This is my first time posting here, but I’ve been following this forum for a while and found so much inspiration here when things were really active. It made me think of the old days when we all helped each other out.
I wanted to come back and share some positivity. I’ve been working in SEO for about 10 years, and the last 5 years have been really good with niche sites being my main source of income. It’s been tough since HCU, but I’m not ready to give up or change careers.
After the HCU update, I noticed a lot of people stopped building or abandoned their sites, but I think that’s a big mistake. Like any business, the key is to keep going during tough times when others quit. I actually think there’s more opportunity now than ever.
I managed to recover from HCU (not fully, but enough to still rely on this as my main income).
Here’s what I did to recover:
Got rid of hundreds of bad backlinks.
Cut almost 100 pages that weren’t performing (I originally built these to boost “topical authority”).
Improved internal linking (now every page has at least 7 internal links).
Added a community section (and it’s ranking for some keywords too!).
Added a ‘services’ page (I just generate leads and sell them, not doing the actual services).
Made the homepage look like a real business, not just a blog.
Started selling some merch (nothing major, but it adds to the look of the site).
Built 30-50 high-quality backlinks (these weren’t bought, I spent over 300 hours getting them).
Even though recovery was slow, I’ve also started new sites this year. Three of them are getting between 5k and 10k organic traffic. It’s not a ton, but they’re growing.
Others aren’t doing great, but I’ve been testing different things on them to find what works best, including how much AI content I can use.
If anyone has any questions or needs advice, I’d be happy to help! Just please don’t ask me to share my site, I’m not comfortable with that.
AstroAdept said:
That’s a lot of time spent on backlinks, but it clearly paid off. Can you share how you went about it?
I created a couple of pages meant to attract links, like stats and PR articles. I managed to get some high-authority sites to link to me by using emotional appeals and solid data.
Aside from that, I went the traditional Digital PR route, getting links one by one by responding to journalist queries.
@Content
Did you reach out via email or just respond to journalist requests? I thought HARO was shut down, and the only other way I know is using X/Twitter.
MaryJane said: @Content
Did you reach out via email or just respond to journalist requests? I thought HARO was shut down, and the only other way I know is using X/Twitter.
Peter Shankman relaunched HARO with a new name. Look up SOS Media Queries on Google.
I love seeing this! I almost gave up on my niche sites too. They used to be my full-time income. Just started building a new one this week… fingers crossed I can still do this!
winsteizsty said:
I love seeing this! I almost gave up on my niche sites too. They used to be my full-time income. Just started building a new one this week… fingers crossed I can still do this!
Congrats on bouncing back! I have a question… what’s your strategy for anchor text when adding 7 internal links per post? I usually use the target keyword as the anchor, and my content ranks well even with a weak backlink profile. Thanks!
I aim for 30% exact match, 30% partial, and 40% contextual. I use Linkter AI to pull keywords from Google Search Console, then let it work those keywords into sentences naturally. Sometimes I adjust manually.
I’d avoid using the same keyword too much—it could be seen as over-optimizing. Keeping it natural works better.
