Few Questions Regarding Army Ants Method & Keyword Stuffing

[freshpeppermint]

Okay so I read some posts here and some people mentioned how the army ants method is getting fewer searches.

So we know a 700 article that is optimized for a specific keyword will generally beat a 1.5k or 2k article which is like the army ants method which answers related questions in the whole article right?

And people do say that the first would rank higher but, since the content is shorter, wouldn't the user read LESS? The longer they are on the website the more ads they are exposed to right?

Another question, how would you take advantage of the fact that you have your own banner affiliate products on the sidebar and at the bottom of the page? Wouldn't a longer article technically sell the affiliate offer better than a shorter article?
(Keep in mind I am comparing the army ants method article VS individual short articles.|

Also Which one will build more topical authority? Will google see that you have more articles which are getting more traffic so you rank better instead OR will google see your army ants article and see that you have a lot of information covered on each of your articles??

Another Question, does keyword stuffing still work? (Like Not blatant or doing it waaay too many times) The other day a competitor blog I came across had an insane amount of traffic and they found these super-low keywords in the h2's and stuff which were similar to the keyword but in a weird arrangement, and the whole article wasn't that high quality compared to other articles but, it had the keyword like 11 times or so. And some parts sounded unnatural not all parts though. For a newer blog with fewer articles, this site was doing insanely well with A Ton of traffic.

 

[Ryuzaki]

The Army Ants method (why does everything need a silly name?) stopped being the way to do things a long time ago. I'm sure it can still work but as soon as anyone else comes in and deals with these queries directly, you're going to lose. That's my preamble.

So we know a 700 article that is optimized for a specific keyword will generally beat a 1.5k or 2k article which is like the army ants method which answers related questions in the whole article right?

It's not necessarily that it's optimized for the keyword but for the intent of the keyword. I know I'm splitting hairs here but it's important. You win by serving the query with the intent the searcher had in mind.

And people do say that the first would rank higher but, since the content is shorter, wouldn't the user read LESS? The longer they are on the website the more ads they are exposed to right?

Just because content is longer doesn't mean it's as engaging. I might scroll quickly through a 10,000 word article and never leave any ad on the screen long enough to count as an impression. But I may stop and read a 500 word article in it's entirety and every ad impression ends up counting, and some may refresh if I'm a slow reader. The point is, the length of the content doesn't determine the time-on-page.

Another question, how would you take advantage of the fact that you have your own banner affiliate products on the sidebar and at the bottom of the page? Wouldn't a longer article technically sell the affiliate offer better than a shorter article?

I'm not sure what kind of answer you're after here, but I'd call attention to the ads (at the bottom more so. The sidebar isn't going to be seen on mobile and that's sadly where most of our traffic is from these days). No, a longer article isn't necessarily more persuasive than a short one. Length = Strength in people's minds, but not if it's crappy.

Also Which one will build more topical authority? Will google see that you have more articles which are getting more traffic so you rank better instead OR will google see your army ants article and see that you have a lot of information covered on each of your articles??

This is purely speculation but I'd say both. I'd think it's a matter of indexation count on a topic (breadth across the niche) and then a matter of stacking up the right keywords and entities (depth within the niche). The more nouns and pronouns and entities from the niche that can be found in your articles, the more optimized you are for the overall topic. And that happens across many articles. So I say both.

Another Question, does keyword stuffing still work? (Like Not blatant or doing it waaay too many times)

A lot of old stuff works again once everyone gets scared of it. Keyword stuffing is a no-go but 11 instances of a keyword isn't too many depending on the length of the article. But like you're pointing out, what matters more is the positioning of the keywords in the article (in the right spots). I talk about this in-depth in the On-Page SEO day of the Crash Course, especially in posts further down the thread. On-Page is half the battle. On-Page with the right keyword research (meaning low competition keywords) can be the entire battle. Ignoring off-page would be silly but the point is on-page SEO is a huge deal that shouldn't be taken for granted.

 

[Hanuman]

So we know a 700 article that is optimized for a specific keyword will generally beat a 1.5k or 2k article which is like the army ants method which answers related questions in the whole article right?

And people do say that the first would rank higher but, since the content is shorter, wouldn't the user read LESS? The longer they are on the website the more ads they are exposed to right?

Technically, you are right. But you can still win this way. The shorter, specific article strategy only work when you build a large volume of such articles.

So, you can't just win with one 'Can dogs eat cookies' article. You will need to perhaps publish a dozen articles on various food items like popsicles, icecream, ginger, etc.

You then have a good interlinking strategy to move people between these different questions. A person interested in learning if dogs can eat cookies, might also click on a story about dogs eating icecream or popsicles.

This way, you perhaps have the user clicking on 4-5 different articles instead of just one that they came to your site for.

I can't say which one will get more ad impressions, but this strategy can be made to work equally well, if not better.

 

[freshpeppermint]

Technically, you are right. But you can still win this way. The shorter, specific article strategy only work when you build a large volume of such articles.

So, you can't just win with one 'Can dogs eat cookies' article. You will need to perhaps publish a dozen articles on various food items like popsicles, icecream, ginger, etc.

You then have a good interlinking strategy to move people between these different questions. A person interested in learning if dogs can eat cookies, might also click on a story about dogs eating icecream or popsicles.

This way, you perhaps have the user clicking on 4-5 different articles instead of just one that they came to your site for.

I can't say which one will get more ad impressions, but this strategy can be made to work equally well, if not better.

Wait so ok, so should I stick with 700 word article where:
I link to relevant links like other questions the users might have LIKE I would have done the "army ants" method but instead of putting it below in an h2 or h3, I would just show them the link to a new article.

Should this be a more solid approach?

 

[Hanuman]

I'd probably stick to the first option with a "Related reading" or "People also checked" sections. I do not know how you plan to go about it in the second way, but I'm concerned this could cause some duplication issues.

 

[freshpeppermint]

Hmm do you suggest I just do the army ants method but answer each one EXTREMELY thorough so it's like a 3k-5k word article?

 

[Hanuman]

No, 700 word articles with a Related Reading section linking to other related articles.

 

[freshpeppermint]

Guys is it not allowed to take keywords from your competitors??

I was reading MrMedia's post and he said this:

One site was destroyed by competitors the month before I listed it and it cost me $130K.

I got an inside contact for a well known Google SEO person and set up a random dude email address and emailed the Google guy as a "concerned citizen".

The next day my competitor was removed (position 100+) for all the terms he stole from me.

So although I was still nuked he was fucked too and that gave me some cold comfort.

Still have no idea how he wiped me out other than a mountain of shitty links sent at my site."

Can someone do this to me? I recently found a site that is like 4-5 months old and they targetted really solid low comp keywords that I can rank for. I am planning on writing better articles on those exact keywords as them. Is this allowed right?

Also, how many images do you guys suggest? I heard some people say the more images the better, yet some say only put in 3-5 images per post. Of course, they give like an X length for x images. Do you base it off the competition?

I also read on MrMedia's AMA that it's good to cull/delete content or merge it with others if it's not performing well. On one of my sites, all I did was just look at my competitors and copied their url and counted the word count and sent it off to my writer with ONLY that info. I have ended up with like 700 articles this is over like past 1 or 2 years on this one site? No real keyword research or anything. That site in the make money online space, got hit on May 2020. Then slowly declining more and more. To where it's at like 20 sessions per day. I have no real images on like 95% of the posts, no real interlinking, no external linking, only featured image. Is it wise to even bother with this website? Is my time spent better on other things? I learned to do proper research now, and add images and stuff.

I have done this on a few sites and A lot of them are not ranking. I recently deleted all the content on one of my sites and started writing better content and Low competition content daily and I am able to get more traffic than my other website which has like 700+ articles.

@MrMedia if you can answer these:

One site has gone X5 since I sold it. The new owner is some sort of SEO wonderkid so fair play to him.

How would you become a "SEO wonderkid"? Is it like through experience or like studying the serps and reading a ton of blog posts? Wouldn't that waste time rather than taking action on content?

"1. Yes - one was completely destroyed by a competitor with negative SEO days before I was about to list for sale Lost about $400k. In turn I destroyed his site so although we both lost it gave me cold comfort.

I got a well-known SEO to send me the details of a well-known google rep and reported the fucker as a “concerned citizen” reporting bad user experience lol.

3 days later he was annihilated."

How did you exactly destroy someone's site? Can someone do that to my site? How does 1 prevent this type of a thing? One of my sites have talked massive crap about some certain rich gurus, and one of them I had to remove a certain article or they would have taken legal action.

Also, I found a site recently and it has a ton of low comp keywords, could I steal his whole site's keywords? Basically, writing a better article than him? Can't anyone do this? But, then you say how you got someone's website screwed.

Yesterday I wrote an article and on Copyscape, it came as 5%, this scared me so I had to change it so it didn't say that. What would you suggest when rewriting articles to make them better? I mean if they are doing snippet optimization you also do that, is copying h2's like the questions allowed?

 

[MrMedia]

@MrMedia if you can answer these:
One site has gone X5 since I sold it. The new owner is some sort of SEO wonderkid so fair play to him.

How would you become a "SEO wonderkid"? Is it like through experience or like studying the serps and reading a ton of blog posts? Wouldn't that waste time rather than taking action on content?

"1. Yes - one was completely destroyed by a competitor with negative SEO days before I was about to list for sale Lost about $400k. In turn I destroyed his site so although we both lost it gave me cold comfort.

I got a well-known SEO to send me the details of a well-known google rep and reported the fucker as a “concerned citizen” reporting bad user experience lol.

3 days later he was annihilated."

How did you exactly destroy someone's site? Can someone do that to my site? How does 1 prevent this type of a thing? One of my sites have talked massive crap about some certain rich gurus, and one of them I had to remove a certain article or they would have taken legal action.

Also, I found a site recently and it has a ton of low comp keywords, could I steal his whole site's keywords? Basically, writing a better article than him? Can't anyone do this? But, then you say how you got someone's website screwed.

Yesterday I wrote an article and on Copyscape, it came as 5%, this scared me so I had to change it so it didn't say that. What would you suggest when rewriting articles to make them better? I mean if they are doing snippet optimization you also do that, is copying h2's like the questions allowed?

I am not and have never claimed to be anything special when it comes to SEOzzzzzz or other interwebs activities.

If I had to say what the difference between me making it and not making it in order I would say -

1. Niche selection - volume, volume, volume.
2. Hard work - produce more content and better quality content.
3. Massive Action - Go balls deep once points 1 and 2 are locked down.
4. Luck - Holding a massive site for 7 years was / is high risk - I was very lucky to never be wiped out.

I am not getting into the details of how I got my competitor nuked but it was surprisingly easy since his site was blatant spam and it only needed to be placed in front of the right person who had the power to do something about it.

 

[freshpeppermint]

I am not and have never claimed to be anything special when it comes to SEOzzzzzz or other interwebs activities.

If I had to say what the difference between me making it and not making it in order I would say -

1. Niche selection - volume, volume, volume.
2. Hard work - produce more content and better quality content.
3. Massive Action - Go balls deep once points 1 and 2 are locked down.
4. Luck - Holding a massive site for 7 years was / is high risk - I was very lucky to never be wiped out.

I am not getting into the details of how I got my competitor nuked but it was surprisingly easy since his site was blatant spam and it only needed to be placed in front of the right person who had the power to do something about it.

But if it was actual quality content, would you have been able to destroy his site?

I only ask this because I am worried what if this happened to me??

Also, I was talking about the guy you were referring to who bought your site and 5x the traffic. You called him an SEO Wonder kid so I was wondering how does one become like that.

 

[MrMedia]

But if it was actual quality content, would you have been able to destroy his site?

I only ask this because I am worried what if this happened to me??

Also, I was talking about the guy you were referring to who bought your site and 5x the traffic. You called him an SEO Wonder kid so I was wondering how does one become like that.

It was decent enough content but was held up by pure spam play links.

It might happen to you - does that mean you should not start?

The wonder kid took my site and vastly improved UX and content quality and then bought a FUCKTON of high quality links and guest posts.

 

[freshpeppermint]

It was decent enough content but was held up by pure spam play links.

It might happen to you - does that mean you should not start?

The wonder kid took my site and vastly improved UX and content quality and then bought a FUCKTON of high quality links and guest posts.

No, but, I am planning on outranking this guy's whole website, so I might not do this if this can happen to me.

I also wonder if this is what happened on my other website which had a ton of articles but 20 sessions per day on a 700 article website.

 

[MrMedia]

No, but, I am planning on outranking this guy's whole website, so I might not do this if this can happen to me.

I also wonder if this is what happened on my other website which had a ton of articles but 20 sessions per day on a 700 article website.

Big talk. Worry about it when you do it.

 

[freshpeppermint]

Big talk. Worry about it when you do it.

https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/copyright-claim-for-google-search.5997/
I have 4-5 more articles left to cover from his site. ^ Imagine if you put so much of your money into something and this is what happens.

 

[janky]

https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/copyright-claim-for-google-search.5997/
I have 4-5 more articles left to cover from his site. ^ Imagine if you put so much of your money into something and this is what happens.

Imagine you don't even try to win.
Just do it and fix it later if something happens. What happened to CaptainHustle is very rare and almost always only happens if you have copyrighted stuff.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Someone WILL try to extort you or harm your site if you do well enough. There’s no way around it. It’s a signpost along the road to success that tells you you’re still on the path and moving in the right direction.

Happened to me a couple years ago with lawsuit threats and trying to “settle outside of court”. I’ve also had all the hack attempts, been hacked, been DDOS’d, doxx attempts, the whole nine yards.

All the talk about haters is cringe but true. If you don’t have them you aren’t winning as hard as you need to be.

 

[Hanuman]

If you drive better than everyone else on the road, can you still get hit by a bus?
Well, there is always a chance that you get hit by a bus if you have chosen to drive on the road.

You don't stop driving because this threat exists.
You don't get hit just because this threat exists.