During Lockdown, Some Sites Spun or Rewritten Out My Content, and They Monetized With Adsense as the Impact of I Had Scared People Through Radio



u/pworksweb

How to deal with new competitors with big money?

I have a blog with 350K monthly views, US audience, in an informational niche.
Built the blog over 6 years. I got backlinks, but none paid for. During the lockdown, I went on radio to discuss how people could survive with internet opportunities.
I shared my blog and how much I was making monthly from just Google Ads and paid post placements.
I mentioned a figure around $2500.
Thing is, after that, I have seen about 7 new blogs come up quickly. Mostly copying my topics and writing better content.
I still hold number 1 and have not been worried. However, I realise they started running Google Ads.
I am worried as this is my only source of revenue. What is the best way to deal with young competition? I have lost about 6 to 7 first position spots and some featured snippets.
75 💬🗨

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evilsniperxv
In the future… don't go sharing secrets and tips for free. As the saying goes, if you're good at it… never do it for free. Keep posting new content, update older content, and stick with it. Don't compete against yourself in the future.

pworksweb ✍️
It was a general talk. No secrets. Except of course giving out my site URL.

NHRADeuce
You gave away the entire secret. Anyone with a little technical skill can figure out 90% of what you are doing with just your URL. If you're not using any very high quality Private Blog Networks (PBN)s, then anyone good can figure out 98% of what you are doing.

MilesWeb
The first thing is never share your strategies openly to anyone. Now, just keep on updating your content as well keep on adding new posts. Also, if they are copying your topics you can send them an email regarding that.

pworksweb ✍️
Lessons well learnt. I'm studying my analytics and search console to see how I can keep improving.

F5_Studio
The only permanence is change.
The best way is doing what you do, but do it better.
Many years ago the one of our SEO specialists started to write blog about a soccer. He made tactical analysis of games in top-5. But after a while, you know, a lot of persons started to do tactical analysis. Our SEO specialist improved his blog. He added information about fitness, soccer intelligence. In other words he created a complex analysis of games. Unfortunately for him, it takes a little bit more time, so, he had to cease writing the blog.
I don't know what is your blog about. Perhaps you need another solution. It seems a great result to have 350K visits per month. So it is really difficult to compete with your blog.

pworksweb ✍️
Thank you for the motivation. I have started covering other lesser relevant topics that may still bring in a few readers via search. Ultimately, I am looking at covering all basis and making the content useful for the readers.

F5_Studio
Sounds great! Good luck!

zeeshanK940
They will never stop copying you now and there is nothing you can do to stop them. What you can do is always remain one step ahead of them. Meaning, you have to spy on them as they are spying on you. Frequently do a competitor analysis of them and try to build powerful backlinks. Get your site Digital Millennium Copyright Act Policy (DMCA) verified (will protect your content) and always add a small logo to your images. In the last, avoid telling your secret strategies publicly in the future.

pworksweb ✍️
Thanks for these. Lessons learnt. I'll look at the DMCA. Is there a way to report content that does not involve paying?

NHRADeuce
Yes. If someone copies your content you can send DMCA take down notices to the site owner, their hosting company, and Google. At a minimum the hosting company and Google will remove the content and make them prove it's original work.
Edit: you can download sample take down notices. Just Google it.
pworksweb ✍️
I'll check and download. Thanks.

CurlyAce84
DMCA isn't relevant here. They're copying his topics and writing better content. That's not subject to DMCA.

zeeshanK940
Well, new competitors always arise and having DMCA is gonna protect the content from the ones who are copying it or will copy it. Its just a suggestion.

Viper2014
Improve your content and then improve your site. Then check what the competition is doing. This means that you need to be aware of their On-Page and Tech SEO.
Hope it helps : )

pworksweb ✍️
One of my plans is to follow them keenly, and do what they do better, write on new topics they write that I don't have and study who they target their ads to.

jonnyah
350k page views for a US audience and only $2500 a month seems low. Are you using something like Mediavine, Ezoic or Adthrive?

pworksweb ✍️
Just plain AdSense. 3 ads on page. Should I increase number of ads? I haven't changed site design in two years.
I tested and tested and this one keeps the users longest on the page.

D3AD_L0CK
Yeah, Google ads pay a lot less than Adthrive or ezoic.
I think Adthrive is the best option for 350k page views.
jonnyah
You could probably triple that by switching to something like adthrive. I make about $10k a month on one blog from 200 – 300k page views
pworksweb ✍️
Wow! Looking them up.

hamtastic9
Are these networks easy to setup on WordPress?

jonnyah
Yes, super easy. The generally do everything for you.

pange33
It sounds to me you had yourself a solid little honey hole that you opened up to the badgers. Now it's time to bucket down and start tripling down on what has got you to that top rank in the first place.
Or maybe its time to find you an additional honey hole by rinse and repeat. Whatever you decide I would suggest to somewhat moving fairly quickly toward some strong progress or your honey hole might just turning another regular hole real fast. Best of luck!

pworksweb ✍️
I intend to keep it as a honey hole. Will work towards that.

pange33
Best of luck! It's time to invest and get to work and report back in 6 months how well uour doing. Though trust me from someone who had a site and let get too passive and I felt too comfortable. Whatever you invest in now will only help you in the long run. So now is the time or time and others will be passing you soon. Hopefully you get my sense of urgency on this one.
pworksweb ✍️
Thanks for your feedback. I'm working on it from now onwards.

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achuthan89
Well, competition is nothing that you or me or anyone can hold off buddy. But if I would be you, this is what I would be doing.
As to reply to your answer, let's assume one of the blog is on 'Search Engine Optimization (SEO)', you can replicate these to all your blogs.
I will try to answer these questions first.
(1) How much value this particular 'SEO' blog is adding to its users?
(2) Have I mentioned all the 'entities' related to 'SEO'?
(3) Have I organised & structured the information exactly as in the way it has to be understood by a newbie, intermediate & an expert?
(I understand the fact that there is a chance for 3 blogs here & according to niche it changes.)
(4) Through how many content types I have shown the data/information to the user which should be the best way to make them understand about what I am trying to say on that particular section/topic.
(Content types – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Bullet points, Table, Infographics, Q & A, Videos, Images, gif etc..)
(There are 100+ ways you can show/present the content to your reader).
(5) Does this blog posses an expertise, authority & trustworthiness on the topic it is talking about?
(Search Quality Guidelines – Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness (EAT))
(6) Has this 'SEO blog' covered as many as 'entities', 'People Also Ask', 'People Also Search For', 'Related Searches' which would be showing on Google's SERPs for this keyword?
(7) Has this 'seo blog' got any internal links from other blogs & is that properly structured?
(8) Proper Onsite for every blogs & meaningful interlinking.
(9) Proper meaningful OBLs
& last not but the least,
(10) Backlinks – Of course!
Relevant, Authoritative, Trustworthy mentions starting from blogs to social media handles!
(11). Implementing relevant schema.
Well, seems like these much check & execution for every blog like this, I doubt whether it would be outranked by some 'new blogs' especially since you said that its been there for 6 years.
There are many other things as well you can do after completing these first 11 sets, but as like I said, if I were you I would be completing most of these checklist in order so that I can be sure that I am giving something valuable to my readers which the bigG is also looking for its users!
All the best, Good luck 🙂

pworksweb ✍️
Off to work. Have had a lot of featured snippets. I think from all comments, the way forward is to step up the work. I am totally up for it.
I will refer to your checklist as a starter. Thank you.

camaro2ss

I went on radio to discuss how people could survive with internet opportunities.

That's totally fine.

I shared my blog and how much I was making monthly from just Google Ads and paid post placements.

Okay this is where you messed up. Why in the world would you share the intimate details of your business publicly like that? There is literally zero for you to gain and everything for you to lose.

pworksweb ✍️
I agree. I thought I was going to motivate others.

GrumpLife
As an authority in the niche, you can very easily outrank them. For the snippets you've lost, some minor tweaking should get you those positions back.
Same goes for any other positions you think might be dropping. If you optimize your content, you'll be fine. Add more exact match and related keywords to the content.
Also, as a general rule, you should be updating your content regularly. Even if it's something as small as adding another internal link.
I'm not sure which tools you use but SEMrush is great for content optimization and position tracking.
Best of luck!

pworksweb ✍️
Thank you. I'll do that. What's the best way to use SEMrush to update old content though? Any tutorial on that?

GrumpLife
They have 2 sections called SEO Content Template and SEO Writing Assistant. Those are pretty self-explanatory.
The other solid area is the Keyword Magic Tool. Enter your target keyword and use it to find related keywords and questions.
pworksweb ✍️
Thanks.

Nomadic_asset
Many people here offering you advice that I'm sure you now realize (hindsight 20/20 and all that). I'll offer some input on where you can go from here.
Have you reached out to the owners of your competition. Consider a partnership with the next biggest competitor to seed yourself, along with them, as the uncontested authority. Alternatively, you can try and buyout the competition before they get too big and run their site in addition to yours and increase revenue?

pworksweb ✍️
Yeah. I'll keep eyes closed, try to remain the leader and see who comes out on top from them.
I just don't know why they are spending money on an informational blog.
Zaxora

Alternatively, you can try and buyout the competition before they get too big and run their site in addition to yours and increase revenue?

How would that work? Write an article then rewrite it in different ways?

Nomadic_asset
There's a few ways to go about it. You see industry consolidation and mergers happen frequently with public company's after the initial growth phase (ex: ATT maintained it's Monopoly buy buying out other networks).
On a much smaller scale, you would run both websites independently but shift the acquired one to a separate smaller niche in the same field.
Capatilize off of synergies in the field (ex: keyword research is similar for both sites, saves time) to hold an advantage over peers. Or use the backlinks from each to boost authority and send traffick to both. And as you mentioned reusing slightly different content for cheaper time/cost of content than what single-site peers use. End game you want to build a Private Blog Network (PBN) through an acquisition process like this while cementing your original site as #1.

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emuwannabe
I'm in a similar boat as you – have a site getting lots of views (not as many as you) and I'm running adsense but I think it's time to develop more "in-house" advertising. We're trying to figure out a good, but fair, price and then start reaching out to others in our industry.
Personally I'd like to be done with adsense altogether – the amount of money we've made is peanuts compared to what I think we can do just with a few monthly advertisers.
Anyways, that's my strategy – to effectively sell banner ads (for lack of a better term). Replace the adsense ads with advertisers I sell to directly.

pworksweb ✍️
I wish you all the best. When it comes to direct ads, I sometimes the ad of say company A then contact their competitor about how much an opportunity they are missing.
They 30% or so of the time end up "buying the ad space from company A".

hammadshaw
Everyone will give you different chunks of suggestions here, which I totally appreciate. But here I am telling you something about the system.
You know how the new websites work? or why people make these new websites on existing topics?
They do so for two reason:
• They think if you grew, they would also grow in the same market/niche/topic.
• They know what you are lacking and missing. They hunt those loopholes and then try to rank on them and ultimately appear in your competition (and sorry but even beat you someday soon).
So those 7 competitors who are appearing, these are not just mindless absurd writers. Instead these are the one working with a plan. I am an SEO person and I know how we are constantly hunting for the proftiable niches and then find the loopholes in already existing brand sort of websites and then rank ourselves on those loopholes first, and then the major sections. This is exactly what some expert is doing for those websites, while keeping your website in his mind as a competitor/target, right now.
I always say this to my clients that getting first is easier, maintaining it is difficult. You need to mantain the first position, otherwise you wil be badly trapped into losses.
How to mantain your first position?
The only way to secure your existing position is to grow further. Seems pretty easy in words, but how to do that in real? Let me explain.
In websites, there are always loopholes. For example, a common man would say that it's impossible to have loopholes in the famous websites like McDonalds etc. but there too are some loopholes. (I can't mention that loophole specifically here, because the same would happen to me, as it happened to you. But I personally hunted a loophole in McDonalds and my client is getting pretty good traffic out of that).
So the point is to find your own loopholes before they have been hunt by your small competitors (that are going to be very big, soon). You find those loopholes yourself first and start covering them. Obviously, you are an existing brand and you will get this favor of ranking easier, higher and reliabe in google. Thus leaving no much space for others to rank themselves.
As I said, its difficult to maintian your first position. But it's only difficult, not impossible. If you have any other questions, ask me freely, here or in the Personal chat. I will try to assist you as much as I can.

pworksweb ✍️
I appreciate this so much. Maybe a strategy is to get someone to find the loopholes. Will just tell them I want to create a similar site. While I also search for these loopholes myself.

hammadshaw
No don't create a new website. Just cover the loopholes within the existing one. BTW I just Messaged you. I can't disclose everything publically, what I learnt with my hardwork through years of struggle.
pworksweb ✍️
Not creating. Just using the info to update my own site.
hammadshaw
That's great. I can offer a great and in-depth competitive and gap analysis in which I can cover all those small and even larger gaps that you are having.
This will cover everything, with major focus on your loopholes, on which your competitors are trying to rank.

kyle_roch
If the competition is eating into your Google ad revenue, compensate by adding more demand sources into the mix. There are a few ad networks out there that will compliment your existing AdSense setup and introduce non-Google demand for your inventory.
Whatever you do though, stay away from exclusivity contracts. They may seem tempting right now, but in the long-term publishers always lose.
Feel free to Direct Message (DM) me and we can probably narrow down some ad networks that work for you.

pworksweb ✍️
Nice nice. I will do.

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