It started with a message on Upwork. The client had a blog all about outdoor camping and overlanding—trail guides, gear tips, first-hand stories. But the March 2024 Google update wrecked it. They lost almost all their rankings. Organic traffic flatlined. Nothing they did seemed to help.
They were looking for someone who could figure out what went wrong and pull the site out of the ditch. I’ve worked on tough recoveries before, so I took the call.
Starting with the Mess
The backlink profile was my first stop, and yeah—it was bad. The site had picked up a bunch of low-quality links over time. Some looked automated, others were buried in irrelevant directories. Anchor text was over-optimized. It was clear Google had finally said, “Enough.”
I compiled the worst of the worst and submitted a disavow file to Google. That doesn’t solve everything, but it gives you room to rebuild.
Link Building That Actually Mattered
Next, I focused on getting quality links from places that made sense—sites owned by real campers, off-grid travelers, gear reviewers who actually test what they write about.
No mass outreach. Just one-on-one conversations. I reached out to people who care about the same things. We linked up through shared interests, interviews, even swapped guest posts. The links we earned weren’t just for SEO—they made sense contextually, and Google noticed.
Scrapping the Fluff Content
We took a hard look at the blog. A lot of the old content was generic. It looked like it had been written just to rank, but didn’t have much soul.
So we got rid of the worst and rewrote the rest. We made it personal. Practical. Useful. Stuff like:
- The real gear that held up on a month-long solo trip
- What it’s like to camp in the desert with no signal and no backup
- Lessons learned from gear failures in the rain
This wasn’t about chasing algorithms. It was about building trust with the people who actually read it.
Letting Intent Drive the Strategy
Instead of stuffing in keywords, we followed user intent.
People landing on the site wanted help planning trips, picking gear, and avoiding rookie mistakes. So we built content around that. Organized it into clean clusters. Internally linked everything in a way that kept users moving through the site.
It wasn’t flashy—but it worked.
The Comeback
By month six, the blog was breathing again. Steady growth. Better rankings. And by the one-year mark? Over 9,000 organic visitors a month. No ads. No gimmicks.
And this wasn’t low-quality traffic. These were campers, overlanders, people bookmarking the site, returning for updates, sharing posts with friends.
That blog went from being penalized and ignored to becoming a real player in its space. It still has room to grow, but now it’s on solid ground.
It all started with a message on Upwork and a site that just needed the right kind of care. If you’re in the same boat, there’s a way forward—you just need the right plan, and someone who knows how to execute it.
