While everyone’s busy complaining, serious owners are quietly putting in the work. It’s tempting to pin it all on Google, but the real reason often comes down to the business and the person running it.
Critical: Zero Sum
One goes up
One goes down
If you own a coffee shop and someone opens up across the street, your sales will decrease.
If their coffee is better, and you do nothing, you’ll likely go out of business within 6 months.
This happens online and offline; it makes no difference. Your competitors invest time, effort, money, and resources into winning, all of which are actionable.
I stumbled on a recent Reddit thread, easily the millionth person complaining about Google. I’ve worked in this industry for years, and I’m dumbfounded by the number of owners who expect to rank and firmly believe it’s Google’s fault.
I meet owners and see sites like this every single day.
Owner
I started my blog back in 2010. I used sites like Facebook to get traffic. Those were the days when you could actually get traffic from Facebook. I was getting 5 to 6K page views every day. I shared only a recipe, a photo of the food, and a little blurb about why I liked the recipe.
still happens today, more so even
In 2017, I learned how to monetize my blog and had enough traffic, so I applied for Adthrive, which is now called Raptive. I was so thrilled and excited about that. Google wasn’t doing anything to their platform at the time, but they made updates to search engines. It was a good time.
Yes, Google was, but competition in 2017 was dismal
Today, about 75k blogs and 7.5m posts are created daily
So, my best estimate is around 195 million blogs created between 2017 and today, with a possible range of 180–220 million depending on growth trends and platform-specific data.
Around 1 quadrillionish blog posts, yet only a small percentage are exceptional.
Worse yet, only a tiny percentage of entire blogs are exceptional. For reference, check my comparison of data set 1 and data set 2 below.
While there is technically nothing wrong with a medium (adequate) quality, it comes down to competition.
In 2020 I saw that air fryers were trending and I started sharing those type of recipes and then Covid hit. I was getting 1 mil page views every month during those years just from sharing air fryer recipes. I was quite thrilled about this and I found a niche that nobody was doing at the time.
Again, early to the party, with limited competition
2025 Everybody and their mom has an air fryer, and these posts that used to rank on page 1 are now on page 5 or 10. I’ve done everything in my wits end to try to get those posts to go back to the top including things like getting a site audit done or having someone help me with SEO.
Just because something worked doesn’t mean it’s good. If you’re the only coffee shop in 100 miles, you’ll do well, even if your coffee sucks.
It’s been so long that I cannot recall when this started, but establishing a clear purpose for a defined audience is critical for success.
2023- Google starts making algorithm updates and I’m losing 1,000s of page views every month. 2024 was still a good year for me; don’t get me wrong. But now my blog has taken a major hit, and I can’t get any of my traffic back.
Real competition involves owners investing insane amounts of time, effort, and money into producing exceptional content daily for years—not just content but internal quality across the board.
So, that’s my story. For those thinking about making a blog, Google has it’s Ups and Downs. A LOT.
It’s about you more than it’s about Google or any external traffic source
Pretty much every site in the top 10 increased, except recipe-diaries
You will not always win. I’ve been trying to find other traffic sources like Pinterest, Reddit, and Mailing lists.
Again, this external mindset, chasing, yet not a single note or mention of internal quality, purpose, audience, etc.
I think the Glory days of getting easy traffic from Google are over unless something changes.
There is some truth to this: it’s easy when you have no competition. However, this statement about getting easy traffic resonates a lot with spam.
Upon reviewing this site and Blackstone Fried Rice, I stumbled upon the perfect example of a small site that has been consistently gaining traffic in the last 4 core updates
Exhibit A (Decreasing)
https://www.recipe-diaries.com (Owner Above) – unclear/confusing brand, defined purpose, and audience – low quality site overall, brand name, logo, about – 744 posts with 17k organic traffic, 22 per post – hammered, over and over
“I’ve been trying to find other sources.” Note that internal quality wins across the board, regardless of the traffic channel. This is a single, straightforward recommendation.
Focus on internal quality rather than chasing external traffic sources. Hey, try my bad coffee. Improve your coffee, then shift back to external mode. When serving GOOD coffee, gaining traffic and building an audience is much easier, often resulting in, “Hey, they have amazing coffee.”
Exhibit B (Increasing)
https://theflattopking.com (Her Competitior) – clear brand, defined purpose (griddles), and audience – high-quality site overall, brand, name, logo, about – 225 posts with 66k organic traffic, 293 per post – hammered in HCU but gained in the last 4 core updates
HCU recoveries have always been recoverable but not easy or quick. So when someone says, “getting easy traffic”, we immediately know this owner isn’t recovering and will tell everyone it isn’t possible.
Importance of Content Quality, including Effort, Originality, Perspective, and First hand experience is critical.
Data-Set Comparison
I mentioned this earlier, compare the following:
Low Quality
Site 1 68,000 organic traffic / 998 posts = 68 organic traffic per post
Site 2 40k organic traffic / 1,167 posts = 34 organic traffic per post
Site 3 29k organic traffic / 560 posts = 51 organic traffic per post
Site 4 5.5k organic traffic / 465 posts = 11 organic traffic per post
Site 5 15.5k organic traffic / 485 posts = 32 organic traffic per post
High Quality
Site 1 311k organic traffic / 243 posts = 1,279 organic traffic per post
Site 2 2.6m organic traffic / 1,886 posts = 1,378 organic traffic per post
Site 3 1.3m organic traffic / 1,946 posts = 668 organic traffic per post
Site 4 881k organic traffic / 1,299 posts = 678 organic traffic per post
Site 5 979k organic traffic / 1,414 posts = 692 organic traffic per post
Observation
The site I referenced earlier, theflattopking.com, is making progress! 66k organic traffic / 225 posts = 293 per post
This is often what I’d see when documenting recoveries. Increased site quality, clear purpose, defined audience, and content improved site-wide.
Competition
5 hours a week vs. 50 hours a week makes a monumental difference. Competition is intense. Someone working 5 hours a week takes 10 weeks to match a 50-hour week. It’s hard, but it is what it is; business isn’t easy.
Takeaway
While online noise is predominantly negative, most owners feel entitled to rank in the top 10 and drive traffic. That means 200 million blog owners expect to rank and drive traffic. And the underlying difficulty shifts depending on your industry, for instance:
Finance site generating 212k annually, with top 10 articles touching 100 referring domains.
Crafting site generating 186k annually, with top 10 articles around 8 referring domains.
On avearge, the more competitive, the higher the quality.
Like the owner above, her site doesn’t stand a chance in its current state. I review sites like this nonstop, every day, on repeat, hundreds of times per month. They genuinely expect to rank and strongly believe the issues are external.
This past week, I had 5 onboarding, declined 4, and onboarded one. The difference between the 4 declines and the single onboarding was night and day.
On the worst call, the owner focused 90% of his time on everything but his business and site. And he had no real intention of doing anything meaningful internally, outside of stubbornly defending his opinions and copying others.
In contrast, the owner I onboarded is the complete opposite. She wants to improve her business, website, and content, and she doesn’t care what anyone else does. These are, hands down, the owners dominating all traffic channels, and I am happy to have contributed to their success.
