TalkativeEditorial: The site is 18 years old so has had many URL changes. I used an AHREFS trial to identify redirect issues and redirect chains and fixed that up. Also added internal links as they recommended. I actually really liked AHREFS and would have bought a subscription, but it's just so far beyond my budget.
Hired somebody to speed up the site, I'm not great with the technical stuff.
Disavowed some really ugly looking links. I still don't know how you end up with dodgy links when you've not actively sought them out (also never paid somebody to do SEO or build links for me). I've done other stuff, but can't remember it all.
Focusing on social media, which I resent because there's only so many hours in a day. But the site has 100k followers on FB, so sharing my posts there in the hope they'll share etc.
ON page SEO:
As of now, I'm taking my rose coloured glasses off regarding how I view my content, especially the formerly top-ranking articles that are now nowhere. One, in particular, was 4,000 words and it was way too much. It was my pride and joy and I think I just tried to keep making it better. But 4,000 words for most people is way too many (I was repeating a lot of things over and over). I've managed to massively condense it down without actually depriving the visitor of any important information. I've also been using SurferSEO which is quite helpful for identifying key phrases (and therefore important information) that I may not have. I'm trying to really focus my attention on the best possible experience for the user. It's hard at times, because it's just me, and I am competing against multi-national companies whose thin content outranks me. But even if I can get into the top five, it would be better than being nowhere. This is day two of seeing a slight upswing, the 4,000-word article has gone from over 100 to 64. So still on page six, but at least it's coming back.
Off topic, I have a friend in an industry that I write about quite a lot. In his line of business, he is constantly asked 'is a okay for b', and he tells them to go to my site to see. But it's still a pain for the customer to do that. My husband came up with the brilliant idea of creating a QR code. So that's what I did last week, friend is displaying the code in 10 locations in the shop (it's big), and the customer can go right to the post. If this takes on, it could be used by potentially thousands of other stores which sell the same product. Unless somebody copies it.
Google Updates and SERP Changes - January 2021
