Q2 2024 Check-In: Accountability on All My Sites

Well, fudge. It’s Q2 of the year; we’re halfway through 2024, and none of my sites that got hit in the past few Google updates have recovered. In fact, none of the sites that got hit at all have been recovered, at least among those being tracked by some of the top SEOs out there. Google really f*cked us, guys.

I do these updates to hold myself to account for my various goals, but it’s lately become a parade of announcements about me stepping back from this site or that site; I am still working on five of my sites in some capacity, but I’m really only publishing consistently on two of them – that’s from the original 12 I started reporting on back when I launched Site School.

Nevertheless, I’m here to report on those quarterly goals, to hold myself to account and to share my journey both running each site individually and how I think of them as a portfolio. I hope my insights are helpful as you try and figure out what to do and which goals to focus on in the coming months.

As a reminder, I’m using the stoplight system Rand Fishkin uses as part of his SEO predictions posts each year; it’s a clear way to measure how you’re doing (or did) when evaluating things.

In total, I have 11 areas of focus across 5 active sites, and here’s how they’re doing:

• 🟢 (success/achieved) = 6/11 = 55%
• 🟡 (in progress) = 2/11 = 18%
• 🔴 (failure/so far) = 2/11 = 18%

I’m actually impressed; I think my success at achieving these goals is aided by the fact I’ve got more focus on fewer projects. Let’s dive into each site so you can understand more.

Sites I’m Focused On

This section focuses on the five sites I’m currently working on; they’re the ones I have as ‘favorites’ in Asana and have at least a few articles (new or updates) scheduled in the coming months.

Valerie & Valise (October 2013)

Back in October, I set two areas of focus for Valerie & Valise – I called them “predictions we would all need to focus on” in my Q4 update – which has turned out to be alarmingly prescient in light of Google’s continued assault on small site owners. Here’s an update on both of these big hairy goals in the past quarter:

• 🟡 Be Inimitable – I haven’t really changed my strategy much here; I’m still focused on creating a real personality within my content, especially on social media. (I already think my blog is pretty good at this.) It’s hard though – I’m definitely feeling some imposter syndrome as I haven’t been to Alaska since last summer and the competition has gotten stiff due to Google’s updates.
• 🔴 Diversify Content Forms – I didn’t accomplish much in the way of “videos, podcasts, books, audiobooks, etc.” in Q1 due to being on parental leave for most of it… and I didn’t accomplish much in Q2 either, though I can’t really blame my kid for this one. I’ll be honest that I don’t really want to work in other media formats for this site, so for now I’m sticking to blogging.

I’m not sure exactly how I’ll measure success on these goals for the year – especially the first one – but I’m going to stay committed to them (or at least to reporting my failures with them) until my next annual recap for the site.

Space Tourism Guide (November 2017)

Since my Q1 update, I’ll be honest: my heart has completely left this project. Once I realized how completely and devastatingly Google had hammered Space Tourism Guide (down to ~15% of what it was before the last six months of updates…), I just don’t have the energy or heart to doing much of anything with content. Nevertheless, I persist in my goals:

• 🟢 2024 Content Updates – I’m no longer doing updates for the new year, so this goal was a success.
• 🔴 Continue Filling Rainmaker Gaps – I am not producing any new articles right now, because I can’t really see a point when nothing ranks… I have a list of potential ‘rainmakers’ to write someday, but I’m not sure I ever will.
• 🟢 Take a Well-Earned Break – Though this break is perhaps lasting longer than I originally intended, I’m definitely stepped way, way back from this site right now.
• 🟢 Integrate SATW into my Site – I haven’t done much more to integrate the new edition of my book into my work here, but I also did the basics back in Q1, so I’ll count that as a win.

Given that STG is in the toilet and I don’t see much hope of recovery, I’m not sure what I’ll be doing as 2024 winds down. It’s such a shame – this project was already hard for me, and now I can’t even reach the community of interested space nerds like me to get that feedback and excitement from them to keep me going. This is the biggest example of Google truly breaking my heart with their bullshit.

Given that I’m not really doing much with this site, I may move it to ‘On Hold’ next quarter, just to make more space for the other projects in my mind.

London On My Mind (January 2021)

Now that we’re nine months on, the hits have kept coming for London My Mind, and it’s only getting about 20% of the traffic it once was last year. I haven’t been hit as hard as some other London sites, but it was so bad that I have actually noindexed the site and will eventually block Google’s crawlers from the site entirely.

(I don’t want Google to have access to any of my “unhelpful” content, and the traffic without Google is shit but still enough to keep me going.)

I am actually actively working on LOMM, producing content 1-2 times per week; it’s mostly throwing good money and time after bad money and time, but I still enjoy the work, so I’m trying to stay positive… I’m not sure how long I will continue this past 2024, but for now, I’m still focused on my goals:

• 🟢 Manage Expenses vs Growth – I have officially let go of both of the writers I hired last summer specifically to help me grow this site. It’s bullshit, but it was financially responsible, so I did it.
• 🟢 Keep Trying New Content Types – My current content plan takes me through the end of the year, testing a few different types of content like specific attraction reviews that are strongly tied to affiliates. While I am not getting a ton of traffic to really know what’s working or not, I think I’ll be able to make some decisions by year’s end.
• 🟢 Triage Low-Performing Articles Quarterly – At this point, I’ve deleted over 50 articles from the site, and plan to delete another 20+ more as I convert those articles to ebooks and remove them from my site. From its peak, this will be about 25% less content on the site by the year’s end, but I do think it’s the right move even if it’s not going to help me with Google… oh wait, I blocked them, hah!

As I just set these goals in early Q1, I’ll be focusing on them for the remainder of my quarterly updates this year!

Jordan Traveler (May 2021)

I recently sat down to write my three-year case study update for Jordan Traveler, and folks, it ain’t good. This site got hammered between the October Core and March Core updates – plus the war in Gaza has destroyed interest in visiting the region. All in, the site is now receiving only about 5% of the traffic it was last year. Oof.

As such, I didn’t set any new goals for the coming year. I am going to test migrating some content over to my main site (since lots of general travel blogs are now ranking for keywords I once dominated) and am still publishing about 1 new article per month. As traffic’s just 5% of what it was, I’m only giving 5% of the time and attention I once was.

To be honest, I don’t know how long I will continue to focus on this site, and may move it to ‘On Hold’ in my next update even though I’m still producing a little bit of new content on the site.

Eat Like Bourdain (June 2021)

If there’s one ray of sunshine in my world as a website owner, it’s Eat Like Bourdain. It’s the only site I have that didn’t take any hits in the past year, and the community is still growing even as traffic stabilizes since I finished all of the main guides for the entire world of Tony’s travels.

For this next year, I set the following goals:

• 🟡 Enthusiast, v3 – I have a new idea for the format of this podcast, and have actually already started working on it!
• 🟡 Instagram/Social Community – With less time spent on guides, I’ve had more time to focus on a social presence; I’ll continue to plug away at that as it makes sense in the coming months.

I’m looking forward to spending more time on these different aspects of the site as the year goes on; Enthusiast is one of my two big goals for the second half of the year!

Sites On Hold

I started this section in Q1 of this year, to cover the sites that I am stepping back from. I’m not one to easily let things go, so these quarterly updates are letting me still feel connected to each project and wrap up any loose ends before I move on entirely.

Discover Sausalito (January 2020)

Since my last update, I did end up migrating some content from Discover Sausalito over to V&V (and have flagged other articles to move at some point in the future). So far, the results are mostly mixed, but one article is doing super well after migrating, making up more than any losses others have suffered… so it seems to have been the right move!

By the end of 2024, I’ll have migrated all the other content I want to move, and created an ebook from the existing content. With that done, I’ll let the domain expire.

Follow the Butterflies (April 2020)

Follow the Butterflies crossed its four-year milestone with a big announcement here: I’m no longer working on that site. It has always been low-traffic and high-competition, but Google decimated it like many other sites, and I just don’t see a benefit for continuing to beat my head against a wall with this one. I’ve migrated some content to other sites I’m still focused on (like all of the London content to LOMM), but I’m planning to let this domain expire in early 2025.

Great Plains Travel Guide (March 2021)

Similarly, Great Plains Travel Guide is done, at least as I see it for now. I’m migrating some content over to V&V to see how it does, but if I have to scrap the whole thing and walk away, I’m ready to pull the ripcord at any point, and the domain will expire in early 2025 also.

Other Sites Not Mentioned

I didn’t update this section for Q2; nothing has changed here.

You might notice a few other sites I didn’t mention, and I wanted to address those here. I’ve decided to retire a number of sites I started in 2021, including Soup Whoop (my failed food site), Visit Niihau (my micro Hawaii site), and True Crime Podcasts (a cool idea I just don’t have time to focus on or a good monetization plan for). I won’t be doing recaps of those sites as I’m not publishing them anymore.

However, it’s worth noting that for some reason I’ll never understand, Soup Whoop has actually done better following the Helpful Content Update than it was doing before. I’m still not focusing on it – I’m just not a food blogger! – but it goes to show Google is totally drunk in every direction when it comes to evaluating sites right now.

I also launched – and then immediately quit – my Dungeons & Dragons site, D&D Community, back in March/April 2023. While I haven’t been focused on blogging to support the site’s growth, I did buy the branded Instagram account, and that’s actually been a good place for partnerships and creating fun content… and it’s growing organically thanks to the strength of the brand name!

I mentioned in my Q4 update that I had one more content site I wanted to start; I did buy the domain – GlobalTikiTour.com – and wrote one article. This site aims to compliment my matching Instagram account… are you sensing a theme of how I’m approaching sites going forward (Instagram + Site as a brand-building bundle).

As I continue to step back and retire some sites, these updates are getting less cumbersome to write. I do hope that you still found this helpful. Have any questions about my various quarterly goals? I’m happy to answer in the comments!