Modern tips for better SE placement?

[csdude55]

I really haven't "focused" on SEO in 5, maybe 10 years. I did in the early stages of my main site's development, but at the time the logic was "focus on traffic, and placement will get better naturally".

There were some things that I did focus on, though: a main keyword being in the domain, using H1 tags on important keywords, keyword density, important keywords being near the top of the page, and back links.

At the time I had about 1/5th the traffic that I have now, but I was top 10, if not #1 on most of my keywords. I'm not in a hugely competitive niche so that's not TOO impressive, but it helped.

But today I discovered that the main keyword that I focused on, the one where I used to be #1... now I'm on the 10th page of results! Way behind sites with a tiny fraction of the traffic (sites that might have 10 visitors a week), and sites that have the keyword on the 5th or 6th level (eg, example.com/blah/blah/blah/blah/keyword/blah.html).

I don't know if I'm really losing any money because of this, but since I'm rebuilding then I might as well spend some time focusing on this, too.

I use Webmaster Tools and Search Console, and don't have any errors. But for the last 3 months, the top click-through was for something totally unrelated to me (a restaurant that's just near me), with 13 clicks. And the top 30 queries for me was actually related to them, not me.

I also have 733 "valid" pages indexed, with 43,000 being ignored! That's down from 3,008 on Dec 12, 2017, which I guess is when I was added to Search Console.

So what criteria do you guys think I should focus on in order to get back to where I was?

[csdude55]

Addendum: according to Webmaster Tools > Google Index > Index Status... a year ago I had 129,756 pages indexed. Today I have 148.

My site is predominately classifieds and message boards, with posts dating back to 2001. There are over 150,000 threads and 2200 current classified ads (they expire after 2 weeks), so 129,000 pages indexed would actually be on the low side.

But 148 means that the wide majority of the older threads have been dropped, and most of the current classified ads (if not all of them) have been dropped.

[keyplyr]

Modern tips for better SE placement?

To achieve better placement in Google's SERP mark-up [developers.google.com] your content the way Google suggests.

Then make sure your content contains what users are looking for.

[csdude55]

Thanks, key :-) But in my case, I went through the process of adding schema markup to my pages sometime around Feb 2016, so if that has had any impact then it's negative.

But I did just realize one thing... under Webmaster Tools, I only have http://example.com and http://www.example.com listed; not the https:// version! This particularly stood out when I went to Crawl > Fetch as Google, and it only brings up "301 Redirect" errors (which is unexpected since my site redirects via .htaccess).

I added the https:// version, do you think this will have a significant impact? I have 60+ sites, so if so then I'll have to add https:// and https://www. for each of them :-(

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:30 am (utc) on Mar 11, 2018]
[edit reason] Delinked various bits of protocols and code. [/edit]

[keyplyr]

Impact in SERP ranking? No, it just generates reports. It may help Googlebot find all your pages if you submit your HTTPS sitemap.xml.

However, I would advise updating all your GSC properties to the HTTPS version just to stay relevant with the reports.

They will soon generate the ad reports.

[csdude55]

I might be on a wild goose chase looking at GWT, then. I switched to HTTPS in Feb 2017 so it makes sense that the HTTP report dropped after that, and I just now added the HTTPS so I won't see if it has more indexed for a few days yet.

But in that case, there's still no explanation of why my placement dropped so far back.

[keyplyr]

Seems to happen with some sites when they install secure protocol. There's no verified explanation for it. It shouldn't happen. Google has said there *may* be an upset when switching to HTTPS because they treat it as a site move... but the majority of sites see no loss of traffic or ranking at all. In fact Google has said HTTPS pages get a slight boost in ranking.

[TravisDGarrett]

The main difference between 10 years ago, was that, in the past, you were optimizing a site / pages for Search engine robots, while today, you should optimize pages for users. Of course some will argue this is not true,and that user experience has nothing to do with ranking. I am not agree with this claim, but everybody has his own experience.

[csdude55]

Now that I'm rebuilding, though, what other criteria do you think I should be focusing on? It appears that having specific keywords in the domain and URL are no longer relevant, META tags seem to not be relevant, emphasizing keywords with H1 tags, inbound links, age of the domain, number of unique visitors... all irrelevant. So what IS relevant?

[keyplyr]

Now that I'm rebuilding, though, what other criteria do you think I should be focusing on?

Be explicit in answering questions. Make that the main purpose of each page. Try not to compete against yourself by having multiple pages defining the same topic.

Google's rich snippets, knowledge graph, and others are moving toward specific answers to questions. This is likely the result of more AI being used to determine user intent.

[TravisDGarrett]

All these have been abused, and over abused, again and again . That's why now there are tons of factors that search engines are taking (trying to take) in consideration, also ranking is versatile, what can help today, might downgrade your ranking later, etc...

My opinion has no value, but my recommendation is just to do a site as you feel like, and as it pleases you. Then happens what happens.

[csdude55]

My opinion has no value, but my recommendation is just to do a site as you feel like, and as it pleases you. Then happens what happens.

That's been my philosophy, too, but after last year's HUGE drop in revenue I'm second-guessing that. And now, seeing that I've dropped in Google for no apparent reason, I'm being forced to pay more attention to SEO than I feel like a good webmaster should.

The HTTPS version of my site is now showing up in GWT, but it's not retroactive so I only have 2 days worth of data :-( It shows 4,328 clicks over those 2 days, and from those (where "mysite.com" is the name of my site):

mysite - 1,765
my site - 1,330
mysite.com - 83

and so on. Of the top 30 results, all but 3 are a modification of the site name in some way. So virtually all of my search engine clicks are from people that are already aware of me and are trying to find my site, which is good, but doesn't help me bring in any new users.

[csdude55]

While we're on the subject, do you think that the distance of keywords from the top of the page has any relevance?

For example, with my current site, the first H1 tag is on line 220, and the actual content (after navigation and everything) begins on line 1293. Is there any value in working to move that content higher up? With my new build I've moved the navigation to a separate Ajax script so that the content begins on line 370... relevant?

[keyplyr]

do you think that the distance of keywords from the top of the page has any relevance?

I don't think keywords has much to do with anything anymore. Google and Bing both use AI which looks for user intent, then finds pages that fulfill that intent.

The days when we could manipulate SERP with keywords are long past.

[csdude55]

I guess it's not really that I'm trying to "manipulate" it or anything... at least, not in a bad way. I just can't figure out why I'm on the 8th page of my primary keyword, when sites with seeming little to no relevancy are on the 1st or 2nd page.

My site focuses on a local audience. It's over 15 years old, and it's pretty much a household name. We have local news, classifieds, event calendars, and message boards, so it stays very active. So how in the world is it that, when you search for the county name, I'm nowhere to be found anymore? I mean, the Association of Realtors is on the 4th page (well above mine), and their site has 5 pages and gets about 50 pageviews a month...?

[martinibuster]

Focus on user intent. Focus on the winners and how they solve user intent differently than yours. Sometimes that shows an answer or part of the answer.