Grateful Dad #1.26: January in a Flash
The first month of the year came by so quickly!
It’s been a long time since I last wrote a Grateful Dad post, and that’s because I’ve been busy with life in the last few months (or even years). Contrary to what most people post on social media about January being slow and dragging, I felt that this month came by in a flash. One moment, we were welcoming the new year, and then the next, it was already the end of January.
Anyway, we have an ongoing big family project which we started around late 2024, but things didn’t go as planned, so we had to go back to the drawing board. It was a good thing that the delay only affected us for a few months, so we were soon back on track.
I will tell you more about that project when it is close to completion, but let me just emphasize that all our plans and decisions revolved around that project in the last few months, which brings me to my next update: a new job.
Starting a new job
Well, not technically new, as I have been with a new company for four months now. Again, the decision to transfer to a new job was anchored on our project. It wasn’t the cliché “I want personal growth” or “I got tired of my bosses” kind of reason, but it was about seeking greener pastures.
I needed the money to fund our family project, so I accepted the offer. Aside from that (and more importantly), I knew that I would receive back wages, which could help me comfortably finance our ongoing project. So, you see, transferring to a new job is not at all that negative as long as it’s planned, deliberate, and purposeful. The back pay that I received gave us a little reprieve from our monthly expenses. Because of that, I was able to save up money for our future overheads (or upcoming gastos haha). Again, it was an intentional move.
Celebrating my son’s 8th Birthday
On a different note, we celebrated Miguel’s birthday earlier this month. He’s now 8 years old, already a big boy. It’s just surreal to think that he is no longer a baby. And every year, I can’t help but ask, “Why do they grow up so fast?” Just the same, we are grateful because he is healthy and happy. Our kids are always safe and well. We still appreciate our weekend trips to the mall with our children, but we had to reduce the frequency and be more conscious of our expenses. We explained to Rafa that we had to be more mindful of how we spend money because of our family project, and we are thankful that he understood.
On recent SEO trends
Also, earlier this month, I finally convinced myself to do some research on the last few Google algorithm updates (particularly the Helpful Content Update) with the help of Copilot. It was rolled out in 2023 (if I remember correctly), and my blog was one of those severely affected. I never had the energy I once had to keep myself abreast with the latest SEO and other search updates, so I just let things be. I thought that my blog would recover naturally, but it didn’t.
Turns out, after careful research and assessment, my content isn’t exactly what Google would consider helpful content. While I do have a good number of helpful articles about travel blogging, my parenting articles, personal essays, and guest posts somehow diluted my authority and Google’s perceived helpfulness of my blog to humans.
As recommended by many SEO sites and even Copilot, I looked at my Google Search Console data and marked non-performing articles and non-helpful articles as no index. I was afraid of deleting and transferring articles to my other blogs because that would negatively impact my domain authority. I made that mistake once, tried to recover from it by republishing old articles, but I think it also did more harm than good.
So now, again, I just asked Google to deindex a good bulk of my posts. I’m hoping that it could somehow improve my organic search traffic. What struck me most, although Google denies it, is that E-E-A-T signals (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) immediately equate to big sites such as news sites, scientific sites, well-established magazine sites, and other similar websites.
This puts small publishers like me at a disadvantage in terms of search rankings. At some point, you’ll begin to question if it’s still worth trying to improve your articles because recovery is not guaranteed. Then again, I can still carry on with enhancing my old posts, and if it doesn’t work, I can at least say I didn’t give up the fight easily.
As one travel blogger said in a forum, we don’t have to be at the mercy of the algorithm for our income. I enjoyed good revenue from my blog during its peak, but I also understand that the search landscape has changed considerably in the last 2 or 3 years.
Harnessing the power of AI
AI has been very helpful; I have to be honest. It has increased our productivity, and, in fact, it was Copilot that helped me with the recommended recovery strategy from Google’s HCU (just a matter of time to see and test if the recommendations are effective, haha).
So, it’s perfectly understandable why people are turning to AI to help them with their everyday lives, even with simple queries. In the office, we are encouraged to use the AI tools that we have to help us with research, inquiries, creating presentations, summarizing data, and many more. It’s a valuable advancement that we should all harness.
However, for my blog posts and articles, I still want to write them on my own. I enjoy the process of thinking and crafting an article because it’s a source of fulfillment for me. Again, blogging will always be an outlet for me and my preferred medium to connect with readers (even if you are just a few 😊).
Appreciating the journey
Then again, with all the noise and chaos in the social media landscape, don’t you feel that it’s a lot nicer to slow down and just enjoy the moments that we have? We don’t have to share everything and document everything online. Let’s stop trying to please those whom we don’t know and be more present for those who are important to us.
Live life well and to its fullest!