Let me do an update. I have 10 projects I've been working on lately and the only thing I can say for a fact is SEO has changed DRAMATICALLY these past few months.
So much so, I think it's time to change it's name from "SEO" to "SEOWTF".
Because I've been reading forums like crazy, been doing my own testing, and forgive me for saying, but my findings show that Google has successfully "broken" SEO. There is a new and obvious degree of randomness that I simply can't account for no matter what I read or do.
PBN links that use to rank my sites #1 in less than 6 weeks, now it's taking months and it's like sites reach a certain point, than some random ass shit happens and everything just goes apeshit. Some sites move to page 1 for a few weeks then back down to page 3 and stay there for a month no matter how many links I build or how perfectly I do everything. I've tried mixing in socials, diversifying links with GSA, and I'm getting very very close to saying something I thought I'd never say.... which is "SEO is broken". Not "dead", but "broken".
I'm curious if there are ANY people on this forum in moderate to competitive niches who have managed to rank a site #1 since mid may?
I have 1 competitor in 1 niche, the guy hasn't built a backlink in over 6 months and is ranking strong #1 on Google for more than 50 keywords. Meanwhile I'm building more and better links, completely relevant to my niche, and I can't outrank this mfkr no matter what I do. The ONLY thing that guy has that I don't is an older domain. But he has literally NO socials and NO recent backlinks OR content at all.
I know there are people who are gonna read this and be like "wtf dude, it's not SEO that's broke it's YOU", but I just want to hear from **1** person who's been trying to rank new sites since the update and has managed to grab a #1 spot. For a moderate to competitive keyword. Because I haven't seen anyone post any shots of #1 rankings. It also seems like there is a huge fog over SEO forums lately. Like there are certain people denying everything and have said, "as long as Google exists, so will SEO". But I'm starting to think that less than .00001% of marketers have any clue wtf is going on.
My case studies won't be finished for another month. And eventually I'll get some screenshots up. I actually planned on posting screenshots last week but NOTHING significant is happening. SEO was NEVER perfect but it DID have a certain degree of consistency and predictability. Something I'm just not seeing as of late.
I'd really love to see some more people chime in and update because SEO seems to have turned into russian roulette these past few months.... and I wanna know wtf is going on.
-BB