031 — Appeasing the SEO Gods

You can also watch the video on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/ENFM-pQK5iM

A quick update about some recent updates I pushed out on https://www.starterpacks.net. In the last episode, I announced the addition of the Quick Starter Pack Editor to the site. Since then, I have rolled out a few tweaks to make it nicer, like preventing duplicate entries to be added to new Starter Packs—even though those were never duplicated when saved to Bluesky—along with the ability to remove people from the list before saving. I have a few more updates planned around editors, namely being able to edit an existing Starter Pack, but that has not rolled out yet. I am sure I’ll be posting an update when it does.

Other than a few editor updates, the main updates that made there way to the site are in support of trying to help crawlers discover more content and pages on the site. Since January, the number of indexed pages in the Google Search Console has dropped from 980k+ down to just over 3,000 pages. In order to try to counteract the indexed page loss, I figured it was time to address some crawling issues that I introduced when I added infinite scrolling to the site. Now, in addition to supporting infinite scrolling when a user visits the site, there are links that crawlers can follow to continue discovering content and pages linked from those lists. At first when I tried to re-validate some of the issues via the Google Search Console, the number of indexed pages ended up dropping to just over 2,000 pages, but after a few tweaks and re-validating a few other issues that number has jumped up to over 17k pages, and based on the logs I am seeing from the site I am hoping that I can get back into the 6 digit+ range for indexed pages, which I am hoping will help to drive more organic traffic to the site.

In addition to the making the site updates, I am going to try to start posting more updates in the different communities to hopefully drive awareness, and also start building more backlinks back to the site. The first update was posted over on Indie Hackers, just announcing to project and enabling the profile so I can post more. You can read that one here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/starter-packs-is-born-fe2Z1KTOK7spuf84v0i7

There is a bunch of other stuff I should probably work on next for Starter Packs, but I think I need a new project to be able to ping-pong on when my interest wanes. Want to see what I plan on working on next? Subscribe to this channel, ⁨@ryan_hefner⁩, and I’ll be live streaming the development of it. And, if you have a project you’re working on that you would like to share, I welcome guests on the stream. Show off what you’re working on!

To follow along, you can find me at https://www.ryanhefner.com, follow me on Bluesky @ryanhefner.com (https://bsky.app/profile/ryanhefner.com) and keep up with the show on https://www.allplay.fm and @allplay.fm (https://bsky.app/profile/allplay.fm).

Help yourself, while supporting the show, by trying some of the services that I use, and highly recommend:
Transistor FM (https://transistor.fm/?via=allplay)
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#buildinpublic #podcast #startups #webdevelopment  #webdesign #bluesky #indiedev #bootstrapping #indiehackers

Episode Transcript

Ryan (00:01):
Hey. How's it going? I'm Ryan Hefner. This is the All
Play podcast. So I've beenworking on some more stuff.
I'm gonna dive into some updatesthat I've rolled out on
starterpacks.net and the resultsthat I'm getting back so far,
and we'll go from there. So Ithink in the last episode, I had
talked about rolling out thenew, like, quick starter pack

(00:24):
editor. I did roll out a fewmore updates on there, so now
it'll it'll prevent people fromadding duplicate entries to that
to new starter packs. Not thatthose are ever actually added on
Blue Sky, but, no longer will itbe allowed to be added on the
starterpackstarterpacks.netside. It'll prevent any

(00:47):
multiples from being added tothe strip below and, it also
knows allows you to removepeople that you potentially
added by mistake before addingthat creating that new pack.
So I think that's just a nicelittle tweak that it roll rolled
out. And, there's a few otherlittle odds and ends that I'm
gonna be adding to the editor,essentially being able to

(01:12):
basically edit an existingstarter pack. So edit the name,
edit the description, and removepeople from an existing pack all
fromstarterpacksstarterpacks.net. So
that'll be coming out soon.Still tweaking that and, but
things are looking good and, youknow, just kinda inching along

(01:33):
as far as adding features to thesite.
Now on the indexing and, I guessbasically just kind of like
trying to boost up the SEO ofthe site, I think things are
actually progressing prettywell. So looking at the numbers
right now, it's when before Istarted doing those updates, I

(01:53):
was down to about 3,000 or sopages that were indexed via, the
you know, I'm looking in GoogleSearch Console. That was out of
a total of 3,300,000 potentialpages that could be indexed. And
back in January, I actually hadalmost a million pages indexed,

(02:14):
but for whatever reason over,you know, the last couple
months, that has kind of likedwindled down to about 3,000.
Then I rolled out some tweaks.
I basically tried to take everysingle page on the site and make
it to where it is. The majorityof the content is server side
rendered so that first thatfirst page is basically getting,

(02:37):
you know, as much as theprofile, as much of the starter
packs, as much as, like, the,people that a person follows as
far as on the profiles. Thestarter packs themselves are
loading the general starter packinformation as well as the first
fifty or so, you know, peoplethat are within that starter
pack. And so those changes wentout. I then basically had it to

(03:03):
where all of those now includelinks to these sub pages.
And now every page, there'swords like basically like a
paginated entry where so forinstance, the file you know, so
the number of people or thepeople that, the list of people
that you follow, it'll load thefirst fifty, and then obviously,

(03:26):
as you scroll, it'll load fiftyfifty fifty. There's a link
that'll take people to subpages, and it'll be 50 per page,
and, the crawlers can followthat link and basically kinda
find it. What's interesting is,I then once I rolled all this
stuff out, I started to kind oftrying to revalidate some of the
errors that I was seeing in inGoogle Search Console, like some

(03:47):
of the soft four zero fours orthe five hundreds that were no
longer valid or just rebootingthe unindexed pages. And when I
first started doing that,actually, I kinda got a little
bit worried. Some of the numbersdipped.
And so from my 3,000 pages, itwent down to like 2,100 pages.
And I feel like that's kinda mynaivete or whatever, my my noob

(04:12):
level thing with Google GoogleSearch Console. I've never
really been, other than justkind of like implementing
certain things for likemarketing purposes, I've never
really kind of like had to tryto go in and really optimize the
SEO of a site or thecrawlability. I've done
crawlability, but never had toreally worry about the numbers
and and deal with the the GoogleSearch Console side. So,

(04:34):
tweaking that now, I I I got alittle bit worried, but, after
kind of addressing a fewdifferent things on the site,
also making sure that, pageswere properly four zero four ing
if there was no informationcoming back from Blue Sky, that
those numbers went from, like,you know, 3,300 pages down to

(04:54):
2,100 pages.
But since then, it's actuallybumped back up to I think it's
at about 17,000 pages. So I wasI dipped down to 3,000. It's at
17,000, and I know that thecrawlers are crawling because
when I look at the, access logsfor the site, now the the actual

(05:16):
numbers of people who arevisiting the site is nowhere
near this, but I'd say I'mgetting about 10,000 requests
every twenty minutes. I'm justdoing like the the the twenty
four hour breakdown, looking atthe access logs. And so for
every twenty minute span,there's about 10,000 requests to

(05:36):
the site.
So I think that's basicallyGoogle and who knows, other
crawlers potentially that arejust kinda going in and and
checking these things out. SoI'm really, you know, fingers
crossed. I'm gonna see that17,000 jump up to more assuming
that I'm fulfilling my, youknow, browser, my browsability

(05:59):
duties and Google finds thecontent interesting. So, yeah,
on that front, I think thingsare looking good. Now, I don't
really know what else I can doother than just try to get more
backlinks to the site and dosome things like that.
So I am gonna start publishingsome updates over on like Indie

(06:21):
Hackers and I think I'm prettyclose to actually maybe even
dropping a link on, I don'tknow, Hacker News and and see
about maybe even doing like alittle product hunt drive to the
site. I don't know. I'm I'm alittle bit torn on that. I kinda
just wanna work on some otherstuff in the meantime, and just

(06:43):
see where things go from just anormal organic traffic, SEO
index, you know, kinda like, howhow good can I kinda craft it to
where both like Google and AIsand all this other stuff are
potentially driving traffic toto starter packs and then see
about basically beefing up thethe subscriptions and just the

(07:07):
general offering? But a lot oftweaks going on on that front,
but I kinda wanna take a littlestep back.
So the two things that I'm kindaping ponging in between is the I
don't know. I kinda wanna buildbasically, like, the the Axe or
Twitter spaces for Blue Sky andactually have it be more of an

(07:31):
open platform, so kind of like,I don't know. Spaces is kind of
like Clubhouse, but, you know,the Clubhouse app, it was just
always kinda weird that it was,like, stuck in this app. Even
Twitter spaces, you know, if youweren't actually on Twitter, you
didn't really know about it. Imean, maybe you got a push

(07:52):
notification if you had thoseenabled.
I think there's something thereto to where it could be
interesting about having almostkind of like a not necessarily
decentralized, but something towhere it's a conversation space
that is targeted. And I guess Iwould start with Blue Sky just
just just because I already haveso much there. And, I think I

(08:16):
could probably get pretty quickup and running as far as the
OAuth and some ties into beingable to, send messages or push
notifications when certainevents are happening. So yeah.
So I I kinda wanna do that.
I also kinda wanna play aroundwith, like, a posting app, like
a really, like, posting appwhere I can post out across

(08:39):
multiple networks and see howthat might go. I don't know. I
just wanna I wanna tinker onsomething. And at this point, I
feel like the things that I needto work on for starter packs is
really just the stuff that I'mnot really, like, quite that
interested in right now. So Iguess I'm kind of at a
crossroads where I'm gonna tryto figure out what that next

(09:02):
thing is.
I will do some live streamingwhile I this stuff. So if you're
interested into seeing a a newproject get spun up, I'm gonna
do some live streams on onYouTube and Twitch and stuff.
And I might even, see if, Ecammcan tap into stream. Place,

(09:23):
which is like a basically astreaming platform that's based
on the the AT pro protocol, andwe'll see where that goes. But
quick little update on starterpacks, how that's doing on SEO
front, some numbers, and catchthe livestream if you wanna see

(09:43):
which project I end up tinkeringon next.
And if it's interesting to you,we can dive in and jam out
together. So with that, I'm RyanHefner. This is the All Play
podcast. You can find episodesat allplay.fm, and I hope to see
you on the livestream soon. Sohop on in, share what project

(10:03):
you're working on.
Obviously, I'll do the same andif you wanna, ask any questions
or or just, you know, havequestions that you have for your
project, let me know and we'lljust jam on some livestreams
together. Alright. Have a greatone. Later.