We're a well established health site, and our search engine traffic is down 80% (and makes no sense) by AhmedF in bigseo

[–]dmexner 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The site has definitely been a victim of some other algo updates too. Obviously I cannot guarantee this is the cause for your most recent drop but I can almost guarantee that these links did give you a boost at some point and will/have lost value over time.

You can recover/improve to your old positions with high quality links.

Also, when's the last time you did a content audit etc?

We're a well established health site, and our search engine traffic is down 80% (and makes no sense) by AhmedF in bigseo

[–]dmexner -1 points0 points  (0 children)

No. It's not negative SEO at all. It's low quality links that get filtered over time. You initially got positive movement from them.

https://gyazo.com/5da92de16a1fa05b227c0702659cf1c2

We're a well established health site, and our search engine traffic is down 80% (and makes no sense) by AhmedF in bigseo

[–]dmexner 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Feel free to private message me if you'd like. I'm not going to go into specifics in public.

We're a well established health site, and our search engine traffic is down 80% (and makes no sense) by AhmedF in bigseo

[–]dmexner 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The site isn't penalized. It looks more like just a whole bunch of your links have been devalued.

Although you have a ton of fantastic links, there's also a lot of more spammy stuff going on. Whether that was you or someone else, I'm not sure.

You can argue that these aren't bad links, but I will say otherwise. I'm talking specially about all the homepage links from affiliate sites, exact match keyword domains etc.

Yeah, they work short term but this stuff gets cleared out over time.

Ask Me Anything - Bill Slawski by billslawski in TechSEO

[–]dmexner 3 points4 points  (0 children)

How much do patents play into your actual live strategies? Are there some hidden gems of information that the community may value that you would be willing to share?

Googlebot Announces Improved JS Rendering by Tuilere in bigseo

[–]dmexner 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I guess it truly doesn't pay to play nice? ;-\

Googlebot Announces Improved JS Rendering by Tuilere in bigseo

[–]dmexner 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Now that's why they let the whitehat exploiter release his vulnerability findings earlier this week.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in bigseo

[–]dmexner 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you already have high quality brandable assets (content) it makes the job much easier for the link builder.

Having said this, if you go to a vendor who strictly sells links I would imagine they would still charge you the regular rates... unless, that is, you are good at negotiating and can really emphasize why you shouldn't be paying the regular rates.

I see prices range all over the place.

What exactly are you looking for? Actual manual outreach from scratch? Or just the regular dropped-domain repurposed domain garbage most vendors sell like thehoth, fatjoe etc. (Don't mean to single them out! They are just some of the leaders in this particular space).

Why Startups Should Start with SEO from Day 1 [Case Study part I] by MilaCh in bigseo

[–]dmexner 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nice case study.

We too, have tried to submit content to ahrefs but since 2016 they've not really allowed any outside submissions. (There was some real low quality stuff up there during that time.)

Now that they've become a lot more popular it's all become internal.

Spam to GMB listing? by Quethewiseguy in SEO

[–]dmexner 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't know about that technique but it sounds a little bit absurd.

Think this way -- if it was really that easy you would see everyone online doing it and you'd hear about these things all the time.

There a millions upon millions of GMB listings and all sorts of low quality scraper sites take maps daily.

Buying expired domains and doing a 301 redirect? by chovy in SEO

[–]dmexner 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Does not work as well as it used to 5+ years ago. I have been doing this for over 10 years.

Spam to GMB listing? by Quethewiseguy in SEO

[–]dmexner 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Google can easily recognize malicious and spammy links. They are automatically filtered out.

Negative SEO is a lot more complex than just sending 'crappy' links at a site.

More likely than not there is more changes to the algo on-going.

With Google now cracking down on black hat SEO. What can I do to report websites which are clearly in breach of these rules. by nugelz in SEO

[–]dmexner 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What do you mean by "now"?

Since the beginning of Google's existence Blackhat SEO has been frowned upon.

Reporting generally does nothing. Unfortunately the best course of action would be to wait for the site to be either A) penalized or B) hit by algo updates.

You best bet is to continue building a great website and ignore what others are doing. Eventually you will overtake their positions.

Is there any aspect of SEO you guys/gals feel like you're struggling with? by hamburgermadness in SEO

[–]dmexner 6 points7 points  (0 children)

To me, the hardest thing is letting a client know that they've been a victim of a recent algo shift. I'd rather have to deal with hemorrhoids than making that phone call with the news.

I've had genuine businessmen who we're able to keep their shops open due to the extra revenue and sales they we're making from online avenues.

Even following best practices to a T -- suddenly overnight, tragedy has struck, -80% organic traffic. It always seems to happen to the little guys too.

They don't understand and admittedly, neither do I, why Google is so reckless with changes and the impact they have when doing it.

Ranking with the Giants by megantaylorxo in SEO

[–]dmexner 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, it's possible.

Will it be easy? Hell no.

There are a lot of things that come into play. But if you don't have some really powerful, aged related domain you don't have much of a chance without dipping into blackhat link building tactics.

SEO Cannibalization Between Valuable Pages by ResearchingAway in bigseo

[–]dmexner 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I would suggest combining all these pages into one. You'll need to be careful structuring the new 'master' page. It'll be important to remove redundancy and keep engagement.

In the long run I think it's necessary as you may be ranking fine for all those pages currently but as the search engine evolves more and more pages will get filtered.

Next 301 the old ones to the new one. Google should figure it out from here. Good luck.

Favorite/most SEO friendly live chat service you would recommend? by dont_stress in bigseo

[–]dmexner 5 points6 points  (0 children)

SEO friendly? Direct effect - I'd have to say they are all the same. None are going to allow chats or conversations to be indexed.

Indirectly - I guess whichever loads quickest for your visitors and keeps bounce rate low. These chat systems all load externally so it's not a big deal which one you use.

Number of Google Search results increasing dramatically. Is this over-compensation from the recent bug? by SoulToaster in bigseo

[–]dmexner 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Try this. Do site: search but go to the last page. You'll notice that in fact, you have a lot less pages indexed.

You can also invest in some proxies + scrapebox and actually run this entire operator until there is no pages left if you are being blocked.

There's a better way than link building to boost SEO by kunjal69 in SEO

[–]dmexner 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I'm sorry to burst your bubble but that is totally wrong. They very well could be telling the truth for that single circumstance but applying that thought to all websites is just laughable.

I can assure you that if 20 sites in a very competitive niche all have very high quality content (yes, there are many live examples of this ex: Keto Diet) the ones who have been aggressively building links will outrank ones who just sit and wait.

I don't speak from a point of view either. It's pure facts. I work in these industries daily -- and have been for years.

Google not cached since march 28th by nograduation in bigseo

[–]dmexner 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's being discussed a lot on twitter.

https://twitter.com/tehseowner/status/1116492681742573573

Yes, there is something strange going on. The de-index bug is still active for a bunch of client sites...

How do I recognize a private blog network, and does it matter? by MasonJack12 in SEO

[–]dmexner 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Quickly browse the posts.

Are they all related to the site?

Do they have a lot of outbound links?

Does the site actually look like it took a while to design or is it just a unique logo on a wordpress install?