In the age of AI and AI Overviews, is it worth your time and money to build a blog today? While your traffic from Google search might not be what it was ten years ago, there are still some valid reasons why you would want to build a website.
This is especially true if you’re promoting yourself as an expert or professional in your field.
For instance, I think it would be insane for any author not to have a website or a blog. The same goes for freelance writers promoting their work or even a local handyman looking for new clients.
There is more to the blog and website than making ad revenue from search traffic.
Why Should You Build a Blog Today?
It’s disheartening to see your presence in Google get diminished overnight thanks to AI Overviews. However, the algorithm was never really your target audience. It is the human element that you want to attract. And while search was one of the most prominent ways to do this, it’s not the only method.
This is coming from someone who lost just a bit more than 70% of his traffic once AI Overviews became more prolific.
While AI platforms like ChatGPT often double as search engines, you’ll still get a few visitors as they often link to your content as a source. It’s not as much as the top 10 of a Google results page used to deliver, but it’s still better than nothing.
So, why should you build a blog while AI and AI Overviews take away so much of the traffic?
Focusing On Your Human Followers and Subscribers
Although SEO and appeasing the algorithm gods are still a priority, engaging your human visitors is far more important. With the right audience subscribing to or following your blog, it doesn’t matter what Google and other search engines think of the content.
All that really matters is how well you’re engaging humans.
This means making sure you’re giving readers what they want, whether it’s information or entertainment. Diving into your blog’s analytics can help you determine the best types of content that your visitors want most.
Demonstrating Your Expertise
If you’re a professional, a freelancer, or someone who wants to share their expertise in some fashion, blogging is a great way to do so. This is especially true if you’re including your own screenshots or pictures to help solidify that expertise with your readers.
The more content you create regarding your niche, the more humans and search engines recognize you as an expert in your field. This was one of the ways that I became a go-to source for Textbroker about a decade ago. I demonstrate my expertise using the platform while helping a lot of folks get started writing from home.
For instance, WriterSanctuary demonstrates my expertise as a freelance writer, blogger, and self-published author. Eventually, I am going to add screenplays to that list. If it has anything to do with writing, I’m going to explore it on this blog.
Highlighting Your Experience
Like expertise, highlighting your experience is great for marketing yourself as a professional. Tutorials and reviews are trusted if you’re able to show that you know what you’re talking about.
Let’s not forget about using the blog as part of a portfolio or resume. In fact, most jobs that I’ve applied to recently have had a space specifically for URLs to show the employer your set of skills.
So, whether you’re working from home or applying to jobs, it’s ideal to have a blog to highlight what you can do and how long you’ve been doing it.
Promote Yourself as an Authority Figure
Being an authoritative figure in your industry can open all kinds of doors. Sponsors, clients, employers, interviewers…it depends on what your blog is about and how well you promote it online. In any case, lots of high-quality content regarding specific topics builds that authority.
Remember what I said about being a go-to source for Textbroker? It was both humans and Google who viewed me as an authority on the topic because of the volume of quality content and proven statistics I added throughout the years.
For example, who would you trust more, a plumber with a single blog post about plunging toilets, or one who had a massive library covering a variety of topics related to all things dealing with your plumbing? The one with the library of great content is going to be viewed as the authoritative figure.
Building Trust with Your Audience
People and search engines need to know they can trust you. This is done in a number of ways, including publishing high-quality and factual information while delivering personal experience.
People trusted me about Textbroker because I was honest and factual about my ventures. I provided screenshots related to the topics I covered and never blew smoke and rainbows.
Unfortunately, this is also a reason why a lot of brands won’t work with me. I am very honest about products and will point out the flaws for all to see. That kind of attitude doesn’t make you a lot of money, but it builds trust within your audience. And I’d rather have trust than dollars.
Continued Growth and Development
Blogging has helped me continue to grow and develop into the professional I am today. I share everything I learn and try to teach others as best I can when it comes to freelancing, blogging, or self-publishing. A lot of the time, it’s because I don’t want someone to make the same mistakes I did.
I didn’t just wake up and become an expert in writing. It took a lot of work over the years to get to this point, and I am continuing to grow even more as I share my experiences going back to college to earn a degree or two.
The point is that sharing your knowledge and experiences will help you grow and develop as a professional. So, write about those classes or publish a piece about something new you learned in your industry. It’s an exercise in self-improvement that will connect with your readers.
As a Base of Operations
Perhaps the biggest reason why I maintain my blogs, despite AI and AI Overviews tanking the traffic, is to provide a base of operations for the things I’m doing. All roads lead back to the website.
For instance, I am currently working on promoting myself as an expert writer on this blog. As such, I share everything I know and learn while posting that content on social media, through emails, and through published books.
All of these things lead back to WriterSanctuary, where I host affiliate links, advertise my books, and continue to build my presence. While the algorithm and AI Overviews may bury my content, the humans I attract are more than likely interested in what I have to share.
Besides, the more you cover any given topic, the more the algorithms will view you as an expert anyway. So, it’s still beneficial to blog for both humans and bots.
Helping You Learn & Grow
I initially built WriterSanctuary as a way to document my journey as a freelance writer and to practice everything I learned about AP Style English and SEO. It has been an incredible part of my learning process and growth.
The site worked so well over the years that I’ve decided to build an anthropology blog to go alongside my education as I work toward a degree.
My point is that blogging about things you learn helps solidify that information in your head while delivering many of the above points. In reality, that’s what a “web log” was for in the first place.
Instead of thinking about what money I could make from the site, it’s more about how I can help someone with what I’ve learned.
Yes, Build that Blog!
The way we viewed blogging is essentially dead. Instead of focusing on content to generate revenue from search, we have to change how we view the site and what our expectations are from that content.
In the digital age, you’ll need an online presence to promote yourself as an expert or professional. While some folks intently focus on social media to provide that presence, having a blog, especially with your name on it, is incredibly useful.
Don’t build the blog with the explicit reason to replace a full-time income. Look at the blog as a way to promote yourself as a professional with the potential to make a few extra bucks through AdSense or affiliate links.
According to Blogging for Busy People, about 80% of new bloggers quit within 18 months of starting. One of the reasons is because of unrealistic expectations. Building a popular blog is all about playing the long game. It’s exceptionally rare for any given site to start pulling massive numbers within the first three months.
In other words, you’re more likely to strike oil in your backyard while simultaneously winning the lottery than to build an instantly successful blog.
However, the blog is a useful tool to promote yourself or to engage a human audience. As you continue to grow and publish more content, your readership will grow with you. That is, as long as you’re marketing yourself. And I’m talking about doing more than sharing posts on Threads, Twitter, or Facebook.
So, I’d say yes, build that blog, but keep your expectations realistic. You’re not going to write a single post and see a massive influx of visitors. Keep track of your week-to-week data to see your growth, but don’t start panicking after the first three months.
Depending on your content, marketing, niche, and writing style, it could take more than a year to start seeing a reasonable number of people coming to the site.
10 Ideas to Reach Your Target Audience
Marketing is vastly important in any industry. If people don’t know something exists, they can’t consume it. If you’re trying to engage as many people as possible, you need to get the blog in front of them.
Here are some of the most common methods to reach the human audience.
- Continue to write high-quality and informative content
- Set up newsletters (subscribers are more likely to interact)
- Connect Pinterest and share images
- Create video content and link back (YouTube and TikTok generate more traffic to this blog than any other platform)
- Add URL to all social media profiles
- Add the URL to email signatures
- Use the URL on printed media in person
- Reach out to others in your industry for collaborations
- Interact on niche forums and question sites, like Quora (Yes, still works to drive some traffic)
- Share posts on social media (you might get lucky)
The reason I isolated Pinterest from other social sites is that it seems to have a different kind of algorithm. Threads, Facebook, Twitter, and others tend to de-prioritize posts that have external links leading people off their platforms. The result is far fewer viewership than other types of posts.
Pinterest almost feels like it works in reverse.
In fact, I get more visitors to this website from my Pinterest account than from any other social media platform, save YouTube. And I haven’t posted much on Pinterest in over three years.
Side note: I do plan on adding at least one pin per week in the future.
Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness
Starting a blog is more than just trying to make a full-time income, especially nowadays. The more you promote yourself with expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, the better you appear to both humans and search engines.
Well, nowadays, that could also include AI search results.
Does everyone need a blog to be successful? No. However, publishing rich and factual content under your name vastly improves your chances. In today’s world, it’s more about reputation and income.
It may take a bit of time to get people and bots to start recognizing you as an authority in your industry. But it’s worth every moment, as it could lead to a wide variety of opportunities.
From private freelancing clients to potential employers, they are all looking at your online presence. Show them something impressive.
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