Does anyone have a guideline for seo? Is doing the basics enough or is there something that creates magic?
How I ruined my SEO
61–70 of 96 posts
Re: How I ruined my SEO
#62As others have said, this strikes me as a multi-faceted problem. It's possible Google devalues those sharing (even inadvertently!) GA tags in the rankings, although I don't think there's been any public proclamations from Google on that. But if that were the sole culprit, only your GA instance would reflect that. The fact that you're losing real traffic (as reflected in what the 3rd party tools are telling you) makes…
My site is definitely page based rather than image based.
I'll confess to complete ignorance when it comes to keywords. I'm a total novice in this area.
I still get traffic, but for things like a webpack define plugin post I wrote in 2017 and for 2 CSharp posts. "eslint for c#" and "build props"
All my Azure / TypeScript / React / Bicep traffic dried up. No idea what replaced me.
For what it's with, with no false modesty, my content is pretty good. It's the sort of thing I'd hope to find when I Google.
Re: How I ruined my SEO
#63As others have said, this strikes me as a multi-faceted problem. It's possible Google devalues those sharing (even inadvertently!) GA tags in the rankings, although I don't think there's been any public proclamations from Google on that. But if that were the sole culprit, only your GA instance would reflect that. The fact that you're losing real traffic (as reflected in what the 3rd party tools are telling you) makes…
Good comment! I’d add in one more question so we can put the GA tag issue to rest.
Does the writer have access to Google Search Central? They rename this product every six minutes. It used to be Google Webmaster Tools and it’s likely called something new now. Are there any manual actions or security alerts in there??
If Google performs a manual action or picks up certain types of security problems, they will tank traffic. But they usually report to give webmasters the chance to fix it.
I’d avoid ahrefs and the like and start right with google tools.
Re: How I ruined my SEO
#64As others have said, this strikes me as a multi-faceted problem. It's possible Google devalues those sharing (even inadvertently!) GA tags in the rankings, although I don't think there's been any public proclamations from Google on that. But if that were the sole culprit, only your GA instance would reflect that. The fact that you're losing real traffic (as reflected in what the 3rd party tools are telling you) makes…
Good comment! I’d add in one more question so we can put the GA tag issue to rest. Does the writer have access to Google Search Central? They rename this product every six minutes. It used to be Google Webmaster Tools and it’s likely called something new now. Are there any manual actions or security alerts in there?? If Google performs a manual action or picks up certain types of security problems, they will tank tra…
No manual actions / security alerts I'm happy to say. Good callout
Re: How I ruined my SEO
#65As others have said, this strikes me as a multi-faceted problem. It's possible Google devalues those sharing (even inadvertently!) GA tags in the rankings, although I don't think there's been any public proclamations from Google on that. But if that were the sole culprit, only your GA instance would reflect that. The fact that you're losing real traffic (as reflected in what the 3rd party tools are telling you) makes…
My site is definitely page based rather than image based. I'll confess to complete ignorance when it comes to keywords. I'm a total novice in this area. I still get traffic, but for things like a webpack define plugin post I wrote in 2017 and for 2 CSharp posts. "eslint for c#" and "build props" All my Azure / TypeScript / React / Bicep traffic dried up. No idea what replaced me. For what it's with, with no false mod…
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Re: How I ruined my SEO
#66With your approach I'm sure you'll get back to normal traffic very soon. I think your conclusion is right. It's not one thing that cause the drop but a combination of things. Let's forget one sec about the traffic you had before and focus on the current situation. - Page speed: It's one of the most important ranking factor. You don't have to get 100 score, but passing the core web vitals score and having higher score…
Edit II:
Few more tips:
- The drop might be related tO Google algorithm update. This link can help with understanding if the traffic drop is in correlation with your traffic drop:
https://ahrefs.com/google-algorithm-updates#october-2022-spa...
- Google search console: Check if there was any penalty More info here:
https://searchengineland.com/google-penalties-manual-actions...
EDIT III: This thread might be useful
You can find more related threads of people who suffer traffic drop after Google algorithm update (October 2022):
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fsupport...
Re: How I ruined my SEO
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good comment! I’d add in one more question so we can put the GA tag issue to rest. Does the writer have access to Google Search Central? They rename this product every six minutes. It used to be Google Webmaster Tools and it’s likely called something new now. Are there any manual actions or security alerts in there?? If Google performs a manual action or picks up certain types of security problems, they will tank tra…
No manual actions / security alerts I'm happy to say. Good callout
That’s good. Any noteworthy increase in error codes?? Perhaps a mass of 404s??
I’m specifically wondering about how you deal with redirects and what you tell the robots.
Re: How I ruined my SEO
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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...
Which pages or queries in GSC specifically lost traffic? Was there a handful of keywords that drove most of your traffic that you’ve lost? Or is it down across the board for all articles?
I still get traffic, but for things like a webpack define plugin post I wrote in 2017 and for 2 CSharp posts. "eslint for c#" and "build props"
All my Azure / TypeScript / React / Bicep traffic dried up. No idea what replaced me.
Re: How I ruined my SEO
#69With your approach I'm sure you'll get back to normal traffic very soon. I think your conclusion is right. It's not one thing that cause the drop but a combination of things. Let's forget one sec about the traffic you had before and focus on the current situation. - Page speed: It's one of the most important ranking factor. You don't have to get 100 score, but passing the core web vitals score and having higher score…
> You don't have to get 100 score, but passing the core web vitals score and having higher score on mobile is recommended
Note that they don't have a CWV score yet due to low traffic. But a 39 performance score from the simulated Lighthouse is often more than enough for a passing grade. That is: if a Moto G4 can do OK, your normal users will likely do great.
For instance, a site I made[0] has a 22 from Lighthouse, but a passing CWV grade, so further improvement to the LCP, FID, and CLS would confer no direct Google SEO benefit.[1] (But it may help things like bounce rate, which may confer second-order benefits)
> by removing the lazy load effect from the LCP
Indeed. Even better, making it high priority instead of normal: https://addyosmani.com/blog/fetch-priority/
[0] https://i.imgur.com/TGD1sj2.png
[1] "For example, a page with an LCP of 1750 ms (better than the “good” LCP guidance) and another one with 2500 ms (at the “good” guidance) would not be distinguished on the basis of the LCP signal" – https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/104436075/core-...
Re: How I ruined my SEO
#70https://developers.google.com/search/updates/ranking Your rankings tanking on/around 10/19's update looks like a strong correlation. Your GSC with congruent drops in impressions and clicks doesn't immediately look like KWs you were top 3 for suddenly dropping further down the page-- else impressions would be similar but AP/CTR would just be tanking. If you're using GA and your traffic doesn't have tons of seasonality…
looking for correlation with any google change must always be the last thing to check for. if you look for correlation, you will always find some. there was an domain change and URL change with subideal old2new migration.
This would probably be captured when looking at GA in the landing page report with MoM traffic going to 0 for once high value pages. If that is the case, a 301 from old path(s) to new is the simplest solution to possibly restore most of the traffic? From what I've seen, lots of the SO scraper sites got crushed late last year, so if the top traffic driving pages historically have not had URLs changed, then maybe investigate that further. If they had their URLs changed, just redirect the old URLs and hope for the best.
@OP, if there were in fact high traffic pages that got renamed, do a CSV/Excel export in GA/GSC/sitemap/etc., and map the old URLs to their new and implement 301's and wait and see if traffic starts to return.