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How I ruined my SEO

johnnyreilly.com

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Re: How I ruined my SEO

#41

Post by pmig »

Can Google Search Tool site verification via Google Analytics have played a role?

So all the new pages that use your tag get linked to your Google search tool property.

Re: How I ruined my SEO

#42

Post by johnny_reilly »

Growtika wrote: post #22
johnny_reilly wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the tips! > A cool trick to improve the result fast is by removing the lazy load effect from the LCP: https://i.imgur.com/rOOWm91.png Haha, ironically I'm responsible for wholesale lazy loading of images in Docusaurus: https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus/pull/6598 Generally that's a good thing, but it's not good for title images that appear "above the fold". I wonder if there's something we could do to…

That's cool. Just for fun, try to remove the lazy load effect from the LCP, let's see how it effect the score. As for the strategic articles, I mean that you'll increase the internal links certain articles you think can rank higher. On October you had 3300+ keyword that were ranked 11-100 on Google https://i.imgur.com/ZGU0Ezk.png It dropped to 165 keyword now. That's an insane drop, but I wonder how much traffic thes…

tell me more about the timestamp. Where does that data get derived? I thought that should be in great shape since I set lastmod in my sitemap based on git commit date

https://johnnyreilly.com/2022/11/25/adding-lastmod-to-sitema...

Re: How I ruined my SEO

#43

Post by anon1094 »

Johnny is correct and this most likely has to do with the 404 backlinks and accidental misuse of Google Analytics.

I recently did a comprehensive SEO audit for a web3 brand that saw a similar drastic drop in traffic. Here are some other things to keep in mind to rank better on Google.

  1. One H1 per page
SEO experts agree the best practice is to use one H1 per page. Headers help keep content structured for both Google and readers. If there are multiple H1s, convert them into proper H2-H4s to improve the content's hierarchy.

  2. High-quality content >1000 words
According to Yoast, chances of ranking in Google are higher if you write high-quality posts of 1000 words or more. If you have some sparse content that is less than this add a few more detailed sections.

  3. Google PageSpeed score >90
Google PageSpeed says that improving performance increases rankings and user experience. The ideal Google PageSpeed score is >90. Make sure your pages takes less than 2s to load, and ideally less than 500ms. Reduce JS and additional requests on important pages.

  4. Add title tags and meta descriptions with primary keyword
Google recommends matching H1 tags to title tags to prevent inaccurate article titles from showing up on search results. It's also best to include the primary keyword in the meta description too.

  5. Improve primary blog page with multiple sections
Your blog's primary page is your chance to showcase your best content, not just an archive of your latest posts. Separate your posts into sections like best, classics, and latest. Add H1 to make it clear to the audience what the blog is about. Add H2 subheadline to clarify.

By the way Johnny, you can see the full SEO audit on my Twitter[0].

If you're open to it, I'd love to do a full SEO audit for your blog. Let's get those numbers back to their original state. Please DM me on Twitter.

P.S. - I worked with a software company[1] to build out their docs using Docusaurus so I'm familiar with how it works.

[0]: https://twitter.com/dericksozo/status/1613171898430488578

[1]: https://medium.com/solidstateso/shortcat-documentation-case-...

Re: How I ruined my SEO

#44

Post by franze »

johnny_reilly wrote: post #36
franze wrote: post #32

Confusing post for me. Ad redirects? are we talking page URL redirects or just image URL redirects? the GSC pattern looks a lot like page URLs changed. did they? I would recommend to this kind of analysis https://www.fullstackoptimization.com/a/google-update so basically - did the page URLs change? - 4 SEO tests - and then winner/loser pages analysis. Update: 4 SEO tests are better outlined here https://www.fullstack…

There's no ads. Over time I've change page URLs, partly as a migration from Blogger to Docusaurus, partly due to just changing page URLs without thinking about it. I've changed image URLs by switching from PNG to WebP and back again. Thanks for the link will check it out.

that was the latin "ad" aka "about"

mobile friendly tests fails see https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly/result?id=SAu...

and google can not render the page correctly

also test with GSC page inspect -> render page -> see screenshot

if this correlates with the software update (and the page URLs) did not change, then this is the strongest contender.

check the crawling metrics in GSC google search console

js, css average load time should be max 200ms- or it is some other asset delivery issue

html not more than 400ms average response time

note: i am the author "understanding seo" https://gumroad.com/l/understanding-seo/hacker-news (think seo for hackers) feel free to mail me, contact in profile

everything points either to an page URL change or 4 SEO tests issue - from my point of view

written on a mobile in the metro, so can not check in detail right now

Re: How I ruined my SEO

#45

Post by locutous »

nottorp wrote: post #33
pwython wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea he should of phrased the title as a question. As his last paragraph goes: > I'm hoping someone will read this and tell me what I did wrong.

Spelling nazi hat on > Yea he should of phrased the title as a question. ... he should have phrased ... Spelling nazi hat off

That's the grammar Nazi hat.

Pedant hat off.

Re: How I ruined my SEO

#47

Post by johnny_reilly »

supermatt wrote: post #37

> As I've mentioned, I broke links by not implementing redirects. Didnt implement redirects for what? The prior part of the article doesnt even mention you changed any page URLs. But if you did, that is most definitely going to have caused problems. Think about it - the pages are no longer there, so they will get dropped from the search index, so wont appear in search results, resulting in less impressions/opportunit…

> I would recommend going through old access logs to find what your old URLs were, and redirect them to the new URLs for that same content (not a wildcard redirect to homepage!)

this is great advice and I've done that as much as possible. Herewith a giant file of redirects! https://github.com/johnnyreilly/blog.johnnyreilly.com/blob/m...

Re: How I ruined my SEO

#48

Post by exolymph »

Veuxdo wrote: post #46
chrismorgan wrote: post #2

Title: > How I ruined my SEO Conclusion: > I'm not quite sure

Usually Hacker News strips out "How" (and "Why") at the start of article titles to prevent this. I'm not sure why there are exceptions sometimes.

You can edit it back in after submission.

Re: How I ruined my SEO

#49

Post by johnny_reilly »

the__alchemist wrote: post #29

Your site's performance, reflected on its page speed insight score, is showing 45. This is unacceptable for a blog; it should be close to 100 for text-based pages like you have. Does the site contain scripts, deep dependency trees, or analytics? Could this have changed during the performance drop?

No - it's because it's a Docusaurus site and so runs React / JavaScript. It was like this before the drop and so is unlikely to be the cause. It's been Docusaurus for about 2 years now

Re: How I ruined my SEO

#50

Post by johnny_reilly »

Veuxdo wrote: post #46
chrismorgan wrote: post #2

Title: > How I ruined my SEO Conclusion: > I'm not quite sure

Usually Hacker News strips out "How" (and "Why") at the start of article titles to prevent this. I'm not sure why there are exceptions sometimes.

Oh I didn't realise it did that! I assumed I'd copied and pasted incorrectly when I submitted it and added the "How" back after the fact.
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