're reading about here. You're primarily hearing doom and gloom from a specific subset of SEOs, those that went into the mass publishing game for ad views or to a lesser degree the review affiliate SEOs.

SEO is still perfectly possible in a situation such as yours. When you're not seeing the results served, then it means it is going to be easy. You might want to ask yourself why it is not being served. It could be that monetizing this niche with affiliate or ads is not easy. That also shouldn't stop you.

What I would do in such a situation is to ask what kind of resource that this niche is needing. Yes, probably some blog posts, but what else? Does it need statistics? A directory of service provides, locations or guides? A 'crash course' and an associated forum or facebook group?

You want to have a gimmick, a sort of moat you can build, that separates you from a basic affiliate website or blog.

Second, you want to think social media and building connections into this from the beginning. You'd want to find the facebook groups and elsewhere that the people in the niche are hanging out. You'll be sharing your posts there or writing content, making content, based on the niche.

Third, you should have a plan to get into video if possible, even if just showing off products, locations, etc. Share it on Youtube, Instagram etc.

Make a plan to get your gimmick ready, could be everything from a viral quiz to a database, along with say 25 really well written personal posts, then launch ready to go. You want to have some kind of stealth in launching to not invite competition.

Do not put ads or affiliate links on it yet. Spend the first 6 months simply spreading the word about the gimmick you built. Like if it was a custom Google Maps of climbing opportunities in your town, then you share it with everyone. People like stuff like that. Tell them that you've written about each climb, along with routes and photos etc on your site.

Try to make this site look perfectly non-commercial and attempt some local newspaper or niche magazine links etc. All this will be much easier with a social presence and a real person behind it. Try to get some guest posts by reaching out manually.

If done correctly, you will quickly get some follower, grab a few real links from serious websites etc and now you will have trust with Google. This will last a long time. Then you can begin earning.

Relevant.

 

[Darth]

@bernard isn't programmatic SEO very likely to trigger HCU penalties? Thousands and thousands of pages that get very little impressions or clicks.

 

[Steve Brownlie]

@bernard isn't programmatic SEO very likely to trigger HCU penalties? Thousands and thousands of pages that get very little impressions or clicks.

I think the HCU is misunderstood. It seems in reality to have mainly targeted 'niche affiliate' sites and not much else regardless of if they were actually good in a lot of cases. Plenty of SaaS companies and ecommerce stores are full of garbage content, much of it AI generated, and are still ranking just fine...

 

[bernard]

@bernard isn't programmatic SEO very likely to trigger HCU penalties? Thousands and thousands of pages that get very little impressions or clicks.

It all depends on if those pages are helpful and unique.

Amazon has millions of pages that get few clicks.

Also, you don't need to have thousands of pages to have programmatic SEO or indexing each page. It's also not necessarily about quantity of data but quality of data. Take the raw data, work on it, so it increases in value by combining it, calculating on it, making new inferences from it.

As I see it, the programmatic SEO approach is a marketing play, not an SEO play. It's your value added play.

It's the difference between: Someone collected and presented data about all the climbing routes in Georgia (the country) vs someone wrote 1000 words of AI about the climbing routes in Georgia, then put 5 intrusive ads on it.

One is at least somewhat interesting to the average person, the other just .. sucks.

I would want to build something that is, if not a Saas, then at least a small web project. You can write in your bio that you're an "Love climbing and designing websites and made this site to combine the two" etc.

If you combine this approach with getting active on Facebook groups, Twitter etc, and you do this for 6 months before making it commercial, then you have a much better chance of getting some links and gaining those followers, that get you slotted into "real person with real site" that won't get slapped.

Again, if done perfectly, then you probably have a subject matter expert as your partner here too, who will do all this stuff for the 6 months until you get going with the monetazation. Not to say you can't write product reviews and such before that, just don't monetize it.

 

[Nonbeardedman]

I'd echo the points made by everyone else here. Your passion for the niche will definitely be your competitive edge down the line. You may not think anyone's looking, but it's often the people with a serious passion and know-how of a certain topic that are often cited as the 'experts'. You should also remember that based on Google's Helpful Content Guidelines, a passion site providing genuine value and information to the users checks most if not all the boxes. Their guides state:

Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?

If you're passionate about the niche, you'd be expected to provide original info. So, if you have a genuine interest in mountain climbing, you'd be more than willing to share some first-hand knowledge

Does the content provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond the obvious?

If you're climbing those mountains and are overall interested there's no doubt you'd have some interesting tidbits to share from your trips, like "Fun Fact: did you know that Mountain XYZ was actually 700,000sq. but was reduced after an accidental demolition?"; I'm making this up as I don't know how mountains work.

If the content draws on other sources, does it avoid simply copying or rewriting those sources, and instead provide substantial additional value and originality?

I've often seen people who have a bit more know-how and see things from "first-perspective" are usually quick to criticize other sources that may overlook some crucial info

Is this the sort of page you'd want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?

If you're an interesting personality and provide unique content, sure why not?

Would you expect to see this content in or referenced by a printed magazine, encyclopedia, or book?

I've been tapping into academic writing for clients the past 3 months and have worked on multiple research reports, business documents, and thesis, and I can assure you that when it comes to gathering crucial yet unique info, these passion blogs come into great use as a reference when you don't have any other scholarly source to report from. Also, Wikipedia constantly sources small, passion blogs for its articles as well. I remember reading the Wiki for Van Gogh (the painter), and one of the references was a 2007 blogspot blog that was of a painter who was obsessed with Van Gogh and his paintings; he would also detail his trips to the Van Gogh museums, etc.

Is this content written or reviewed by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well?

Keyword here in your case is "enthusiast". Remember you don't have to be an expert, but if you're excited about writing on this, then you most probably fit the enthusiast category.

I'd say go for it!

I'm also pivoting from my niche authority blog site to a more broader site that is focused on something I personally specialize in and enjoy writing on.