I am Uygar Kilic, founder and the editor of Cars & Life blog. I have been blogging for more than 4.5 years and wrote 1770 articles. They are not perfect, but I never give up writing!
I started to blog on December, 2009. Actually, I did some blogs before that they did not live for long. 18 December, 2009 I decided to create my own and write my thoughts, view, feelings about cars. Why? I always wanted to write about cars but couldn’t make it.
It is not easy to find a column on press! Actually, on August, 2007 EVO Turkey published a very tiny article with my name on it. Actually, I sent them four pages of an article but don’t know how, it was shrunk to a tiny column. Anyway, I think EVO Turkey is gone or changed hands.
When I started to blog, I thought it would be nice. People will my articles and like it. Few months, I received really low reader level, it was like 30 or 40 people per day. But I appreciated it, I created my own platform and people started to find on Google. The Google! Where things went totally wrong!
While I was writing my article on my blog, I realised that my traffic is going down and down and down. On July, 2010 I received only ‘one click’! Just one! But I didn’t give up and tried to understand how to increase my views? I started to cover more popular topics, updated more often (I write every day). And my readers started to increase, meanwhile I started share my blog articles on Facebook and Twitter. There was nothing else on those days.
But I was wondering why I cannot receive more readers? People like my articles but Google does not like me! And I found out that, there is a thing called SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). You basically, create a content that Google likes it and shows to people. Regardless of the quality of the content. According to Google, they have a technology to understand the quality of the content.
So I started to search about the Google and SEO. And found out that, Google appreciates your content based on links shared on different websites! That’s why many low quality blogs were receiving high amount of traffic. And interestingly, some of my readers shared my content over different websites, because I was creating content that most of the people cannot find it easily (Once Conde Nast Germany contacted with me to find out more about the Sophie Loren’s photos with Mercedes 300SL).
Hopefully, my traffic to grow but it wasn’t steady like other blogs. So, I revised the design, increased engagement on social media. The traffic started to grow, how? Google Image search. Google was adding the image search results to our traffic and one day, they realised it was wrong and stopped doing.
Actually, it was a very good idea. I lost some traffic but more people shared the content and my traffic started to increase. However, there was a constant update of Google search engine. And it was suppose to give penalty to low quality and fake content and appreciate the real and high quality content. But every time Google updated their search engine, they increase the exposure of the blogs who stole my content.
Yes, my blog was copied countless times and thanks to Google, I managed to remove some of them. But Google assumed that, they are better than my blog and kept showing it! And after few years, Google realised that it was wrong to show fake content and now they are gone. Thanks.
But the drama did not finish here, Google updated the search engine and my readers started went down, I increased the number of posts and covered fashion topics and Google updated the search engine and readers went down.
There was and also there is a content update on Google to reduce the traffic to bloggers, because we are not creating good content. How they judge the Google content, once more? Based on the +1 from the Google+, you have to use Google+! Unfortunately, getting +1 from Google+ is like expecting to have a dinner with Kate Upton at McDonalds, it is impossible. No one uses Google+, have you heard a friend of yours and told you this “I uploaded the party photos to Google”? Of course you won’t because, no one does it. Actually, Google+ mobile uploads automatically like other apps!
Anyway, I did not give up also, and started to watch the videos (https://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp/videos) of Matt Cutts (https://twitter.com/mattcutts) (He is the person responsible for SEO, spam and other things on Google). I followed his steps or directions and kept my content unique! And my blog is unique :) It is not super high quality but it is unique. People love it.
Unfortunately, Google doesn’t love me that much. And showed this by reducing my traffic to 10,000 views per month from the 30,000 views level. Of course, Google does not have problems with me but their updates to search engine started to ruin blogs like mine and blogger started to become a library of left over blogs. People started to loss motivation to write. Why?
When you don’t have likes or followers or clicks, many brands do not even contact with you. I mean, they don’t even respond to your emails! Someone is checking your ranking and assuming that, you are really bad because Google thinks you are bad and you started to loss everything. No more press accreditations or whatever.
Hopefully, this did not happen to me, because I attend to very few events and gave up with press pass or accreditation. It is stressful!
The main point is, Google is tiring! While the Google is trying to reshape the internet, they are messing up with really unique and high quality content. I gave up with checking the traffic from Google Analytics for a very long time. Because, it is really depressing! It goes high few days and Google punishes you after that. I can see this very clearly from Google Webmaster Tools, it shows how many times the Google computers check my site and it is going down, why? I really don’t know.
So what shall I do? Instead of crying like Cartman from South Park? Usually, some bloggers spread their links to everywhere and this is called full-time blogging. It is painful and taking very long time! Some of them hire SEO guys to take advantage of Google, that works quite well, if you are using WordPress! Or pay Google, Twitter, Facebook for advertisement! That’s what they want to here :) But you need to be wealthy for this! Online advertisement is not cheap.
Anyway, I am sure Matt Cutts or his team will read this and may not agree some of my points. But I really wish the team of Matt Cutts to have some empathy and while revising the Google search engine, consider the real and original content. Also, press officers please don’t judge blogs based on clicks or likes or followers. Those things can be manipulated very easily and you may be engaging with a very badly written blog and assuming that it is really influential. And to bloggers, if you really love to write, just keep writing. Even though, no one invites you to press days or ignores to send you press releases. Create your own path, never give up. This is internet world, you can access wide range of knowledge.
I wanted to write this for a very long time and I think it was the right time.
I wrote this article around 02:50 AM in London time, so please ignores my mistakes :) Thanks a lot :) And also, thanks a lot to every brand who supported me on this tough journey :)