🔎 starting from scratch

It's time for me to put up or shut up...

I'm going to start a blog from scratch.

(yes in 2024, a horrible year to do that)

I’ve been working in digital marketing for almost a decade now. I know how to do SEO in theory, but I feel I’ve forgotten how to build a website in practice.

Since the last time I built a website, there has been the proliferation of AI and crazy Google updates. Google itself seems to promoting spam and deprioritizing SEO (see more in a great article below ⤵️)

But I need to get back to basics…and that means starting over. Going from 0 to something.

This is either going to be a massive failure, or the biggest success of my professional career. Even if it is the former, I’ll hopefully at least learn a thing or two. And through this experience, hopefully you learn something too.

Let's see how this goes 👀

Day 1: Topic & Vertical Selection

Luckily for me, the topic I’m writing about has already been established for me. Over the past few years, I have gotten a pretty big Twitter following writing about a niche subject in the Web3 space.

When most SEOs talk about building a website, they tell you to do keyword research and to find a vertical that will be most profitable.

That’s nonsense to me. If you’re going to be writing about something all day, every day, it better not just be about something random.

Sure, it’s important to pick something that could be profitable one day. In my early days of SEO, I tried optimizing a candy blog into a full-time income.

That was a mistake.

That being said, you still need to pick something you have a track record of being passionate about. It doesn’t have to be the shiniest or coolest subject in the tech or fitness world. Hell, it doesn’t even have to have a market yet! It needs to be something you can write about and something that a few others might be interested in reading or learning about now or in the future.

Don’t just throw a dart at any ol’ subject and start a blog about it. This website is about to be your baby. Don’t just indiscriminately pick a niche because you think it’ll make you money. I’ve made that mistake far too many times when starting websites.

If you want your website to be of quality, which will help you rank better on Google, you need to write blog posts of quality. You’ll only be able to do that if you have a topic you like writing about.