- Tim at Penfriend
- Posts
- Why most people fail at SEO
Hi Penfriends,
Most people fail at SEO because they think every article has to be perfect.
It doesn’t.
The problem with trying to write perfect articles is that each one takes forever, and costs a lot of money, and so you end up with a tiny blog that could never, ever, ever, ever constitute topical authority in Google’s eyes.
The other problem is writing a lot of sh*tty articles, but I’m going to assume that’s not on your to-do list.
We see things pick up at around 100 to 150 articles. Stuff just starts to get traction. We can’t be 100% sure why because nobody really knows how the Google machine works, but it’s likely to be because at 150 articles the blog is hitting some sort of topical authority inflection point.
If Google sees you’ve written 150 useful, 3,000 word articles on one topic, you’ll be in their good books.
Here are the options most people choose from:
37 perfect articles = ❌
274 sh*tty articles = ❌
Both don’t work.
You need at least 150 high quality articles that you improve over time.
We call it Minimum Viable Content.
And it’s what we built Penfriend to generate.
Here’s the killer question though…
What should I get Penfriend to write?
The trick is to think in chunks of content in a structured hierarchy.
At the very top you’ve got your main niche, your industry. Let’s use gold as an easy to follow example.
Industry = gold
Then below that you’ve got main topics within that industry.
Buying gold
Storing gold
Selling gold
And then within each one of those you’ve got sub-topics which go into much more detail. Let’s use buying gold as the example here:
How to buy gold
Why buy gold
Physical gold vs paper gold
Gold bars vs gold coins
Gold ETFs
Gold mining stocks
These are just a few of the hundreds of potential keywords within the buying topic alone.
If you have 3 main topics, you could easily find 50 sub topics for each and soon have 150 keywords to write articles for.
People over complicate SEO.
You just need to write about all the stuff people who might buy your product want to know.
Then put those 150 keywords through Penfriend and publish them for god’s sake! 😂
Don’t wait.
And if you want to move really fast and have the professionals do it for you…
Here’s our full Done-For-You service:
Advanced keyword research
Priority score the keywords
Cluster the keywords
Existing content review
Market research on your business's industry and positioning
150 articles, generated by us
Have a human review each article for LLM hallucinations
A content optimisation plan with editing principles and guidelines
A content maintenance plan so you know what to do next
A training session with your internal team
A Coda workflow board to store and manage your articles
FAQs
Can I do more than 150 articles?
Yes, some clients have chosen 300 and 450 articles
Can I do less than 150 articles?
Yes, but we don’t recommend it. We usually see things pick up between 100 and 150 articles.
How long is the process?
It’ll take between 4 to 6 weeks. We like to under promise and over deliver so it’s more likely to be nearer the 4 weeks, but have 6 weeks in mind.
Will Google penalise me for publishing hundreds of articles at once?
No. we’ve published nearly 400 articles in one week on the Penfriend blog and nothing bad happened. 450 in Google’s eyes is nothing. But people have tried to publish thousands of crappy AI articles per day and that’s what gets you into trouble.
Will Google penalise me for AI content?
It’s less about whether the content is generated by AI or not, and more about whether the content is useful for readers. Most AI generated articles are trash. The ones Penfriend crafts are high quality.
If you’re interested to find out more, just reply to this email to start a conversation.
Best wishes,
John, Tim, and Inge
p.s. Prices are still 30% off for our early done-for-you clients. But they’ll be rising soon.