5 builders who never spoke to each other · contested
Publish at a volume and cadence you can hold
Sheer page count is the clearest thing separating sites that rank for everything from sites that do not, and a dip in output shows up directly in traffic, so treat publishing volume as a lever rather than a by-product. Pick a rhythm you can sustain instead of emptying the tank, reinvest revenue into writers and an editor, and pick a subject that generates constant events you can cover from several angles.
What both sides agree on
- Commit to publishing on a fixed cadence and keep going when posts flop, since reaching the front page of an aggregator is part substance and part luck.
Where this splits
Glen Allsopp's data names page count as the clearest separator between sites that rank for everything and sites that do not, yet the smallest independent site in his own top twenty held just 530 pages against nearly thirteen thousand for the smallest media-owned one.
side 01 · 5 claims
Publish at volume, page count separates the winners
Glen Allsopp · Greg Kogan · Ron Stefanski · Tim Davidson
- 1Sheer page count is the clearest thing separating the sites that rank for everything from the ones that do not, so treat publishing volume as the lever rather than a side effect.
- 2Publishing volume drives the traffic that drives inbound leads, so a dip in output shows up directly in traffic.
- 3Publish on a steady cadence and accept that both volume and consistency are what move traffic.
- 4Reinvest revenue into writers and an editor so content keeps shipping while you work on distribution.
- 5Pick a subject that generates constant events, then cover each event from several angles, because one happening yields a preview, an injury note, a social media round-up and a result piece.
side 02 · 2 claims
A few hundred well chosen pages can rank too
Bhanu Teja · Glen Allsopp
- 1Pick a cadence you can hold instead of emptying the tank: a slow steady rhythm beats a burst followed by silence.
- 2You do not need a huge library to reach serious traffic: a few hundred well-chosen pages can put you alongside sites carrying tens of thousands.
What it returned
- 20
Ahrefs estimates put the top 20 media-owned content sites at an average of 549,279 pages each, eight times the 66,540 average across the top 20 independent sites.
- 50%
Seven essays that year; two of them brought thousands of readers, several hundred subscribers and a few dozen leads. Overall traffic was down 50% versus the prior year when he published nine, and a 2015 post about finding consulting leads was still his most-read.
- 11
Published 11 posts in August with no schedule, then settled on two a week. He rates one post a fortnight above ten in a week and then two months of nothing.
- 7,500
His first post got about 7,500 unique visitors over a weekend, his next two flopped; he kept to at least one post a month.
Sources
- My 2020 Blogging JourneyBhanu Teja · bhanuteja.dev · Aug 29, 2020 - Create Your Own Super Simple URL Shortener (11/27) · 2020-12-31 · dissenting
- The State of Content SERPs: A 250,000 Keyword Analysis - Detailed.comGlen Allsopp · detailed.com · Media Companies Dominating Independent Websites in Google Mostly Has a Logical Explanation (?) · 2023-10-04 · dissenting
- The Sites Dominating Google's Top Stories SERP Feature in 2024 - Detailed.comGlen Allsopp · detailed.com · The Second Most Interesting Site (To Me) Launched in July of 2022 · 2024-08-29 · dissenting
- Episode 143: SEO & AI Content Creation for Freelancers, with Tim Davidson - Double Your FreelancingTim Davidson · doubleyourfreelancing.com · AI-Generated Summary: · 2024-07-01
- How Ron Makes $10K/Month With 6 Different WebsitesRon Stefanski · failory.com · Which are your marketing strategies to grow your traffic? · undated
- Year in Review: My Fifth Year of ConsultingGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · What could be better next year · 2018-12-19
- How to Find Consulting ClientsGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · Month 10 · 2015-10-21
the second source
Three plays a week, for the phase you are in
No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.
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