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independence6 unconnected · 1 more author in those circles
standing

contested · 9 claims against 2

applies to

b2b, no audience needed

confidence

high

evidence

12 claims · 10 articles · 4 receipts

window

2016-09-12 → 2024-12-20

6 builders who never spoke to each other · contested

Write the one page that deserves to rank first

The case for depth is that a genuinely definitive guide, roughly twenty hours of work, takes the top slot and holds it, and that a few hundred words against results running past three thousand simply reads as thin. Ask honestly whether your page is the best answer to the query before expecting a top three position. Against that sits evidence that effort and readership barely correlate.

What both sides agree on

  • Do not publish the definitive guide to a feature you are not yet proud of; fix the implementation first or the content will undercut the product.

Where this splits

Cory Zue and Justin Jackson report long definitive guides taking first place, yet Zue's two most-visited pages were quick posts written in a sitting and Bhanu Teja's least-worked reference outdrew the piece he laboured over.

  1. side 01 · 9 claims

    Write the definitive guide and take the top spot

    Alex Kistenev · Austin Church · Cory Zue · Glen Allsopp · Justin Jackson · Lidiya K

    1. 1Writing the single best guide on the internet for a topic your buyers search for is probably the highest-return marketing you can do, at roughly twenty hours per guide.
    2. 2Build a set of definitive guides covering every major topic your target developers search for, with the aim of ranking first for those terms and using the collection as a standing funnel into the paid product.
    3. 3In a niche where the existing pages are thin, the longest and most comprehensive article on a topic tends to take the top spot.
    4. 4Publish a few genuinely long articles rather than many short ones. They lift search position and keep accumulating readers for years.
    5. 5Build a foundation of seven to ten substantial posts rather than a stream of small ones, because the buyers you want share results-focused writing and ignore quick tricks.

  2. side 02 · 2 claims

    Effort does not predict readership, publish quick posts

    Bhanu Teja · Cory Zue

    1. 1Lower the effort bar and publish short posts in a single sitting; the small ones can out-traffic your carefully worked pieces by a wide margin.
    2. 2Time spent writing does not predict readership, so ship the cheap useful reference too.

What it returned

  • 20

    Zue's April guide became the leading result for Django websocket searches outside forums, and his December guide the leading unofficial result for the python uv query, each taking about 20 hours.

  • Zue planned canonical Django guides on Stripe, JavaScript, multitenancy and deployment as a permanent content asset to upsell Pegasus from.

  • Skyscraper-style content ranked highest in Transistor's niche.

  • Several long reads improved Standuply's SEO and brought real traffic to the blog, and the founder's posts have collected hundreds of thousands of views.

Sources

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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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.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

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