Another Google Update on It's way

[royserpa]

https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4947706-9-30.htm



This is a long post but if you're suffering from a traffic drop, please read.

I am writing this post in order to gain more information on what is happening in the SEO space with Google right now, and to help members get a better grasp on the state of SEO in 2019.

After being active in this forum for a few months (lurking mostly), I have come to the conclusion that in 2019 the way our sites rank in Google have less to do with us making SEO changes and more to do with factors outside our control.

This is why.

Here you can find screenshots of my site traffic from December 2018 to present day: [https://www.webmasterworld.com/r.cgi?f=30&d=4947706&url=https://imgur.com/1aW686p...]

Here you can see the biggest algorithmic change to my site by month: [https://www.webmasterworld.com/r.cgi?f=30&d=4947706&url=https://imgur.com/Cpvaljy...]

Some background: After the big medic update in October my site lost 30% traffic.

I took a deep hard look at my site and I had to agree with Google, my site wasn’t as optimised for SEO as it should be and my rankings lowered. I wasn’t paying attention and was just coasting along while others sites were improving.

I waited a few months to see if things would change but they didn’t. So in December I joined Ahrefs/SEMrush and took action on my site.

I did all of the following:

* removed 35% of pages from my site that were causing bloat and no organic traffic
* created a whole internal link building strategy to ensure every page had at least 3 relevant internal links to each article (you can see the results of this below)
* upgraded to HTTPS
* installed a CDN with cloudfare
* got my website load time down from 3 seconds to less than 1 second
* got my Google Page Insights up from 60 to 85 on mobile and 60 to 99 on desktop (see photo)
* changed web host to reduce my TTFB from 2.2 seconds to less than 400ms.
* decreased bounce rate by 10.40% (photo below)
* increased average session duration by 44% (photo below)
* Increased pages/session by 23% (photo below)
* updated older articles
* wrote articles about super relevant things and during these months I got quite a few relevant backlinks from high quality sites.

I did not hire anyone or do any black hat marketing. I have no manual penalties and never have on any of my sites.

After making all these changes in December and early January I made no other major SEO changes to my site.

You can see my on-site website performance increased after these changes were made: [https://www.webmasterworld.com/r.cgi?f=30&d=4947706&url=https://imgur.com/wAIfhVC...]

Here is my Page speed insights: [https://www.webmasterworld.com/r.cgi?f=30&d=4947706&url=https://imgur.com/6a2fJjT...]

I could post my TTFB and response times to show they are under 500ms but I think you get the point.

You need to ignore sessions/new users/users/page views as the comparison is from current day to November before changes were made, and at current day I’ve lost quite a lot of traffic. As you can see my site has -22% less users NOW after making the changes above.

Since making these changes the following has happened to my site:

December = 34% increase
February = 11% increase
March = 22% increase
April = 14% decrease
June = 46% decrease (and going lower)

After doing all that my website is 22% lower than before I made any of these changes and its going lower. Today is not over and I’ve lost another 20% on yesterday which was a 40%- down.

I’m not here to bash Google because for the past 5 years I’ve been able to make an income because of their platform and I’m thankful.

But for me after listening to what Google has been saying for the 9 months, following Ahrefs/SemRush/Brain Dean and the other big players in SEO, after the improvements I've made to my site, I don't get how I'm doing worse. My site today is better, faster, updated, more relevant and has more relvent backlinks today than pre 2019.

How can I have 4 months of great increases followed by a huge thud that knocks me lower than before I improved my site? That doesn not make sense unless Google is using something to rank sites that I don't know about (if I missed anything do let me know).

I’m an info site and I run no adsense, I don’t sell products and less than 1% of my entire site has affiliate links. No pop-ups or email forms.

I’m not doing any of the newb things like having dozens of external links on the home page or anything like that. It’s just an info site that is 6+ years old. Of all my competitions I rank #2 in terms of PA and DA for my site overall. I'm the second oldest site in my niche with the second best backlink profile based on Ahrefs and Semrush.

With these experiences, I believe something wrong with the Google Algorithm, or they are ranking sites using new metrics that nobody knows about, in which case it would be wonderful of them to tell us.

When I search on Google today I do get directed to the right pages so I don’t think Google is broken totally, but something is going on with their algorithm and updates that doesn’t make much sense.

This drop has killed my site’s revenue by 90%, the revenue it made would be enough to cover a family with 2 children. I am lucky that I still have other income steams (a digital marketing agency) so I can still put food on the table and I’m fairly young with no children. But now I need to get more clients as I’m living pretty thin if things stay the way they are.

But there’s are people out there with children and bills to pay and this has is how they feed their family. I cannot imagine what they are going through.

I’m not saying Google should not make changes to search, they have to do become better and stay #1.

But in the eyes of most web masters (based on the comments in this forum, SEOroundtable and other SEO forums I don’t think I can mention) most people have a negative perception for the Google Search term.

And that should not be the case, admins and Google should be on Good terms because they need us just as much as we need them.

I think this can be resolved by Google letting us know what their algorithm changes are focusing on so people like me and others who depend on their website to feed their family, a chance to make a living.

Saying it’s a board update which doesn’t relate to any one thing doesn’t help a single webmaster, and pretty much leaves Google off the hook, which is why they say these types of things.

As a web admin I am sitting here thinking what can I do to improve my sites rankings, I honestly think the best thing I can do is to do nothing and see what happens in the next update, based on all the comments of websites going up and down on this forum.

If the level of communication between web admins and Google does not improve, I don’t think Google is going to dominate search in 10 years.

Google is isolating the people who made their search what is it, I think when you start burning us without advising us on how to improve our sites with better information you’re in a dangerous place.

I don’t want Google to roll back the changes or give me my traffic back, I know I'm not entitled to the traffic and I don't want it give to me, I want to do the best I can with my site so I get the traffic I deserve. But in order to do that I need to know what caused this huge drop of and how I can remedy it.

I don't think I'm alone in this either. So Google, can you please start communicating with us better and become human being rather than being cryptic and distant.

I have the following theories based on what I've seen and experience in the last 9 month:

1. Google is using something to rank sites that most of us including the expert don't know about.

2. Google search is broken. This is based on my site seeing high surges in traffic after making positive SEO changes, only to be at record lows today

3. Google search is fixed. The past updates that shot my website up were algorithm update that made search worse, and the latest algorithm update fixed them. But if this is true that means Google made errors in past updates.

4. Roll out is not fully rolled out and everything will go back to normal. This is the least likely theory based on how many people are seeing huge drops based on sentiment online.

It would be great if more people posted what they did and what changes they have saw so we can get a better idea on what we are dealing with. Feel free to ask me any questions and I'll do my best to answer.

Not enough blackhat man

I often see this comment thrown around, "build whitehat", usually by people that do not understand what whitehat actually means. Pure whitehat means you are not doing any kind of link building to your site at all. By Google's own definition, any form of link building, be that guest posts/editorials at $500 a pop or 50k automated blog comments for $10, it is all the same to Google - you are trying to manipulate your site's position in the SERPs. That is not to say that a link is a link is a link, obviously higher quality links will be safer and/or more effective than spammy links, but both types still qualify as blackhat in Google's eyes.

Ultimately, what Google wants you to do is sit around twiddling your thumbs waiting for your site to rank solely based on its "amazing" content, because Google has scared you into believing "content is king" and away from blackhat, and when you get tired of waiting (because you are not going to rank for any meaningful keywords with 0 backlinks) it will happily point you in the direction of its Google Ads as the only other alternative.

Not enough blackhat man

I'm very well clear on what defines whitehat. As mentioned, I've been in the game for years and experienced almost every type of penalty you can receive. All I'm telling you is building whitehat cant' get you banned, which is correct, and it does sound like you agree with me on this.

BHW is a forum where everyone believes SEO is about CPA offers, surveys and get rich quick schemes. Most of my works has been from major Scandinavian enterprises, and I can guarantee you that evertything is pure whitehat over there. Just thinking about grayhat movements involves board meetings and months of discussion, so there's meaning in going down that road.

I've problably monitored about 100 of these "enterprise sites" throughout the last 3-4 years, and never have I seen one of them get penalized.

I understand that most people here has to build sites that are somewhat Blackhat, or at least grayhat. But there's a huge difference in building quality content and doing large and time consuming outreach campaigns, compared to buying "legit guestpost" links off a shady forum.

Content is king.

"Consuming outreach campaigns" is the same thing as building backlinks... AKA its a blackhat practice to build backlinks...

In a sense, everything you do to INFLUENCE the google search engine results pages is blackhat. Whitehat would be to build a site completely ignoring what google takes as good or bad to rank a site.

REAL WHITEHAT doesn't exist. Everyone builds sites just to influence google serps and try and rank higher.

If you were really whitehat, you wouldn't give a damn about what google thinks about your site.

But by simply working on "keyword density", "keeping within google rules", is just licking google's balls hoping your site ranks...

Seriously, keeping a good "keyword density", for example, doesn't really help anyone except trying to rank in google.

So, in that sense, "consuming outreach campaigns" and "buying 'legit guestposts' links off a shady forum" are exactly the same bullshit, for the sole reason that the goal of doing both things is to influence google serps in your favor. In the end, building links or doing anything to get links, is blackhat seo.

Makes sense?

 

[bartosimpsonio]

Here's the ahrefs screenshot
https://prnt.sc/nym9xzhttps://prnt.sc/nym9xz

That was a pretty good run, considering it was 100% gibberish.

Don't you agree that he proved without shadow of a doubt that content is irrelevant?

 

[royserpa]

That was a pretty good run, considering it was 100% gibberish.

Don't you agree that he proved without shadow of a doubt that content is irrelevant?

No bro, content is king, man!

 

[bartosimpsonio]

No bro, content is king, man!

OK sorry. That settles it.

 

[Zedcov]

My traffic growing insanely after the update. here is my current stat.


fyi my traffic and value before the update was 1k, value $100.

 

[ohnini]

Seems seo is dead

 

[Man101]

My site traffic has reduced by 25% since March 15th, seems to be crawling back up now, albeit very slowly. Dunno what happened. Some KW that I was not trying to rank for are up and others, down.

 

[Phren]

Don't know if it is related but this I month saw a dramatic decrease in bot traffic to the websites I manage, maybe some of the updates were helpful in reducing "obviously nasty" bot traffic.

SEO wise, no real change, slight drop in rankings for stale sites, no change for fresh ones.

 

[Purush]

slightly better for me but not sure because of this update or my seo .

 

[oscilay]

My traffic growing insanely after the update. here is my current stat.
View attachment 116797

fyi my traffic and value before the update was 1k, value $100.

That s some nice stats. What do you think worked well for u? Off page? On page? From the niches I monitor, i d say domain authority took a huge shit on content and relevance to search intent.

 

[Renfield-Files]

PBNs should be avoided since 2016-17. People kept pushing their luck now... Unnatural links will be punished hard also. Some adult directories are already falling apart. By the way, directories had a good run, it's notable that G took so long to erase it.

First they're showing up the favicon, then they will start to show thumbnails, not just highlight some randomized image from the post/article/etc.

 

[Nootan Kumar]

Hi, @https://www.blackhatworld.com/members/seo-sem.989785/

I totally agree with you, everything that you said. My website also heavily hearts by this update, almost 90% of traffic has been gone. I am not doing any black or even gray hat SEO practice on my website. Most of my top ranked keywords pushed on the 2nd or 3rd pages, I am not sure what to do. Just waiting to this update fully settle down.

 

[kromik100]

Not enough blackhat man



Not enough blackhat man



"Consuming outreach campaigns" is the same thing as building backlinks... AKA its a blackhat practice to build backlinks...

In a sense, everything you do to INFLUENCE the google search engine results pages is blackhat. Whitehat would be to build a site completely ignoring what google takes as good or bad to rank a site.

REAL WHITEHAT doesn't exist. Everyone builds sites just to influence google serps and try and rank higher.

If you were really whitehat, you wouldn't give a damn about what google thinks about your site.

But by simply working on "keyword density", "keeping within google rules", is just licking google's balls hoping your site ranks...

Seriously, keeping a good "keyword density", for example, doesn't really help anyone except trying to rank in google.

So, in that sense, "consuming outreach campaigns" and "buying 'legit guestposts' links off a shady forum" are exactly the same bullshit, for the sole reason that the goal of doing both things is to influence google serps in your favor. In the end, building links or doing anything to get links, is blackhat seo.

Makes sense?

You're not reading my posts.... I'm telling you there is a huge difference in grayhat/blackhat techniques, and buying links from a shady forum is not the same as building quality content and outreaching. Yes, they're both partly against the the Google guidelines. But one is significantly more below the radar and partly legit.

Saying that keyword density doesn't exist anymore is again some bullshit that you've read on some other post or forum. It's exactly what I mentioned before, and it's wrong! Run your own single variable test and come back to me again.

Save some time and check larger data studies like Ahrefs and Authorityhacker https://www.authorityhacker.com/million-serps-analyzed/

I'm tired of people being naive.

 

[kromik100]

What do you actually test ? I regard to the plano thynoplasty I remember the person, Kyle did a few test how the bot interact on the page

I test pretty much all I find interesting, but it's very time consuming so I don't get to try out everything. I usually do SEO in "foreign language" as I work here in Scandinavia. So I take the S.I.A test and replicate them in other languages. Sometimes there's a (huge) difference, and sometimes it's the same.

 

[royserpa]

You're not reading my posts.... I'm telling you there is a huge difference in grayhat/blackhat techniques, and buying links from a shady forum is not the same as building quality content and outreaching. Yes, they're both partly against the the Google guidelines. But one is significantly more below the radar and partly legit.

Saying that keyword density doesn't exist anymore is again some bullshit that you've read on some other post or forum. It's exactly what I mentioned before, and it's wrong! Run your own single variable test and come back to me again.

Save some time and check larger data studies like Ahrefs and Authorityhacker https://www.authorityhacker.com/million-serps-analyzed/

I'm tired of people being naive.

Did you read what I posted?

ANY way you to try INFLUENCE the google serps is a blackhat technique. Simple.

Real whitehat is building sites without giving a flying fuck about what google thinks about your site

Everyone is "greyhat" at most as even reaching out to someone to link to your site is against Gs policies...

Regarding the keyword stuff, i said that if you are really whitehat, you are not going to give a flying fuck about what google thinks about your site when building them.

 

[kromik100]

Did you read what I posted?

ANY way you to try INFLUENCE the google serps is a blackhat technique. Simple.

Real whitehat is building sites without giving a flying fuck about what google thinks about your site

Everyone is "greyhat" at most as even reaching out to someone to link to your site is against Gs policies...

Regarding the keyword stuff, i said that if you are really whitehat, you are not going to give a flying fuck about what google thinks about your site when building them.

You wrote "Seriously, keeping a good "keyword density", for example, doesn't really help anyone except trying to rank in google."

Wrong.

 

[Zedcov]

That s some nice stats. What do you think worked well for u? Off page? On page? From the niches I monitor, i d say domain authority took a huge shit on content and relevance to search intent.

both works well, but on page is the most important thing to done first.

on niche i working on, high authority domain shows up

 

[royserpa]

You wrote "Seriously, keeping a good "keyword density", for example, doesn't really help anyone except trying to rank in google."

Wrong.

That means that, for example, keyword density (or whatever freaking stat google wants to take into account to rank a site), serves no other purpose than trying ti rank in google.

Like, a user doesnt give a fuck about freaking meta tags or having keywords in bold... Those "practices" are just there to try to rank google. Thats it!

CLEAR EXAMPLE: Landing Pages!!! You really dont give a fuck about what google thinks about them, why??? Because their purpose is to engage with the user!!!

There is no real whitehat and you are greyhat at best.

 

[fb3003]

I test pretty much all I find interesting, but it's very time consuming so I don't get to try out everything. I usually do SEO in "foreign language" as I work here in Scandinavia. So I take the S.I.A test and replicate them in other languages. Sometimes there's a (huge) difference, and sometimes it's the same.

glad to see someone who does single variable testing. May i know what has been the biggest eye opening test result that you have seen over the last few months?! feel free to PM if you want to keep it a secret. !!! : - )

 

[royserpa]

glad to see someone who does single variable testing. May i know what has been the biggest eye opening test result that you have seen over the last few months?! feel free to PM if you want to keep it a secret. !!! : - )

He's not pming you anything, man.