After the April 2024 updates, some of my sites are being hit and some are not. So here I am, showing some result and comparasion and my guess about what may cause those sites being hit or increased the traffic.
Before I showing my sites, here are some other sites I noticed being hit and gain traffic in same niche.
Case 1: Retro Gaming Niche.
the below video first caught my attention. The owner of Retro Dodo, a retro gaming niche website owner post a video about his website being hit by google since the Helpfult Content Update.
Below is his website SEMrush's report:
as we can see, his traffic did being hit hard by both update, at the same time, I want to see who is the winner of the same niche and what happened. I found the retrododo.com's page : https://retrododo.com/best-pokemon-rom-hacks/ is a good example, because it targeted the "pokemon rom hacks" keyword. This page, at its good time before the HCU, is ranking well, and after that, it is declining. and now I am looking at the SERP to see who is winner now for the same keyword:
Reddit, no need to say more, it is the winner after those updates. Beside that, we have 3 possible websites to check: (with their traffic)
visualboyadvance.org
www.pokecommunity.com
www.pokemoncoders.com
After I checked those sites, I noticed following possible reason for Retro Dodo being hit:
1. Google now prefer UCG content, not only Reddit, the www.pokecommunity.com a pokemon online froum and it doubled its taffic since those update.
2. user signal is a more important factor now, maybe even more important than backlinks. The reason is for the keyword I checked, all 3 result now ranking are full of the list, which means the user may enter the gate URL and explore more URLs of those website, not finished reading and come back to google and goes to next search. On the other hand, Retro Dodo's page now lack the indepth content, it is a well written page for sure. but the reader seems go in, read and come back out. Those may signal google to decrease rank of those pages.
Case 2: Websites that I control
Site 1:
Site 2:
What I have done for 2 sites, both using same method to writing the content (both done by my team), same linking building method (HARO only). I am the only SEO working on the site. So this is a good controled experienment for this April 2024 update.
Major difference is, site 1 is a content blog, and site 2 is a ecommerce brand.
My final thought:
1. pure content site may no more a good choice, either need to add a ecommerce part in the website, even a fake ecommerce part and when visitor clicked to "purchase now", you send them into your Amazon affiliate link or your dropship the item yourself.
I am not sure why a ecommerce function can cause the difference between a winner and loser for those update, my site 1 avoided being hit by HCU but get nuked by the April 2024 update with 90% percent traffic is gone. While another site with same link building and same writing method gained a lot of traffic.
My guess is either Google did not applied the April 2024 update on ecommerce site or it is the user behavier that I said before singled google to boost the rank.
Below is the same idea mentioned by a YTber:
2. with Google adjust their algo like this and I am thinking maybe build a subreddit is a better way to gain traffic? or social media, I can imagine the Retro Dodo owner's feeling, my sites are not my major income, but his site is his business. and now google nuked it.
3. I am going to rework the site 1 and add a ecommerce branch in the site and see if it affact traffic.
Please dont mind to share your thought and idea about April 2024 update.
Before I showing my sites, here are some other sites I noticed being hit and gain traffic in same niche.
Case 1: Retro Gaming Niche.
the below video first caught my attention. The owner of Retro Dodo, a retro gaming niche website owner post a video about his website being hit by google since the Helpfult Content Update.
Below is his website SEMrush's report:
as we can see, his traffic did being hit hard by both update, at the same time, I want to see who is the winner of the same niche and what happened. I found the retrododo.com's page : https://retrododo.com/best-pokemon-rom-hacks/ is a good example, because it targeted the "pokemon rom hacks" keyword. This page, at its good time before the HCU, is ranking well, and after that, it is declining. and now I am looking at the SERP to see who is winner now for the same keyword:
Reddit, no need to say more, it is the winner after those updates. Beside that, we have 3 possible websites to check: (with their traffic)
visualboyadvance.org
www.pokecommunity.com
www.pokemoncoders.com
After I checked those sites, I noticed following possible reason for Retro Dodo being hit:
1. Google now prefer UCG content, not only Reddit, the www.pokecommunity.com a pokemon online froum and it doubled its taffic since those update.
2. user signal is a more important factor now, maybe even more important than backlinks. The reason is for the keyword I checked, all 3 result now ranking are full of the list, which means the user may enter the gate URL and explore more URLs of those website, not finished reading and come back to google and goes to next search. On the other hand, Retro Dodo's page now lack the indepth content, it is a well written page for sure. but the reader seems go in, read and come back out. Those may signal google to decrease rank of those pages.
Case 2: Websites that I control
Site 1:
Site 2:
What I have done for 2 sites, both using same method to writing the content (both done by my team), same linking building method (HARO only). I am the only SEO working on the site. So this is a good controled experienment for this April 2024 update.
Major difference is, site 1 is a content blog, and site 2 is a ecommerce brand.
My final thought:
1. pure content site may no more a good choice, either need to add a ecommerce part in the website, even a fake ecommerce part and when visitor clicked to "purchase now", you send them into your Amazon affiliate link or your dropship the item yourself.
I am not sure why a ecommerce function can cause the difference between a winner and loser for those update, my site 1 avoided being hit by HCU but get nuked by the April 2024 update with 90% percent traffic is gone. While another site with same link building and same writing method gained a lot of traffic.
My guess is either Google did not applied the April 2024 update on ecommerce site or it is the user behavier that I said before singled google to boost the rank.
Below is the same idea mentioned by a YTber:
2. with Google adjust their algo like this and I am thinking maybe build a subreddit is a better way to gain traffic? or social media, I can imagine the Retro Dodo owner's feeling, my sites are not my major income, but his site is his business. and now google nuked it.
3. I am going to rework the site 1 and add a ecommerce branch in the site and see if it affact traffic.
Please dont mind to share your thought and idea about April 2024 update.