So we were looking at our network stats last night around 11pm and were thinking to ourselves “how can we improve the blog visibility for our individual members on autopilot?”. We’re about to get all these amazing bloggers publishing incredible content daily, and some of them will be writing stuff that deserves way more eyeballs than it will initially get.
And that’s just… wrong.
You spend three hours researching, writing, editing a post. You hit publish. Maybe you share it on social media where it gets lost in the algorithm void within 47 minutes. Your mom comments. That one person who always comments on everything comments. Then crickets.
Meanwhile, your perfectly good content sits there waiting for Google to maybe – maybe – decide to rank it somewhere on page 94 for a keyword nobody actually searches for.
We’re fixing that. Well, part of it anyway.
Table of Contents
Your Posts Are Now Homepage Material (Finally)
Here’s what changed: every time you publish a new post on your Badass Network blog, it automatically appears in our new homepage activity feed. Not buried somewhere. Not in some obscure “recent posts” widget at the bottom that nobody scrolls to.
Front and center.
This matters more than you might think for blog network exposure. When your post shows up on our homepage, you’re getting:
Immediate indexing opportunities. Search engines crawl our homepage constantly – like, multiple times per hour. Your fresh content gets discovered faster. Way faster than if it was just sitting on your individual blog waiting for Googlebot to wander by during its monthly check-in.
Built-in backlink from a high-traffic page. Every post in that feed links directly to your article. That’s a link from our network’s main domain pointing to your content. You know what search engines love? Relevant, contextual links from active sites. (We mean, they love a lot of things, but this is definitely on the list.)
Real human eyeballs from other bloggers. This isn’t just about search engines. Other network members are checking the homepage to see what’s being published. You’re getting exposure to people who might actually read your stuff, comment, share it with their audience. Actual engagement. Remember engagement?
We’ve watched so many good posts die in obscurity because nobody knew they existed. This feed is designed to increase blog traffic by making sure your content actually gets seen by people who care about good blogging.
Plus – and this is kind of a side benefit we didn’t expect – it creates this weird accountability thing? Like, when you know your posts are going to show up on the network homepage, you maybe try a little harder. Or at least we do. (Could just be us though.)
The Blog Checker Moved (And Why That’s Not Boring)
Okay, this sounds like a minor UI tweak. “Oh cool, you moved a form. Revolutionary.”
Except it kind of is important for how our network grows.
We moved the blog name availability checker to the top of the homepage. Middle of the page. Impossible to miss. Because here’s what was happening: people would land on the homepage, scroll around looking at posts, maybe read a bio or two, then leave without ever checking if their blog name was available.
Which meant they never even got to the “oh wow, I could actually join this network” moment.
Now? They see it immediately. Type in their desired blog name. Get instant feedback.
And here’s where it gets interesting for the affiliate blog network model we’re running: if they came through an active affiliate’s link and the blog name is available, they go straight to checkout. No waitlist. No waiting around. They can secure their blog right then.
If there’s no active affiliate referral? Waitlist.
We know that sounds harsh – “sorry, you have to wait because nobody sent you.” But we’re deliberately keeping the network small while we finish building out the backend systems. The affiliate requirement is our way of controlled growth. We want people who are connected to existing members, who understand what we’re building here, who were referred by someone who trusts them enough to send them our way.
It’s not exclusive to be exclusive. It’s exclusive to be functional. (There’s probably a better way to say that, but you get the idea.)
Mobile Wasn’t Working Right – Now It Does
Real talk: the mobile version had issues. Specifically with the header scrolling and positioning.
If you were on mobile and scrolling down, the WordPress admin bar would scroll away (which is normal), but then our sticky header would… we don’t even know how to describe it. It would jump? Create weird gaps? Sometimes it would cover content. Sometimes it would float off into space.
It was bad. Like, “we should probably fix this before someone notices” bad. Except people definitely noticed because we got emails about it.
So we fixed it. The header now smoothly tracks when the admin bar scrolls away on mobile. No jumping. No gaps. No content getting mysteriously hidden behind the header when you’re trying to read something.
Also fixed the smooth scrolling for anchor links to account for the admin bar offset. Because nothing says “professional website” like clicking an anchor link and ending up 50 pixels too high, with the content you wanted to see hidden behind the header.
These aren’t sexy updates. Nobody’s going to email us like “wow, the header positioning is incredible.” But they make the site actually usable on mobile, which is kind of important considering mobile accounts for roughly 60% of web traffic these days.
What This Actually Means For Your Blog’s Visibility
Let us be direct: we can’t promise your traffic will triple overnight because of these updates. That’s not how blog visibility works, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
But here’s what we can say:
Your content now has more pathways to being discovered. More entry points. More chances for someone – whether that’s a search engine bot or a actual human reader – to find what you wrote and actually care about it.
Every post you publish gets promoted on our network homepage. That’s exposure you wouldn’t get on a standalone WordPress blog sitting by itself on some shared hosting plan. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that – we all start somewhere. Aron started on web-log.nl in 2003. It was… a time.)
The homepage feed updates in real-time. Well, close enough to real-time. Within a few seconds of you hitting publish, your post is live on the homepage feed. It stays there rotating through with other recent posts from the network.
And because our homepage is getting decent traffic from the network community checking in regularly, your post is being seen by people who actually want to read blog content. Not random bots. Not people who accidentally clicked thinking they were going somewhere else. Bloggers. Writers. Your actual potential audience.
Is this going to replace having a solid content strategy and doing actual SEO work on your posts? No. Obviously not. You still need good titles, proper formatting, internal linking, all that stuff that makes content actually rankable.
But it’s another tool in your arsenal. Another advantage that network members have over solo bloggers grinding it out alone.
Side Note About What’s Coming Next
We’re working on some backend stuff that we can’t fully talk about yet. But it involves better analytics for network members – like, being able to see which of your posts are getting the most traction on the homepage feed, where your traffic is coming from within the network, that kind of thing.
Also exploring some community features that might be interesting. Maybe forums? Maybe a Discord? We haven’t decided yet. Input welcome.
For now though, these updates are live. Your posts are already showing up in the new homepage feed. The blog checker is already in its new prominent location. The mobile issues are already fixed.
If you’re already on the network, just keep publishing. Your content is automatically getting more exposure now.
If you’re not on the network yet and you’re reading this somehow… check if your blog name is available. If you’ve got an affiliate connection, you can join today. If not, get on the waitlist and we’ll let you know when we open up more spots.
Either way, welcome to a network where your content actually gets seen.