Should you give up on SEO?

[goodroi]

For everyone dealing with Google traffic drops, "Not giving up" sounds nice but it's not always the wisest course of action. You want to figure out what is influencing your SEO traffic change. If you can't figure it out, then you are going to have little chance to successfully improve the situation.

Did the traffic drop due to a change to the serp layout?
Did the traffic drop due to a change in your competition (new sites or new pages outranking you)?
Did the traffic change because Google adjusted their ranking algo?

If your traffic changed due to Google adjusting their ranking formula, take a step back from your site and evaluate your ranking signals. Do you have good content? We all think we have good content but is your content generating traffic from social sites? If you are not getting a good amount of social traffic, then maybe your content is not as high quality as you think. We all think our own baby is cute but let's be honest not every baby is super cute and not all content is great. Engage with relevant social audiences for your website. Pay attention to the content they want and the content that is gaining traction from them. These are good clues on how you can improve your own content.

Start sharing your content with relevant social audiences. Check your ego at the door and be very receptive to criticism. It doesn't matter how you feel about your content, it just matters if other people like & want your content. So listen to the social audiences and give them the content they want. Doing that will help you build up a healthy traffic source outside of Google. It also boosts Google traffic. For example more brand awareness from social audiences can lead to more backlinks & that definitely helps SEO.

Once you have great content, worry less about your Google SEO trouble and build up your network of traffic referring websites. What websites would make good cross promotional partners for you? Traffic generating referrals and cross promotional partners are high quality backlinks. Backlinks aren't easy to develop but they are rocket fuel to Google rankings. Ask yourself when was the last time you gained backlinks that actually drove real traffic to your website? If you can't answer that, then it is likely part of the reason why Google is not giving your site as much love as it used to enjoy.

The more you make your site popular outside of Google, the more it comes crawling back and boosting SEO traffic to you.

Bottom line - we all want to make sure that our hard work will make a difference to our websites. Be smart and take a step back to assess the situation to make sure you are working on the right thing at the right time. Working harder isn't always smart. You can punch a brick wall as hard as you like but its not going to help your SEO rankings. Be careful that you aren't blindly working without knowing what is actually needed to fix your rankings :)

[zeus]

I know one he has in the beginning made fantastic content about SEO, he believed in Content is king. Nothing happens ranking wise for 1-2 years. Then he started with link building and many other of site seo stuff. Then the ranks came. There is maybe 1-5% which will get good rankings with Content with a little luck.

Another thing, I really think it is time to focus less on google ranking, its simply not the future for sales anymore and will be a waist of time for many.

[azlinda]

What really gets in my craw is culinary sites. They write a lot of gobbledygook that you have to scroll through before you ever get to the recipe. And many of them have the same picture taken from different angles over and over again. If that is content that Google loves, then so be it. When I want a recipe, I don't want to wade through a lot of nonsense to get to it.

[azlinda]

Culinary sites really get on my nerves. When I want a recipe, I don't want to wade through a lot of gobbledygook and the same picture of the food taken from different angles. The written recipe is always at the bottom of all the nonsense. If that is the content that Google likes, so be it.

[csdude55]

I don't think that any of the old or logical criteria works anymore.

My main site is 17 years old. I target a local region, and have the name of that local region in the domain name. The logo is text, using an H1 tag to highlight the name of the region, and I have another area that uses an H2 that includes the name of the region. Keyword density for the region name on the homepage is 2.6%. The site shows local news, message boards, classifieds, events, etc, so it's highly relevant for the keyword. It has more than 100,000 unique visitors per week, and is very active. Webmaster Tools shows no search errors on the site.

A few years ago, my site would come up #1 or #2 on virtually anything you searched for that included the name of that local region. Now, as far as I can tell with Google Webmaster Tools, it doesn't come up at all! More than 95% of my search engine traffic comes from queries that include the website name (which means they were specifically looking for me, they're not a new user that Google sent my way).

But you know what does show up on the first page when I search for the name of the region?

An event that doesn't have the region name in the website address anywhere, uses the region name 9 times on the page (a density of 1.5%), and that already happened in May. This event was listed on my site, too, but that event listing only showed on Google if you searched for the domain name + the event name.

A senior care facility that doesn't have the region name in the address anywhere, uses the region name 5 times on the page (a density of 1.3%), and hasn't been updated since 2016.

A small museum that does have the region name in the domain, but lists events that happened several years ago and isn't mobile friendly.

And generic sites that have little to do with the region are in the top 10 results: zip-code.com, livability.com, mapquest, worldatlas.com, and familysearch.org.

There's no rhyme or reason to it... if someone is searching for the region, especially if they're located in the region (like I am when I search for it), it makes a lot more sense that they would be more interested in local news and discussions than in trying to find a zip code or a single event that happened 2 months ago.

[zeus]

azlinda - yep that has got on my nerves for 2-3 years now, but whos fault is that Googe!, be cause they want content/articles of 1000 words, then you always has to read a lot of bla bla in the start and end. If you would write on topic 100-200 words of not more is needed, you would never rank, but would be the best for the users.

How great would a site not look if there where no google, you could have a ecommerce site with specific text about the product, maybe 100-200 thats it. You could have a blog about recipes, where it gets to the point. A image site with almost no texts, that would be so great for a user.

Think about the time you would have to really concentrate about your site and not how a SE wants it, really do what would be the best for the user.

[tangor]

Not sure g wants all that stuff... but some SEO way back when started a trend and we now have this strange "expanded" web where keywords matter more than content for some webmasters. Sigh.

[browndog]

azlinda, that gets my goat too. A friend who is a journalist shared a recipe of hers and apologised for the excessive amount of text but she did it because that’s what Google likes.

For me, I hit the back button and find a page with the recipe and the instructions. That’s all I want.

I just read an article that the Australian govt has their target on Google and Facebook with the head of a major newspaper saying it is blatantly unfair that Google are taking website content and using it without rewarding the actual creator of the content.

[zeus]

browndog in Europe they are also after Google. I have not used Google for over 4 years, the only thing I have is the console, I dont use anything related to Google. Some sites even write on the Websites "Google free". Be cause why should any support a company that breaks the law time after time again. As with SEO, many depend on Google with right, be cause its a monopoly, they depend on them, but over the last 2 years SEO for Google has be come un logic, I think its be cause they focus more on business now.

[ichthyous]

And I think for many the answer should be yes, you should give up on SEO!

Why, because the ROI isn't there any more compared to PPC. With PPC you get to the top of the page, with SEO (even very succesful SEO you don't. With PPC you get something definite for your money, with SEO you don't!

This is exactly right...this thread is missing the point entirely. SEO is dead already. Google isn't sending the traffic either way, whether you're number 1, 10 or 100. I've recovered 104 #1 ranking terms in the last 5 weeks. My traffic is still steadily declining though, since last September in total down around 37%. It dropped off a cliff in Sept, then in March, and a little more subtly in June....a steady downward trend no matter how much work I put into the site to speed it up, or how many new links are coming in. The page is so loaded with options now that the organic SERPS are lost in the shuffle. Only PPC is going to bring in the traffic from this point forward I fear.

Mark, I'm glad to see that PPC has worked for you...in the past it never worked for me. I got the traffic but it doesn't convert with high price points. It's been many years since I ran an ad...perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised this time.

[zeus]

Also tried google ads, never worked for me , lost a lot of money. The only option I see optimize for duckduckgo and bing, do offline stuff.

[explorador]

Nice thread, nice opening post

Once you have great content, worry less about your Google SEO trouble

Mmmm difficult to agree, yes I read and there is more on your post than just this bit but... I built my websites based on what I learned here on WebmasterWorld and oh boy did that work, my creations went bigger, more efficient and with far more ROI than what I built for the companies I worked for years. The difference: they wanted things their way so I had limits to apply what I was applying to my websites.

My point is, WebmasterWorld and lots of advice here are proven to work, brick and mortar websites. Yet... there was a time when the same content on some websites didn't rank and attract as many visitors, then after some algo change it was huge, then not so much, then average, then way good. Yes I agree on content but the G algos are quite complex, changing from time to time, affecting your websites differently in diff seasons, and nope we cannot rewrite our content, just write new with diff approaches.

As much as I want to stay away from G and their now ever changing approaches, G is still the main source of my traffic. Other sources? yes! that's the key but diff sources = diff optimizations. Social media needs different writing, and honestly as discussed on another thread here, other threads in the past (here) and another thread on another forum: most people on social media are cheap, not efficient traffic. Some cases are the exceptions but exceptions are not enough to build steady traffic or steady income.

Responsive design works, but we are reaching a point where responsive content (impossible) sounds as the answer to the question. Damn how dumb people on social networks can be, pretty much most of them wouldn't survive your first 2 paragraphs, it's amazing so they would need an entirely different writing. My opinion on this is, while I agree on your thread and post, let's not fool ourselves, G is broken inside. Broken... it's almost as a bipolar editor manager who will say diff things regarding your writings on diff days, not to mention the stealing of content.

I care about my websites, the traffic and the income, but as said on other threads now I care more about my mental health. Some other industries are more interesting and efficient now, this is a comment from someone who made a decent amount of money on the web since started building websites, and I mean "my websites" not from specific charges to clients, I mean traffic. The panorama is not a pretty one.

[cnvi]

SEO has been dead for years, ever since Google became the biggest thief in corporate america by no longer behaving like a search engine and instead pushing ads to the point that organic doesn't even come up on page 1.. especially on smart phones.

To answer the OP, we have given up on "SEO" in some respects but we keep the original content coming as best as our budget allows.

Side note, we are getting more traffic from Bing than ever before and it converts. It's not high volume but it converts. Very interesting.

Hope the DOJ investigation is watching these discussions. I made sure they are well aware of WebmasterWorld.

[azlinda]

Unfortunately, culinary sites are a horse of a different color. I for one, don't want to wade through gobbledygook and the same food photo taken from six different angles before I get to a recipe. If all that nonsense is what Google considers good content, then good for them, because I don't. It's extremely aggravating.

[piatkow]

I concentrate on a single metric - sales.

[Milchan]

One of the main problems for me is that Google , via an algorithm, is the one who decides what is "quality content" when fact is that is entirely subjective.

They have created a list of rules they apply to ascertain what qualifies and applied it across the board, with probably some tweaks for certain subject areas or types of sites.

But things are far more complex than that and they do not know a users search intent accurately. It is not possible to define what quality is in a blanket fashion for a whole subject matter.

So when people say 'produce quality content', whilst that can have some justification, it is also always going to be problematic when the definition of quality is variable and open to interpretation.

SEO is not about producing quality content , it is about trying to match content with google algorithm first followed by trying to be good for the user second. Unfortunately the way things work currently it can mean there is a gaping chasm between these two.

[explorador]

Youtube... getting better. Don't get me wrong, it sucks, but getting better than Google.

Sometimes on Youtube I search let's say "how to fix Dell laptop model X999" and I get some results, I would watch every single video, repeat until exhaustion, so I reach the point I checked all the results, nothing new. Then I give up, send the laptop to the garbage and forget. Two weeks later I start getting suggested videos about Dell Laptop model x999, surprisingly they are very good quality, quality content, and their date goes 2, 3 and 4 years old. Yet those videos NEVER appeared on my search. This pattern has repeated a few times, so clear, so strong it qualifies as a pattern. So much for the algos, those videos never appeared despite the exact match of keywords and my search.

I mentioned Youtube (despite this terrible experience) because in many cases it's working way better than Google Search. In the past I would search for fixes and find lots of websites (sometimes still works) but recently my experience has been negative, getting results of broken sites, dead websites, content removed from forums but still showing up, not to mention terrible content ranking as the examples forum members describe about culinary sites, quite terrible content. So at least for fixing stuff, Youtube is showing me better results than Google.

For articles... sites with good ranking and first page results I'm getting a lot of websites with terrible, copied content. What's surprising is how some of those websites allow comments and you can read messages from people telling them how much this sucks, bad content, misleading, copied, incomplete, click bait, and still those websites rank to the first page results?

Google you have to be kidding.

[Kendo]

Who dares to decide if it is good content or not?

[explorador]

Who dares to decide if it is good content or not?

You just reminded me another thread.

There was a discussion mentioning how social media and new recent traffic gives the impression people are becoming dumb, stupid. Some of us posted there how the same content in the past attracted sales, contact, business, emails, clients, people thanking for the publications, etc. Then as years went by the emails changed into very stupid messages tot he point that I disabled the contact form previously placed on every page, so people had to look for the contact button (and served as a filter).

Articles with detailed title and information suddenly received emails asking the questions that are solved in the article. My personal experience on my sites and also selling stuff online (things I don't use) push me to believe the amount of dumb people increased dramatically.

Some friends of mine had stuff for sale on FB, I helped them a bit for a while, and other times they sold some stuff I made. We have discussed the change on people behavior. Years ago it was easier to sell stuff, now you can post a picture stating the exact model and price, and people still send you questions about the model and... price. It's amazing.

[Milchan]

Articles with detailed title and information suddenly received emails asking the questions that are solved in the article. My personal experience on my sites and also selling stuff online (things I don't use) push me to believe the amount of dumb people increased dramatically.

Some friends of mine had stuff for sale on FB, I helped them a bit for a while, and other times they sold some stuff I made. We have discussed the change on people behavior. Years ago it was easier to sell stuff, now you can post a picture stating the exact model and price, and people still send you questions about the model and... price. It's amazing.

exactly what I have experienced . It is a daily occurrence where I get people sending messages from the product page that answers all the questions they ask and most commonly the price - which is there clear for all to see. I could only come to the conclusion that people simply dont read descriptions and think it is better to just send the questions they want the answer to. But all I do is copy the info from the page in the email back to them so it would have been so much faster just for them to read it in the first place.

but for certain people have become stupider and also more demanding & entitled - it is a horrible combination.

[iamlost]

@Kendo: Who dares to decide if it is good content or not?

Good content on a page is content that converts.
A site with good content is one with double digit or high single digit return visit traffic percentages.

Alternatively... sufficient to substantial ROI.
This allows for the craptastic MFA and similar sites...
If one is so enclined.

[EditorialGuy]

Who dares to decide if it is good content or not?

No "dare" is required. It's simply a matter of editorial judgment, whether that judgment is being exercised directly by a human or used to guide an algorithm.

[explorador]

exactly what I have experienced . It is a daily occurrence where I get people sending messages from the product page that answers all the questions they ask and most commonly the price - which is there clear for all to see. I could only come to the conclusion that people simply dont read descriptions and think it is better to just send the questions they want the answer to. But all I do is copy the info from the page in the email back to them so it would have been so much faster just for them to read it in the first place.

but for certain people have become stupider and also more demanding & entitled - it is a horrible combination.

We were doing the same, and sometimes people would insist on making the same question. It's... amazing. They don't read, or it seems they can't read. After a while we decided to use that as a self-filter, anyone needing to be feed the words is not worth selling to (at least that's our stand).

[koan]

For recipe sites, I think they barely have a choice to add filler text nowadays, if the recipe is found on other sites, your page will be considered duplicate content and you won't rank, if your recipe is original, it'll eventually be copied and corporate sites will outrank you. It's hard to compete at all unless you put on some text that can be defended with copyright. I had an recipe site a long time ago and it used to be able to get some organic traffic with about 3-4 others competitors, but there was a point where Google decided there could be only one site and everyone else with similar content will be flushed. Now it's just that one surviving site and some corporate brands, maybe some social media pages. I wouldn't touch the culinary sector anymore.

[Kendo]

dumb questions already answered

We cannot provide enough information when they cannot take the time to read properly.

It may be a case of too much time looking at a computer screen and assuming that they are "speed reading".

I suggest that because I find that the tech guys are the worst... to provide support one needs info for a process of elimination and every time I ask more than one question I only ever get one answer back. Many times I have had to repeat a question up to 30 times before getting the info and sometimes that was with network administrators with Computer Science degrees!

[Kendo]

It's simply a matter of editorial judgment, whether that judgment is being exercised directly by a human or used to guide an algorithm

Algorithm smellgorilaism!

It all comes down to an individual's preferences and it is a human that writes the algorithm (it's not rocket science). What is not interesting to one can be of interest to many and grammar shouldn't come into when considering that non-Americans slam American grammar and Americans slam every one else's grammar. In fact recently I came across an article about a professor who had written a book about writing. Reading his interview sounded like an interview with a retarded gang member from the bronx.

[RedBar]

Should you give up on SEO?

Emphatically no insofar as I am concerned!

Why? Simply because, for commercial/business sites, it's almost impossible to predict from where one's next major enquiry may derive therefore it is critically important, especially for those of us with specialised, niche widget products, to ensure that one is there, available to quote and supply.

I'm going to tell you a true story that has happened to me this last two weeks and to be honest, I am still slightly flabbergasted by it.

On all my specialised construction product pages I have WhatsApp and Telegram logos including text query for visitors to either send info to other people or enquiries to me. A couple of weeks ago I received an enquiry for a specific product by WhatsApp and a discussion started about availability, pricing, shipping costs, the gamut.

Enquirer USA, me UK, raw product origin South Africa, manufacturer China.

My entire global industry is mostly connected via WhatsApp/Telegram/WeChat these days with images being a huge part of what we do. Sending images via email has almost stopped, they are sent direct phone to phone seller to buyer, with no delayed office filtration involved!

Chats went back and forth and samples couriered, today the order was officially placed with the funds duly established at our factory's bank in China.

Now what is remarkable about this sequence of events for me?

This entire process was done via WhatsApp, not one email, fax, not even a phone call was made, it was, honestly, how I hoped future trade may be done when I added this connection facility to my sites.

This is a bulk purchase, 10 container loads, I am not saying that this is a solution for everyone yet it was a very cheap and easy one to implement BUT at the end of the day IF my SEO had not been good I would NEVER have received the enquiry.

Specialised product sites have the opportunity to compete in the SERPs, if all you want to do is drop ship, expect competition, serious competition that you'll most likely not beat.

[tangor]

Chuckles ... what some call "seo" others call "good content" and "servicing the customer".

The whatsapp aside is interesting ... but that contact came from a (wait for it) website. :)

[explorador]

We cannot provide enough information when they cannot take the time to read properly.

Every time I create an ad for online selling, I take my time on thinking how a monkey would react. I've changed from 10 year old to 5 year old, now monkeys, and now 10 year old monkey... with visual deficiency.

This process means creating short texts as clear as possible, and such journey has given me a lot of lessons. Such as the guy insisting on a lower price for an HP printer with HP pictures, HP logo, HP description, HP inks (text), etc and then after refusing to lower the price I sold it elsewhere... and the guy says "damn I really wanted the Epson printer". I keep mentioning this online selling in this thread for a reason: about readers, I don't know anything unless asked, and so they will tell me. But selling stuff I got to know all sort of people: engineers, architects, fashion designers, etc etc... and their IQ is so low, I can't help but wonder what kind of studies they completed at the university to be so dumb at the end.

Sorry for the long post but this is no different from my experience at the large media company. We produced newspaper and several magazines and online publications, the same thing we are talking about here happened there, some magazine organized workshops and conferences, oh man all sorts of dumb people were the public. There was a professional psychologist making some study about one of the magazines for women and the conclusion was quite interesting: it's a dumb audience, superficial, with not so decent intelligence. That was her study, not mine, but it wasn't the only look at the audience, damn they were dumb!

- Someone on this thread mentioned entitlement.
- Someone on another thread (set of not so recent threads) mentioned how the internet means "FREE for everyone"

Well, besides dumb readers and dumb questions I also get the idea others have been talking about: people expect you to inform them and give them data for free, hand feed. My angle on this topic is no longer from the developer or writer point of view, to me it's more about mental health. I really refuse to adapt my websites for dumb people.

If that means loosing traffic then what the hell, after all it's traffic I don't want or need, it's more problems than solutions and people wanting stuff instead of some return.The best traffic after all it's not about high numbers, it's about effective conversions.

[tangor]

@explorador ... please don't hold back ... tell us what you really think!

The web these days is part adventure, part entertainment, part cess pool. Sadly the latter is taking more oxygen out of the room these days.

Would be interesting to look at the age group (demographics) of users and running analysis on their comprehensive skills ... I suspect the younger they are the dumber they are... progressive education has insured the lowest common denominator in the pursuit of equal outcomes.

SEO only works if there is an engaged mind viewing the product (and AI as coded by humans, too). The fact that SEO is NOT working, other than the obvious that g is no longer a "partner" but is a "competitor" ... we have the reality that the AI nee algos are being tweaked by recent college grads.

Could that be a part of the problem?

Things have changed over the last ten (10) years and all of us are curious as to causes of that change.

[Kendo]

I really refuse to adapt my websites for dumb people.

I find that it doesn't matter which way you jump. For example I get complaints from some that my jargon is too technical while others complain that it is simple simon. Then there are those who point out that there is a mixture.and that is not very professional.

But hey, at the end of the day, if they read my jargon and understand how my solution works, then I have accomplished something. In contrast to the wordsmithed articles describing similar solutions that I don't understand even when they are imitations of mine, that is something again.