Battling with the big boys
And the battle of the SERPS
Let me show you a couple of screenshots from Google.
The first is our website’s positioning for the search term ‘Mac mini buying guide’. At the time of writing, it’s residing in second place on page one of Google, sandwiched between MacRumors and one of my YouTube videos.
The second is taken from the first page of results for the search term ‘iPhone 16 Pro Max’. When researching products on Google, you’ll often be presented with a bar on the right-hand side of the screen displaying key details about that product, including expert reviews. And there we are, again, this time, joining Tom’s Guide and TechRadar.
What is going on?
I wrote recently about the fact that I've assembled a team behind the markellisreviews.com website. It consists of writers, an SEO expert, and a technical guy. We’ve also had to draft in help from some other technical people to assist with ad-hoc upgrades and fixes. They’re all, basically, doing their bit to make what was once a one-man-band blog battle with the big boys of the tech publishing industry.
The performance of our website in SERPS (search engine results pages) is as impressive as it is volatile. Rankings change, often, but we seem to be maintaining incredibly positive positions overall, and the number of instances where our poky little - to coin a Top Gear phrase - independent website rubs shoulders with much larger publications is increasing.
This won’t go unnoticed. It certainly isn’t by people who are entering those search terms; they continue to flood into the website daily at a steady rate, generating some great advertising revenue.
I’m sure those big publications have also caught wind of our presence.
“Who’s this Mark Ellis guy?!”
We’re not laughing our way to the bank, though. As I’ve also noted on previous occasions, the website arm of my business isn’t profitable. It won’t be for quite a while, but we intend to make it so. This is against the backdrop of a pretty dreadful era for blogging. The continued march of AI-generated content into the Google SERPS is relentless. You’ll have witnessed it; search for pretty much anything these days, and the first thing you’re met with is Google’s AI platform, Gemini, providing pretty much all of the information you need without you ever visiting any of the websites from which it may have grabbed the information.
This is known as the ‘zero-click’ search era and it has already killed off a lot of independent blogs. Studies have shown that nearly 60% of Google searches in 2024 end without a click. Once again, you’ll probably recognise this in your own behaviour. When was the last time you had to dig through the list of websites on page one of a Google search? How many times did that Gemini answer at the top of the page give you everything you needed? It’s happened several times already for me this morning.
Given this new landscape, you might wonder why I’m investing so much time and money into my little website. The answer is twofold. Firstly, it remains an integral part of the content production process at Mark Ellis Media. Virtually every YouTube video we make starts life as a blog post on markellisreviews.com. The two have gone hand-in-hand for nearly five years, and I see no benefit in breaking the link; our videos would take much longer to make if we did. Equally, I’m pretty sure that the intrinsic link between my presence on YouTube and our website is one of the key reasons for the latter’s success.
Secondly, despite the onslaught of AI, it’s clear to us that Google is still very much interested in sending people to the most relevant websites for their queries. The search giant has spent a lot of time over the last few years attempting to rid its SERPS of manufactured clickbait content that is created for the sole purpose of selling ad space. It wants real opinions from real people who demonstrate that they know what they’re talking about. It’s why we’re publishing countless photos of the writing team using the stuff we’re reviewing. It’s why we’re investing time in building out the profiles of each writer and illustrating that they’re real people. It’s why we’re still writing every post, word-for-word, and only using AI to generate the bare bones of content that isn’t opinion-led.
The results of this considerable effort are clear to see. It’s why we’re ranking alongside MacRumors, Tom’s Guide, The Guardian, and TechRadar. They’re all created by real people, too.
Don’t get me wrong - this is bloody hard work and, as noted, expensive. But the results we’re seeing give me plenty of reason to continue focusing on the website’s growth and to set a path for profitability. It should also give anyone who is reading this some hope that their independent writing efforts won’t go unnoticed by the big ‘G’ - nor will they be eradicated by the marching army of AI assistance.