How News Helped Me Survive A 90% Traffic Loss

Last years Google algorithm changes has decimated many incredible independent websites. My website Retro Dodo is one of them.

Many of us have followed Google's guidelines and are crafting high quality, deeply researched, human written content. But still, we were punished, and inhumanely, with Reddit, AI spam and low quality sites outranking us.

Once Google turned on this algorithm update 90% of Retro Dodo's traffic disappeared within the space of a few months. This forced me to let go of most of my staff and I quickly had to adapt my content. One of the key areas that is helping me survive this onslaught is news.

If high quality product reviews, deeply researched features and passionate interviews aren't helping me right now, then I will try to stay afloat by creating as much news content as I can for my social following.

It's something we have done for a couple of years now. Many retro gamers come to Retro Dodo for fast and reliable news, but I did not think that it would become our life jacket.

To make things worse our Google Discover traffic has disappeared too and I can confidently say that Google has made my website invisible within their search engine.

News has become our lifeline at Retro Dodo, a category that our community come to us for regularly, typically by typing in our name into Google, but also through our popular social accounts. We have over 500,000 social followers, a community of retro gamers waiting to be informed.

The community we have crafted over the last five years has become a reliable source of traffic, a community of folks ready to consume, share and comment on our content and it generates just enough traffic to keep the lights on at Retro Dodo, which I am incredibly grateful for.

It's given me a lot of relief to know I can somewhat live without Google, albeit not comfortably and nor for my only team member, Seb, but we can keep on doing what we love all while being removed from the most popular search engines in the world.

So, my advice to any content brand builders out there that are struggling to stay afloat would be to try testing news posts for your community and build a following that repeatedly come to your website for the latest news and your professional opinions on that news. Do this consistently over a long period of time and you'll see a nice influx of loyal readers coming to you regularly in a natural way through your platforms.

If you can build enough followers, email subscribers and readers that bookmark your news category, which then generates enough traffic/revenue to pay yourself then you can keep the lights on while figuring out your next move.

I know this isn't as simple as it seems, but it's why I keep on shouting about building a community. Community is so incredibly important right now, and has become such a valuable component of Retro Dodo that it's literally our only sign of hope right now.

Some would argue news articles have low ad-rates and retention, and that is true in most niches, but it's still worth it, as typical news content doesn't take too much time to produce. We try to post at least one news post a day, two if we feel like our audience would enjoy it.

How To Build An Audience That Comes To Your Website For News?

News plays a fundamental part for many online publications, it's not only a great source of traffic but provides a lot of value to your readers when done right and honestly.

News however is a fast paced form of content that requires quick reactions and pin point production, because there's no nothing worse than outlets sharing/producing fake news or being days late to the story.

The key strategy to building an audience that follow you for news is to simply be consistent over a long period of time.

Produce news on a daily basis that is high quality, and easy to read. Do this over a long period of time and your readers will sub-consciously search for you when they require an influx of news within our niche.

I find that many of Retro Dodo's readers come to the homepage by searching for us within Google, it's why our biggest search term is actually our brand name, which I believe is a good sign, and a ranking factor for Google to trust you more "as a brand".

Readers will come to our homepage and immediately see the latest news with a scroll, here users typically funnel into our news stories, but if they want even more news we have a news category which is one of our most viewed pages on our website.

Building fast, reliable news over the long run has created a surge of readers coming to our website continuously over weeks, months and years to read our news posts, creating an organic, reliable source of traffic that is currently keeping us alive.

Don't buy backlinks, make news instead.

I can't tell you how many of our backlinks have been obtained from producing news content, if I had to guess, the majority of our backlinks link to our news posts.

It's an incredible strategy that has given Retro Dodo links from large publications such as CNET, The Verge, The Daily Mail, GamesRadar, Mashable, Gizmodo and a whole lot more.

It's another reason why you should be producing news. To get a higher chance of backlinks from other news publication I found that we had to "break the news" within our niche, share it to our socials and then typically it will get picked up by others news outlets that than respectfully link to us.

It's why being the go-to source for news in your niche is incredibly valuable, because its typical that the editors of these other publications will use you as a credible source too, creating a wave affect that pushed even more traffic to the original story.

It's pretty hard to break news these days, and we try our best to do it by speaking directly with companies within our niche and building partnerships with them, but once done right and you have the permission to break the news, it does wonders for your community, your traffic and your backlinks.

The backlink gurus on X won't tell you this, they'll try and sell you them instead, which is a no-go, and against Google's guidelines, so I do not recommend buying backlinks... ever.

A great way to increase newsletter subscribers

The more we look into news production the more we realise that our readers value it, and many of our readers prefer receiving round-ups at the end of the week, which we have basically converted into a newsletter.

This is our CTA. "Retro gaming news, delivered to your email every week, for free".

It's a great funnel and a simple, yet effective way to increase your email subscribers.

I do reccomend though that if your email subscribers are subscribing for news, it's best to give them that within the first scroll of an email.

We did receive advice from our community that they want news to be the main part of the newsletter, so jamming it with our stories, or sponsored sections or product reviews didn't go down so well.

Those sections are now at the bottom of our emails as a "bonus", now we send simple, text based emails to our subscribers about the week's news, with simple clickable text based links.

The combination

The combination of news traffic, frequent backlinks, active social engagement and email subscribers makes this an incredible strategy to build a reliable community that comes back to your website, alongside a easy and organic to build a following too.

It's a must for anyone wanting to build a new traffic source, and a way to make your brand the go-to authority in your niche.

I recommend checking it out and producing a full blown news strategy as soon as you can, because right now, it's the only bit of hope we have while we build our very first product.