How to unrank your content by following expert advice [rant]
-
Hi,
As you can probably see from the title, a massive rant is coming up. I must admit I no longer understand SEO and I just wanted to see if you have any ideas what might be wrong.
So, I read this blog post on MOZ https://moz.com/blog/influence-googles-ranking-factor - where the chap is improving ranking of content that is already ranking reasonably well.
I've got two bits of news for you. The good news is - yes, you can change your articles' ranking in an afternoon.
Bad news - your articles drop out of Top 100.
I'll give you a bit more details hoping you can spot what's wrong.
Disclaimer - I'm not calling out BS, I'm sure the blogger is a genuine person and he's probably has had success implementing this.
The site is in a narrow but popular ecommerce niche where the Top 20 results are taken by various retailers who have simply copy/pasted product descriptions from the manufacturer's websites.
The link profile strength is varied and I'm not making this up. The Top 20 sites range from DA:4 to DA:56. When I saw this I said to myself, it should be fairly easy to rank because surely the backlinks ranking factor weight is not as heavy in this niche as it is in other niches. My site is DA:18 which is much better than DA:4. So, even if I make my pages tiny tiny bit better than this DA:4 site, I should outrank it, right?
Well, I managed to outrank it with really crap content. So, I got to rank two high-traffic keywords in #8 or #9 with very little effort. And I wish I stayed there because what followed just completely ruined my rankings.
I won't repeat what was written in the blog. If you're interested, go and read it, but I used it as a blueprint and bingo, indeed Google changed my ranking in just a couple of hours.
Wait, I lost more than 90 positions!!!! I'm now outside Top100. Now even irrelevant sites in Chinese and Russian are in front of me. They don't even sell the products. No, they're even in different niches altogether but they still outrank me.
I now know exactly what Alice in Wonderland felt like. I want out please!!!!
-
Hi there,
I know it's been a while, but were you able to figure it out? What happened after you requested a fetch?
I'd love to do some type of case study on this with you if you still didn't recover.
-
Why was this marked as "answered"? I don't know what I'm more shocked about - my discovery on Google or your lack of reaction here...
-
Update. I checked Google cache on all my experiment pages and it was out of date. So "fetching as Google" adds the page to a queue and it takes several days for the queue to be processed. Judging by my recent experience, Google withholds queued pages from the index until it's got a chance to re-crawl the page. I don't think I have a problem with this, but...!
Now all my experiment pages are back exactly where they were (no, dear Mr Jeff Baker, no improvement whatsoever), however, I still think this is really bad news, and here's why:
- You can't listen to "experts" too much even if they publish on authoritative sources. That's why it's important to keep a few test sites so that you can test theories before you apply them on your client sites.
- Content is not king. You won't be able to increase your ranking by purely providing better content without improving on other factors
- If you have a stronger link profile, you can afford to serve your visitors crap content
Indirectly, Google is encouraging people to buy links. Next thing I'm going to do after hitting the "Post" button on this page is contacting my link broker whom I stopped using in 2013. Who is the winner in this situation? Nobody, apart from my link broker. I'll tell you who is the main loser in this situation - the visitor. He will be served crap content because from today I will stop caring about providing valuable content to my visitors. Thank you very much, Google!
Conveniently, comments are closed 30 days after MOZ guest posts go live, preventing people to call out BS. Well, I guess it keeps the circle of friends happy, which is the most important thing, right?
-
Thank you, I did check Copyscape and it is not copied.
The original post is here: https://moz.com/blog/influence-googles-ranking-factor - I did check a few of their own site (Brafton) and their articles are ranking reasonably well. I wouldn't say amazing, it is hit and miss but some of his own content ranks pretty well.
So, I can now officially confirm that I'm NOT going mad. I have since done another two experiments and both backfired spectacularly!
Experiment 1 - improve a product description of another product. For the previous experiments I also embedded useful YouTube videos in the description. To make sure it's not the iframe that causes ranking to disappear, I didn't include a video this time. Just took the description from 56 words of nonsense to 300+ words of content that answers buyers' questions.
Tank!!! From #9 to #Nowhere
Experiment 2 - a completely different website with a different audience, different link profile and different buyers intent (lead gen site)... Identified a static page (not a blog post, not a product description) that ranks #17 for a super popular lead gen keyword. It had very average 500-word content. I improved the structure (H1-H3) and added 400 fresh words based on real-life questions that this business receive from potential customers. Sounds useful to you? Sure it does. Google downgraded the page to #27
I am massively worried now. I think I'm giving up SEO and I'm not joking. If this is how Google rewards valuable content, my other option is to make a really crap spam site with copied content. But hey, I just don't want to do it.
I will do another experiment. I will revert one of the product descriptions back to the super-crap content that it used to have, however, knowing Google I doubt that I will regain the positions. I will report back.
In the meantime, if you've had similar experience, I suggest we join forces and challenge Google's staff on Twitter or other social media.
-
Do you have a link to the post? Would be interesting to have a look at it now, compare it to Wayback Archive version, look at the differences etc. Can also run it through Copyscape to see whether by random chance you have typed something very similar to something else well known on the web :') unlikely but... monkeys in a room with a typewriter, and all that. There are any number of variables which could have contributed to this, or it could be a legitimate Google glitch
-
Hi Alex,
I took two product descriptions. Both pages were very similar - just a couple of sentences taken from a manufacturer's brochure.
I went through competing pages with a critical eye, made a list of topics that would match the buyer's intent and crafted original product descriptions that answered a lot of questions.
So I took it from less than 100 words of nonsense to nearly 500 words of in-depth human-generated content.
I didn't do anything else at the same time because I was keen on finding out how much truth there is in the "give Google amazing content" lie. My thinking behind this was that all competitors were ranked with copied product descriptions. So if I can provide original descriptions, I'd be rewarded, all other things being equal.
As for reverting back, no I didn't revert back. I don't know why, I probably don't see a point because rankings now seem completely random.
I've had lots of success both prior and post the 2012 "scare campaigns" however in the last year or two it's just sliding downhill slowly but steadily and I have no idea why.
-
Hi,
I find that very interesting. Obviously, the post was a bit of a plug for Marketmuse, but I always felt that the underlying advice was solid.
Are you saying that you simply went from having a very focussed single topic page to a more in-depth article and found that you lost rank? Was there anything else you did at a similar time? I assume you have now reverted your content? (And has that had any effect?)
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
50% Visibility drop following June 2021 Google Update
Hello everyone,
Algorithm Updates | | yacpro13
We've observed a 50% drop in our Visibility score in the last week. This is our biggest drop ever, which coincides with June Google updates. We're an established ecommerce website located in Canada. This has obviously severely impacted sales. I'm frantically searching for information regarding fixes / implementations to recover asap, but if anybody could point us in the right direction, that would be hugely appreciated. Thanks!0 -
New Website Old Domain - Still Poor Rankings after 1 Year - Tagging & Content the culprit?
I've run a live wedding band in Boston for almost 30 years, that used to rank very well in organic search. I was hit by the Panda Updates August of 2014, and rankings literally vanished. I hired an SEO company to rectify the situation and create a new WordPress website -which launched January 15, 2015. Kept my old domain: www.shineband.com Rankings remained pretty much non-existent. I was then told that 10% of my links were bad. After lots of grunt work, I sent in a disavow request in early June via Google Wemaster Tools. It's now mid October, rankings have remained pretty much non-existent. Without much experience, I got Moz Pro to help take control of my own SEO and help identify some problems (over 60 pages of medium priority issues: title tag character length and meta description). Also some helpful reports by www.siteliner.com and www.feinternational.com both mentioned a Duplicate Content issue. I had old blog posts from a different domain (now 301 redirecting to the main site) migrated to my new website's internal blog, http://www.shineband.com/best-boston-wedding-band-blog/ as suggested by the SEO company I hired. It appears that by doing that -the the older blog posts show as pages in the back end of WordPress with the poor meta and tile issues AS WELL AS probably creating a primary reason for duplicate content issues (with links back to the site). Could this most likely be viewed as spamming or (unofficial) SEO penalty? As SEO companies far and wide daily try to persuade me to hire them to fix my ranking -can't say I trust much. My plan: put most of the old blog posts into the Trash, via WordPress -rather than try and optimize each page (over 60) adjusting tagging, titles and duplicate content. Nobody really reads a quick post from 2009... I believe this could be beneficial and that those pages are more hurtful than helpful. Is that a bad idea, not knowing if those pages carry much juice? Realize my domain authority not great. No grand expectations, but is this a good move? What would be my next step afterwards, some kind of resubmitting of the site, then? This has been painful, business has fallen, can't through more dough at this. THANK YOU!
Algorithm Updates | | Shineband1 -
How important is fresh content?
Lets say the website you are working on has covered most of the important topics on your subject. How important is it that you continue to add content to it when there really may not be much that is so relevant to your users anymore? Can a site continue to rank well if nothing new is added to the site for year but continues to get good quality links?
Algorithm Updates | | DemiGR0 -
Canonical from NOINDEX,FOLLOW pages - Bad idea?
Hi, We have an extensive online shop in Magento - to ensure that some of the pages with query strings are not indexed, we implemented a conditional NOINDEX,FOLLOW so that it will stop indexing any pages that have querystrings on it - We do need to use Canonical also - for other reasons - so my question is: If you have a page that is NOINDEX,FOLLOW and it has a rel canonical pointing to original, would it transfer that NOINDEX,FOLLOW to the main original page causing it problems? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | bjs20100 -
How to follow up Google search in a Joomla website
Hello ! I'm facing a stupid issue but cannot solve it. Google Analytics can track the seach into a website. When I try to activate it I need to add some more parameters that I do not know. http://awesomescreenshot.com/03f1bnau8d Has anyone ever tried to configure Google analytics search for a Joomla website ? Tks a lot !
Algorithm Updates | | AymanH0 -
Has anyone experienced a dramatic decrease in Google rankings followed by a dramatic increase in the past few days?
I don't want to be one of those whiny people always asking about rankings, but for the first time in a while, I've seen some crazy fluctuations in Google rankings. I was wondering if anyone had any similar experiences lately.
Algorithm Updates | | innovationsimple0 -
Large number of thin content pages indexed, affect overall site performance?
Hello Community, Question on negative impact of many virtually identical calendar pages indexed. We have a site that is a b2b software product. There are about 150 product-related pages, and another 1,200 or so short articles on industry related topics. In addition, we recently (~4 months ago) had Google index a large number of calendar pages used for webinar schedules. This boosted the indexed pages number shown in Webmaster tools to about 54,000. Since then, we "no-followed" the links on the calendar pages that allow you to view future months, and added "no-index" meta tags to all future month pages (beyond 6 months out). Our number of pages indexed value seems to be dropping, and is now down to 26,000. When you look at Google's report showing pages appearing in response to search queries, a more normal 890 pages appear. Very few calendar pages show up in this report. So, the question that has been raised is: Does a large number of pages in a search index with very thin content (basically blank calendar months) hurt the overall site? One person at the company said that because Panda/Penguin targeted thin-content sites that these pages would cause the performance of this site to drop as well. Thanks for your feedback. Chris
Algorithm Updates | | cogbox0 -
Update content
y'all, what is the recommended amount of time in which content on a website should be refreshed? TY
Algorithm Updates | | imageworks-2612900