Subtitle: From 0 to Indexed. An Ongoing SEO Experiment for Independent Creators
1. Introduction
In the previous article, I argued that a “new form of craftsmanship” must include more than philosophy.
It must also solve the problem of survival. You can’t separate meaning from making a living.
Last time, I focused on values and production.
[See: Critique of Matthew Crawford — Why romanticizing manual labor fails in the age of AI]
[See: Why Small Business, Creators Must Hack Systems, Not Perfect Skills]
In this article, I want to focus on distribution, especially platforms. This piece is written for people who are suffering because their content does not appear on Google at all.
2. Why You Must Understand Platform Distribution
Here is the core question of this article:
“Why do skilled creators still fail online, even if their work is good?”
Answer: If you don’t understand platforms, algorithms, and domain structures, there is no road. In this article, I will talk about the mistakes you are likely to make when you build your own website as a small business owner or creator.
In the past, craftsmen only had to make good products. That world is gone. In the 21st century, even if you bake amazing bread or write brilliant articles, no one will come if there is no road to your shop.
When my sitemap broke and Google bots stopped reading my posts, I realized something simple and brutal: If you don’t understand the algorithm that opens your store’s door, your products will rot in the showcase forever. Today, a craftsman’s shop must become a ship sailing through the ocean of algorithms. That’s why I started by studying the difference between: rented platform stores, and independent websites.
My conclusion was simple. I chose WordPress with an independent domain.
3. Building a Store on Big Platforms
Why do people willingly pay rent to large platforms and build their stores there?
(1) Pros: Almost Zero Entry Barriers
First, low technical difficulty.
If you sell through Amazon, Naver, TikTok Shop, Instagram, or YouTube Shop, you don’t face serious technical confusion. But with an independent domain, the biggest problem is this: when traffic is zero, you don’t know what is wrong.
You are not a big company. You can’t hire a full-time webmaster. Even if you ask AI, you still need to ask the right questions. If you do nothing, no one tells you what’s broken. Freelance developers won’t take full responsibility either. They are not permanent partners. On big platforms, this problem disappears. You just upload products.
Second, massive traffic and easier marketing.
Big platforms already have crowds. So you are more likely to get views and sales. They also handle search optimization inside the platform. Independent domains get none of that. You must do everything yourself. I even know someone who ran a clothing store and used Instagram dance videos of hot girl to attract traffic and redirect people to his own site. (The business failed.)
Third, payment systems are easy.
I once tried to connect Stripe payments to my WordPress site. After 4–5 hours of work, I finally built a payment page. Then I failed. Because in Korea, you can register for Stripe, but you can’t actually process payments. On platforms, this problem does not exist. Payment systems are ready, trusted, and optimized for UX. You don’t need to think about it.
(2) Cons: No Loyalty, Price Wars, No Brand
So, what are the downsides? Platform stores are easily dragged into dopamine-driven competition: new items, lowest price, constant promotions.
First, it is hard to build loyal customers.
In my Toyota Pub series, I kept saying this: Don’t chase new customers with dopamine marketing. Focus on people who already visited once. Make them stay because they feel comfortable. But platform stores cannot fully own customer data. You must constantly hunt new buyers. That means your content is forced into: dopamine competition, higher marketing costs. If it’s not new, hot, and stimulating, the algorithm ignores you. Production costs go up. But unless you hit big sales, you lose money. Even if one product explodes, when sales are concentrated in only a few items, overall cost management becomes unstable. That destroys capital efficiency (ROI).
Second, brutal price competition.
Price wars are what kill small businesses. Once you compete on price, large companies and distributors enter your category. Algorithms rank cheaper products higher, even if the difference is just one cent. Small sellers cannot survive that. So you sell more, but keep almost nothing. Platform algorithms turn your store into just one shelf inside a digital dollar store. If someone sells it cheaper next to you, your product goes straight to the warehouse. That is the real rent of platforms.
Third, brand differentiation is extremely difficult.
In online environments, brand matters more than product. People cannot touch or experience the real object. But platforms standardize everything: layout, browsing, checkout. This is for operational efficiency. So customers don’t remember buying from SaltnFire. They remember buying from Amazon. You already can’t fully manage customer data. Now they don’t even remember your store. That is a fatal problem.
(3) Who Actually Wins on Platforms?
In reality, platform marketplaces gather: companies that cannot manage independent sites, and small sellers and creators. But to win there, you need all of this:
- products that don’t require loyalty
- massive daily demand
- strong price competitiveness through bulk purchasing
- budget for promotions and ads (algorithm favor this)
So the winners are those who:
- sell products big companies don’t sell directly,
- offer the lowest price,
- constantly source new items, and
- can afford continuous marketing.
Content creators are not that different. The format is different, but the structure is the same.
📊 Where Should You Open Your Store?
| Category | Platform-Based Store (Amazon, Naver Smart Store, etc.) | Independent Store (WordPress, Shopify, etc.) |
|---|---|---|
| Metaphor | A shop inside a department store (huge foot traffic) | A small shop in a side street (customers must seek you out) |
| Pros | Easy to set up, customers come immediately | No platform fees, full control over loyal customers |
| Cons | High “rent” (fees), brutal price competition | No traffic at first, must learn SEO and site management |
| Best for | Sellers who want to compete with volume and fast turnover | Owners with a strong brand philosophy and long-term vision |
4. Choosing an Independent Store
From the perspective of someone who sells writing as a product, I chose an independent website instead of large platforms like Substack or Medium. That decision caused serious problems with traffic and SEO. This section is about those problems. An independent store is like a shop in a small side street. Customers do not pass by naturally. They only come if the technical structure is built correctly.
Most independent stores are built on platforms like: WordPress, Shopify. In the early stage of business, payment systems and transaction fees are not the main problem. The real problems are these two.
(1) There Is No Easy Way to Get Traffic
Unless you are already famous through: mainstream media, or TV, or major institutions, or viral social media fame, your independent website has almost no brand power. So attracting traffic is extremely difficult. The fastest method is usually aggressive attention grabbing: provocative dance videos, celebrity call-out videos, selling success courses. But let’s be honest. These methods are not sustainable. The real solution is simple but painful:
You must consistently produce competitive content or products and build a long-term archive.
But very few people survive this long process. So in the short term, the minimum survival goal becomes: “At least appear in Google search results.”
(2) Many Independent Sites Get Labeled as Low-Quality by Google
Symptoms of a Low-Quality Domain
I cannot speak for Shopify because I have not used it. So I will focus on WordPress. My blog does not appear on Google at all right now. It has been online for more than 9 months.
[Photo: Zero Appearance on Google , Search Result of “Site:yourdomain.com”]
Why? Before your content can appear in search results, it must be indexed by Google. But in many cases, indexing simply does not happen. In my case, things were fine at first.
- Posts were indexed within seconds. 😘
- Search exposure existed.
- Traffic was coming in.
Then suddenly, everything disappeared. This usually means your domain has been classified as low quality.
Typical Signs of a Low-Quality Site
- Google crawls far more pages than the number of real posts.
- When you search
site:yourdomain.com, you see a chaotic mix of:- tag pages
- category pages
- archive pages
- actual posts
In this situation, empty list pages often rank higher than real content.
Over time, Google lowers your domain score and may stop indexing altogether.
- When you search
site:yourdomain.com, no posts appear at all. Everything has been de-indexed.
Remember: If your site is healthy, you should mostly see only actual posts.
Cause #1: Multiple URL Structures
WordPress automatically generates many URLs for one piece of content. If you do not control this structure, search engines will crawl unnecessary pages. That is why SEO plugins like Yoast SEO > Setting provide options to block:
- tag pages
- author archives
- date archives
- Format archives
- Media pages
In most cases, all of these should be set to noindex. These are duplicate pages, making your domain a cluttered site with thin content. I Checked ‘Search appearance’ option 👉 Disabled.
But I allow category indexing to serve as a structural roadmap for Googlebot. Category pages are technically thin content, but given the simplicity of my site structure, I thought indexing them wouldn’t meaningfully contribute to any low-quality signals.
Let’s see.
[Photo: Yoast SEO Settings > I set every duplicate page to “noindex”. Search Appearance disabled]
I discovered this problem around October and fixed my sitemap structure and robots.txt file. I have been cleaning my domain for three months. (Now, 1/27) You can also speed up recovery by manually removing pages in:
Search Console → Removals →
https://yourdomain.com/tag/
[Photo: Search Console Removal page, Written in Korean. It said ‘request complete’]
My Cleanup Results (Google Search Console)
- Oct 20: I fixed sitemap structure
- Dec 23: from 800 low-quality pages down to 285 (real posts: about 160)
- Jan 21: down to 269 (real posts: about 172)
- Jan 25: dropped to 75 (real posts: 173)
- The number of pages that Google decided to crawl but not index has decreased.
[Photo: After three months of restructuring website, I saw a significant reduction in low-quality pages]
At this point, I decided to make a major move. To restore domain trust:
- I started rewriting old articles to improve readability.
- I deleted my Medium account completely to prevent duplicate sources.
Now I am waiting to see what happens next. (I will continue updating this case.)
Indexing Status Recent Update – Feb 5, 2026
1] Discovered → Currently Not Indexed
- Six category pages were detected by Google Search Console for the first time.
- This likely means Googlebot has recognized the site’s category structure after about 10 months.
- Since category pages contain relatively low standalone information value, they appear to be staying in the “discovered” stage for now.
2] Crawled → Currently Not Indexed
- The number of pages in this status increased after recent readability-focused rewrites.
- Manual indexing requests were submitted mainly for core articles during the rewriting process.
3] Current Indexed Pages
- As of now, the domain still has only one indexed page.
4] Interpretation
At this stage:
- Google has likely started understanding the site structure.
- However, full content indexing has not started yet, which suggests an early evaluation phase rather than a rejection.
Battle Tip
If
site:yourdomain.comshows many pages other than posts, suspect multiple URL problems and fix them immediately.
Cause #2: Incorrect Canonical Settings
If you publish the same content on multiple platforms, you must set canonical URLs correctly. Canonical tells Google: “This is the original source.” If canonical is not set, Google indexes the version with higher domain authority. But In my case, even with canonical settings, Google kept indexing Medium instead of my blog.
[Photo: Even though I’ve properly configured my canonical settings on Medium, my Medium account is being indexed instead of saltnfire.net.]
Why? Because Medium’s domain authority is far higher than personal blogs. So I made a brutal decision: I deleted my Medium account entirely. Similar problems can happen on Shopify. For example, when one product generates multiple pages through: collections, color variations, size options. If canonical is not handled correctly, Google may treat all of them as duplicate low-quality pages. Then even new products may never appear in search results.
Battle Tips
- You can spread flyers everywhere, but always mark the original address.
- For new sites, it is safer to cross-post to Medium or Substack only after stable traffic is established.
Cause #3: Reporting Matters
After you change site structure, you must: delete the old sitemap, and submit the new sitemap to Google and Bing. Many people forget this step. If you do not update your sitemap, search bots keep crawling the old, broken structure. New sites already have: small crawl budgets, and long revisit intervals. With outdated sitemaps, your site looks permanently low-quality to Google. Domain trust drops even further, and new content never appears. For new products or new posts, manual indexing requests are essential.
Battle Tip
Whenever you change: robots.txt, noindex rules, sitemap structure. Always resubmit your sitemap immediately.
Cause #4: JavaScript Eats More Crawl Budget Than HTML
WordPress installs many plugins by default. If you do not optimize performance, Google bots may spend most of their crawl budget reading: effects, animations, tracking scripts, instead of your actual content. A blog exists for one reason: content. If fancy features, auto ads, and heavy analytics tools slow down content delivery, they must be removed.
In general, the HTML portion (actual text) should be equal to or larger than the JavaScript portion of your page.
[Photo: Google Search Console crawl statistics. View JavaScript and HTML crawl rates.
In My case, JavaScript 38% > HTML 23%. It means that I have problem. ]
🧪 How to Diagnose This
Open your blog in Chrome. Press F12 to open Developer Tools.
- Click the Lighthouse tab.
- Click Analyze page load.
- After the score appears, scroll down.
- Find “Reduce unused JavaScript.”
You will see exactly which plugins or themes are responsible. In my case:
- I had added
adsbygoogle.jseven though AdSense was not approved. - Jetpack and Google Site Kit were slowing everything down.
- Jetpack features like image acceleration and VideoPress were routing traffic through external servers, making things even slower.
I deleted unused plugins and disabled unnecessary features. After optimization, my performance score jumped by more than 20 points. (From 61 → 83)
Battle Tip
SEO setups vary by domain. Use ChatGPT or Gemini to analyze your site case-by-case. But if you understand the concepts in this article, you will know what to ask. Good prompts come from understanding problem & structure.
(3) Internal and External Linking Strategy
Now let’s move from technical cleanup to positioning. The next question is:
“How do I convince search engines that this site is an expert on something?”
The answer is: link structure.
Internal Links: Building Content Clusters
To be recognized as an authority, your pages must connect tightly. From Google’s perspective: If pages about tents, lanterns, and sleeping bags are linked together, this looks like a camping specialty store. That is content clustering.
If you link: high-traffic pages to low-traffic or new pages , you can boost rankings. But careless, excessive internal linking hurts user experience. Dwell time is the most important index. Too much internal link can increase bounce rates. So internal links should follow real context:
- product explanations
- related photos
- relevant articles
Internal linking is not just an SEO trick. It is how you give users a reason to stay inside your site. That is why I link articles with similar themes and logic.
External Links: Backlinks with Meaning
When traffic comes from high-authority domains like: Reddit, Medium, Twitter (X). Google increases your credibility. This is what people call backlinks. But buying backlinks in bulk is dangerous. Most paid link networks: have no real users, or hurt domain trust after short-term effects. Organic references are slow, but safer.
Note: When I was running my store, I didn’t do any advertising at all. Yet, thanks to Google’s targeted exposure, Slovakians kept coming back. Based on that experience, I’ve philosophically considered why you shouldn’t purchase external traffic.
(4) Traffic Diversification is Good Only If You Have Enough Resources
Google changes its algorithm thousands of times per year. Depending on one traffic source is dangerous. You need one main source, then distribute content through multiple formats: video, shorts, audio. However, do not create all your content using AI. No matter how good the content is, people will criticize it if it smells like AI. If targeting multi-platform channels is difficult due to a lack of time and resources, it might be better to focus on selling just one.
Here is what I did :
- Blog → GPT summary → Medium (with canonical link) → Stopped
- Blog → NotebookLM → 7-minute video → YouTube → Stopped
- Blog → NotebookLM → PDF → LinkedIn → Stopped
- Blog → NotebookLM → Podcast → Stopped
- Blog → GPT shorts script → InVideo AI → YouTube Shorts → Stopped
- Hiphop Music Analysis Blog (Korean/Japanese)
I stopped everything except Hiphop Blog. Because my resources are limited.
(5) Platform Review: What Actually Works
Spotify / Apple Podcasts
Discovery is weak. No matter the topic, exposure is difficult. However, Spotify syndicates your podcast to many small global platforms automatically. Still, discovery was too low. I paused this channel.
YouTube
Exposure is faster than Google or podcasts. But the algorithm favors: financial panic, political conflict, gender wars, food reviews, cute animals, games, comedy. If your content fits these, you can run AI-driven content farms. Run it at a low cost. If the response is good, it might be a good idea to do a live broadcast. Here is how it works.
‼️ Note: This was part of a content plan I originally designed when I was considering running an economics-focused YouTube channel. In the end, I did not execute it. Personally, writing fits me much better than broadcasting.
Step 1: Keyword Extraction
- What: trending economic keywords (example: rate cuts, bitcoin crash, housing collapse)
- How: Google Trends, YouTube Data API
Step 2: Processing and Packaging (GPT + ElevenLabs)
- Script (GPT): To create a 15-minute video with two mid-roll ads, you can use this process. First, request an outline based on trending keywords. Then, ask for about 1,000 words of text for each section. Finally, combine everything into a single script. Include 3 data references. Trigger fear, anger in the intro. Mix in generational, gender, regional conflicts and conspiracy framing. If you start by setting up full recording equipment and writing scripts by hand for every episode, your channel will grow far too slowly. YouTube is not like a text-based blog. This platform runs on speed. Not quality. 👉 You must scatter bait first and place high-end fishing rods only where fish actually gather.
- In the beginning, run low-cost content farms. When certain channels show traction, focus your resources there. That is when you shift into: live broadcasting, deeper market analysis, and higher-quality production. This approach is much faster than trying to build everything perfectly from day one.
- Voice (ElevenLabs): Convert into trustworthy narration.
Step 3: Visualization (AI Video Generators)
Tools: InVideo, Vrew, Pictory. They auto-match stock footage: “Market crash” → red falling arrows, “Money pouring in” → counting cash footage. Time per video: about 30 minutes.
Step 4: Distribution (Cluster Bombing)
Instead of one channel, run many farms: Fun Economics, Honest Economics, Our Economy, Tomorrow’s Economy.
Strategy:
- Operate 5–10 channels at once.
- Only 1–2 need to hit algorithmic success.
- 15-minute videos allow multiple mid-roll ads.
- More profitable than Shorts-only channels.
That becomes your cash cow.
Step 5: Attach Shopping
Tag products from partner shopping platforms. ⚠ Warning: If you upload similar content across many channels, YouTube may demonetize all of them.
Medium
Yes, it can work: small investment, publish in big publications, gain claps, grow followers. But editorial rules are strict. Some publications demand ownership of original content. Outside publications, organic exposure is minimal. I posted over 70 articles. Monthly impressions were around 100. Traffic circulated inside Medium, but did not flow to my own domain. I also could not join partner programs due to residency and nationality restrictions. So I deleted my account.
5. Conclusion
In this article, I focused on one practical truth:
Modern craftsmen must understand platform distribution structures.
Everything here is based on what I personally experienced online. We covered:
- Platform-based stores vs. independent websites → pros, cons, and who benefits from each
- What to watch out for when running independent sites (WordPress, Shopify, etc.)
- How domains get labeled as low-quality by Google and how to avoid it
- How to diversify traffic using AI tools
Even if you outsource website management, (That’s fine) it helps to understand the basic logic of how these systems work. Endorphin craftsmanship does not assume “one big lucky breakthrough.” It is a strategy of: understanding structure, spreading risk, and building systems that become stronger over time. I hope this article helps small business owners and creators develop their instincts for distribution and survival.
If there are major changes in SEO behavior, I will continue updating this article.
If you enjoyed this article, you can support the project – thank you!