I’ve been wanting to rebuild a dead blog for several years now. Currently, I have two, and in 2025, I would like to put my skills to the test and bring one back to life. In this case, I’m talking about the gaming blog that has sat idle for the past couple of years.
I know a couple of people who rather I fixed the fitness site, but until I figure out the damage from 2018’s “Medic/YMYL” update, I’m not sure how much good it would do.
Nonetheless, I’ll be working on that site as well throughout 2025. I’m just dumping effort into the gaming blog to see if I can get it back to where it was a few years ago. In 2021, it was getting 219 visits per day on average. Nowadays, it averages 14 visitors per day.
That’s what happens when you’re not consistently working on a blog. Eventually, Google will think it’s abandoned.
Why Rebuild It Instead of Making a New One?
The blog I’m updating is already semi-established. It still generates AdSense income ($0.13 in the past 7 days) and a couple of the posts are still ranking in search. Not to mention I’ve used the brand for a series of charities that I’d like to continue.
Deleting the blog and starting anew would put me back to square one. That means it would take longer to get authorized for ad revenue and I’d have to create a whole new social presence.
Plus, there is a lot of emotional attachment to this particular blog. It has been responsible for a lot of good times while throwing money at Geeks of Grandeur, Extra Life, and Operation Supply Drop.
With all of these factors in play, it makes more sense to me to rebuild this dead blog instead of creating a new one.
What Are My End-of-Year Goals?
You should never create goals that are outside of your control. So, things like traffic numbers and ad revenue are not necessarily good things to focus on because you can force someone to read content or click on an ad.
Still, you can use them to drive the actual goals you want to create.
For example, let’s say that I want to finish the year with 100 visitors per day. I would then center my goals around things like a consistent publishing schedule, the number of posts written per week, investing time in keyword research, etc.
Those are all things I can control.
All of those things play a role in how much traffic the site can generate per day. Good keyword research and content drives people to come in from search engines. A consistent schedule is good for search algorithms and subscribers.
The potential for gaining visitors is much greater when you focus on those things instead of the traffic numbers themselves.
With all of that being said, my goal for 2025 is to get the gaming site up to 100 visitors per day. The success of that goal depends on my commitment to the steps I plan to take.
Unfortunately, this also depends on the sheer amount of chaos that is thrown my way in 2025.
Steps I’m Taking to Rebuild the Dead Blog
Currently, the blog in question is in some seriously bad shape. It’s not totally without views, but it is nowhere near where it used to be several years ago.
In fact, some of the posts are still scoring in the top 10 for their keywords. Granted, those keywords are ultra-low-volume, but it’s a start.
1. Plog Bost Consistency
Perhaps the most pivotal elements in why the gaming blog lost traffic over the past couple of years is because of a lack of consistency. Seriously, I only published two new articles and rewrote another in 2024!
When you average a new blog post every four to six months, you’re not going to generate a lot of interest.
The primary goal to rebuild the dead blog in 2025 is to publish at least two new articles per week. I already have time set aside specifically for writing these, and I’m working on hiring a new writer to publish a couple of times per month.
That means the gaming blog should have a minimum of 104 blog posts published by the end of the year. I say “minimum” because I’d rather get it to three per week, but that will depend greatly on the amount of time and money I have.
2. Update Old Content
Another factor that kills traffic for a blog is a lack of updating older articles. Google loves fresh, current, and relevant content. If you’re not providing the most up-to-date information, your posts will sink in rankings.
I’ve said several times how I’ve seen an update for a client increase in traffic by more than 8,000% within six months. And I’m talking about from thousands to tens of thousands of views per month, mind you.
For 2025, I am setting time aside to revamp at least one post per week. I’d like to update more of them, but again, that will depend on how much time I have available. However, I can commit to at least one update.
I plan on setting up a spreadsheet to record the data from updating old content. It might make for an interesting blog post at the end of the year to show actual numbers of the impact of the updates.
3. Improve Site Performance
If your site runs slow or is a jumbled mess, Google will sink it in the rankings. And depending on how the bot feels on any particular day, it can feel like an uphill battle to keep Google happy. Nonetheless, the user experience is a priority for web development.
The easier it is for someone to read and navigate your site, the more likely they’ll stay to read other pieces of content. The idea is to keep someone on your site for as long as possible.
Luckily, the gaming blog has fewer problems to contend with as opposed to WriterSanctuary. I’m not 100% sure why, but it doesn’t look like I need to make a lot of sweeping backend changes.
However, I’ll still have to keep an eye on it throughout the year as new features get added. Using something like PageSpeed Insights or GTMetrix will help me keep an eye on what needs fixing.
I’ll run these tests at least once per month.
4. Active Social Presence – ish
Having an active social presence can do great things for building up an audience. That is as long as you’re also being social with your followers and commenting on the posts of others. It’s all about being social, after all.
Granted, you won’t generate a lot of traffic to your blog from social media. But it can play a role in building up the blog’s brand while providing a variety of opportunities for content and revenue.
The social presence for this particular blog is rather flat. It was never beefed up to begin with, but there is a lot of potential in putting in the effort.
I’m not sure how much time I’ll have for this aspect of rebuilding the blog. But I’ll see about setting up automated platforms to reach a wider audience on various social apps.
5. Documenting the Process
I’m a fan of documenting as much as possible regardless of the project. That’s because there are a lot of things you can discover when browsing data or examining the pros and cons of your labor.
In this case, I plan on documenting the process each month and then putting all of it together to determine if my time was worth the results. Afterward, I’ll decide whether I should keep trying or if my time is better spent on a different project.
Who knows, I might take what I learned in 2025 and see if I can make something happen in 2026 with a different strategy.
6. Blog to Book Content
The Blog-to-Book content strategy has been working relatively well for WriterSanctuary. The plan is to publish free eBooks from specific blog posts that cover a certain topic. In this instance, I thought an eBook to rebuild a dead blog might be helpful for those who are struggling.
Plus, the strategy might help maintain regular content on the gaming blog. I might even create an eBook section for that blog for anyone who wants them. This will include books such as using OBS to stream to Twitch, building a gaming channel, etc.
I guess that means I’ll have to work on building up the gaming channel as well. I wonder how long that will take to get monetized.
The downside, though, is how often I’ll have to update those eBooks depending on the topic. Things change wicked fast in the gaming community, and certain things will become obsolete relatively quickly.
Updates Every Month
At the end of each month in 2025, I’ll write an update blog post regarding the process of rebuilding a dead blog. This will include things such as monthly content and traffic comparisons to 2024 and 2021, search comparisons, AdSense revenue generated, the changes I made that month, a short synopsis, and the plan for the following month.
I’ve Got My Work Cut Out for Me
Out of the two blogs I’d love to rebuild, this one is the easiest. It wasn’t hit by major health algorithm updates and has a better chance of resuscitation. Nonetheless, it’ll be a chore to go from 12 visits per day to 100. At least from the perspective of time.
Luckily, I’ll have help affording a writer periodically thanks to the YouTube channel getting monetized soon.
In any case, I’m quite excited to give this a shot. Not only will the dead blog provide me with a wealth of content of varying degrees, but I’d love to rebuild the ad revenue it was making. It hasn’t donated much, and I’d like to toss more money at the various charities in which I’m involved.
Let’s cross our fingers that the chaos is at a minimum in 2025.
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