February had a few interesting movements for the dead blog. Although there were a few numbers in the red, the site itself continued to show more signs of life. The results are hopeful, but the site isn’t off life support yet.
There is still much to be done in 2025 to get the blog back to its former glory. Well, at least an improvement from the September 2024 algorithm change that decimated its traffic by more than 94% within a handful of days.
But, alas, that’s what happens when you don’t consistently work on content or updates. When you ignore your blog, Google ignores you.
Was the Content Productive?
I managed to keep up with the two-per-week schedule of new blog posts. Although I felt a few of them were a tad on the weak side in terms of topics, they still pulled in a few visitors from the push notifications.
The best part is that I was able to revamp at least one older post and added a tutorial page link to the footer. It wasn’t as much as I would have liked, but it was still something more than I did in January.
That makes eight new blog posts and one update for February. That means I have produced more content for this particular blog than I have in several years, and there are still ten months to go.
Slight Increase in Traffic – ish
Comparing January and February for traffic is a bit misleading. After all, January has three more days than February. So, instead, I compare the entire month to the exact previous period.
For example, I set up Analytics and Search Console to compare February to the previous period (28 days). This means it’s comparing January 4 through the 31st (28 days).
Although the spreadsheet for fixing the dead blog shows red numbers from the previous period, the blog still generated 0.7 visitors more per day than January.
This means that the end of January saw quite a bit more traffic comparatively.
Nonetheless, the average daily views for February were slightly higher than in January. Although it’s not a massive jump, it’s still movement in the right direction.
A Slight Decrease in Ad Revenue
The AdSense revenue for the blog dipped slightly in February, and not just because of the shorter months. The decrease could also include better performing ads at the end of January and not enough clicks or views.
I’m not too worried about this aspect since it’s common for ad revenue to fluctuate a great deal when talking about numbers equalling less than a dollar.
Nonetheless, the revenue was still more in February than it was for several of the months toward the end of 2024.
How Were the Search Impressions for February?
The impressions from search grew by 600 for the month. It’s not a lot, but there were a lot of posts that got a sudden boost to searchability in February.
Now, if I can only translate some of those into clicks, we’d see some good movement on the site.
Consider how one keyphrase had a single impression in January and then jumped up to 140. According to the numbers, the article for becoming a Twitch affiliate got the most love.
This is when I would go into that particular post and figure out if there is anything more I can do to improve the content. Or, perhaps I can create a few internal links to that article from other relevant sources.
In any case, there was a growth of 600 impressions from the previous 28-day period, so I’ll take that as a slight win.
Any Other Major Changes Abound?
As I mentioned above, I added a tutorial page link to the footer to help it stand out better. It was part of trying to streamline the top navigation bar.
Aside from that one link, I really didn’t do much outside of writing the eight blog posts and updating another.
I pointed out before that I am relatively sure the reason why the site got torpedoed was because of a lack of content. Judging by the movement in impressions, consistent activity on the site may still be an important ranking factor.
If I’m right, then a lot more of the older posts that are still somewhat relevant should see some positive movement in search positions and visibility.
I suppose we’ll find out at the end of the next month.
The Plan for March
Aside from consistent content each week, what are some other things I plan on doing to help revive the site further?
Redirect Old Posts to New Ones
There is a lot of content on the dying blog that refers to products that have changed in branding and usage. For instance, it’s no longer Streamlabs Prime as it moved to “Ultra” while removing a few features and adding others.
Technically, I’ll be updating those posts but publishing them as new content. That’s because they are extremely far from the original content and could be considered their own entities. Then, I will set up 301 redirects from the old branding to the new posts.
This is done quite often in the blogging space. Sometimes, you can update old posts with new functions or features. But when something changes this much, it’s better to just write an entirely new post and start anew. This is especially true if that content is several years old.
This won’t impact SEO in a negative way. On the contrary, getting rid of the grossly outdated posts and replacing them with something new and fresh should be looked upon favorably by Google.
Update at Least 4 Posts
Outside of the complete rewrites, I would also like to update at least four posts with fresh and current content. Although most of the updates center around the rebranding of certain tools, there are a few that can use a fresh coat of paint without a complete renewal.
For instance, there are a lot of OBS tutorials I can rework without having to write an entirely new blog post. Some functions just need a few new screenshots and an addition or two to the tutorial.
In any case, the goal is to update four posts this month – one per week. I should probably track the progress to provide a visual of how effective updates can be when done correctly over time.
Get the Social Accounts Going Again
I would like to find a social sharing app and get the accounts active again. This is something I wanted to do at the beginning of the year, but I just haven’t had the time to get too deep into setting this up. When it comes to prioritizing my day, social media isn’t very high on the list.
Still, it was relatively effective back when the blog was highly active in 2018. But as most of you would point out, a lot has happened over the past seven years.
With all things considered, getting the social accounts active again is not as high on the list of things to do. Nonetheless, I would like to see if social media can still help drive visitors to gaming content. The markets are flooded, and it takes something awfully special to get noticed today.
Cross Your Fingers for March!
I’ve looked at the first few days in March and calculated how the month would unfold based on averages. And if the rest of the month unfolds like the first three days, March is going to be massive. But three days is a very small sampling, and a lot can happen before the end of the month.
Regardless, things are moving in a positive direction. It’s a slow crawl at the moment, but if I play my cards right, the site should be doing amazingly by June.
Let’s keep the momentum and our fingers crossed.
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