Let's get back to indie
by Wes BurkeThis project has been around for just over 14 years, and it still very much feels like an indie project. Maybe it's the nature of running an online project, but while generally there is some consistency in direction and the vision of what we're building at CG Cookie, the day-to-day, or month-to-month can feel very messy.
It's embarrassing to see our last post here is approaching nearly two years old. A lot has changed since our last post
CG Cookie moved to an annual subscription model, with the intention to make a different kind of cookie - https://cgcookie.com/posts/making-a-different-type-of-cookie
In March of 2022, we successfully migrated our site to the Mavenseed platform we've been building for the past few years. Overall this move has been a successful one, though we did get hit with a penalty from Google, drastically reducing our organic traffic and SERP ratings.
We're digging out, but it's been a learning experience!
The CG Cookie ovens are roaring, with three Blender courses set to be completed and released by the end of this year. https://cgcookie.com/p/coming-soon-to-cg-cookie
Thanks for hanging with us over the years, especially now as we get back to our indie roots, making amazing Blender content while having a bit of fun.
Wes
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Hi @wesburke ... I'm right there with you. Our product, Calendar Snack, is working on it's 10th year of life (in some version or another). Agreed how the day-to-day journey (as a part-time team) can feel like you're making little or no progress - but then you look back over a year, and you got several things accomplished.
Like my co-founder says all the time - if you come in each day and do your 100 push-ups and sit-up - you'll make progress.
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What did you get hit with the Google penalty for? I sometimes feel like a bit of a boy scout in not attempting any of the more grey area SEO tactics.
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To be clear, an official penalty was not handed out, though we did lose around 50% of our organic traffic over night. In part from not fully understanding how this would impact us. (now we know 😅 ), and in part by Google's design.
There are certainly a few more things we could have done in preparation, though we were consumed with migrating the actual data and getting that right.
I found Google has an informative "change of address" page dedicated to it.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9370220?visit_id=637554057505432833-2612991358&rd=1
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