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What If Google Doesn't Reward White Hat SEO?

99 pointsby midefover 6 years ago

26 comments

gk1over 6 years ago
You're a professional "SEO guy" and still surprised that your four-month-old, 50-page, one-level-deep, affiliate-linking site is not outranking the hundreds of established review sites? Come on, man. If it were that easy...
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wh-uwsover 6 years ago
This is site of which the author is speaking<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodcheapandfast.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodcheapandfast.com&#x2F;</a><p>I know little about SEO ... but I&#x27;m sorry man you are CRAZY if you think your are going to rank for the words<p>good, fast, OR cheap<p>for something that came out in the past year.<p>And outside of that im sure there is strong competition to rank for all of the categories of devices that appear on the site...<p>This is just not a think the author can make the conclusion in their title based on...
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Meekroover 6 years ago
Over the last 2 years, I&#x27;ve watched my business go from the 4th page of results for important searches, to always ranking as #2-4 on page 1. More than anything else, what made the difference was <i>time</i>. In my experience, Google heavily rewards old backlinks and old websites -- much more than it used to around 2005. Maybe it&#x27;s an anti-spam technique, since age is a hard thing for black hat SEOs to fake.
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kposehnover 6 years ago
Loooong-time digital &amp; affiliate marketer here. Interestingly, I&#x27;d say the #1 culprit here is time...and the second is probably content thinness.<p>Each page is certainly useful, but doesn&#x27;t really show much information that google _believes_ is useful to a user.<p>Example: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodcheapandfast.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;best-cordless-vacuums" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodcheapandfast.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;best-cordless-vacu...</a><p>The page itself is quite useful to someone searching for the right cordless vacuum, but google&#x27;s algorithm is looking for signs of quality that would assist it in better understanding the potential value.<p>Examples here include:<p>1. Structured data in the page such as a standard price &#x2F; discount price &#x2F; features &#x2F; avg rating table<p>2. A longer description of the product with more information, such as features<p>3. Shorter backlink anchor text to Amazon that have less data crammed in them (try and separate out the features from the actual product name here)<p>4. Crosslinking: you have reams of content that is related, so cross link it! You&#x27;re making it hard for google to discover relevant content paths. Cordless Vacuums -&gt; Robot Vacuums -&gt; Dyson Vacuums -&gt; Dyson Vacuum Accessories, is one example. The content journey one can take is pretty much Home -&gt; Search -&gt; Article -&gt; Amazon, much too short.<p>5. Everything is stacked under tld&#x2F;articles&#x2F;article-name and you have very little variation, making it harder for users to easily see this sort of indexing. Interestingly, category pages, landers with aggregation of multiple areas of content, etc. can help because you assist in discoverability for the user. Keep your canonical tags sorted, no-index variants of category pages so you don&#x27;t end up with reams of pages indexed, and you should see better potential user journeys.<p>This is just off the cuff and YMMV, but is my first take. Hit me on LinkedIn if you want to chat.
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hollaurover 6 years ago
1. The site isn&#x27;t very user friendly.<p>2. What&#x27;s your average dwell time? If people are visiting then bouncing after 1 minute that sends a bad signal to Google. Average dwell time of a first page result is 3 minutes 10 seconds, according to Brian Dean.<p>3. You feature 0 images. Where&#x27;s the alt text? Looking at these walls of text makes me want to bounce ASAP, which isn&#x27;t obviously good for your dwell time.<p>4. I think you need to step up your content game A LOT. Look at what Wirecutter does: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thewirecutter.com&#x2F;reviews&#x2F;best-high-end-ranges&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thewirecutter.com&#x2F;reviews&#x2F;best-high-end-ranges&#x2F;</a><p>5. You say the site features no ads-- but that&#x27;s kind-of a lie. You are an affiliate site, which I personally never trust anyway, when they&#x27;re created in this sort of way. It&#x27;s like look how bad the mattress industry is with these sites. You can&#x27;t trust any of them.<p>6. Good content that ranks in Google is comprehensive. You should think about making your post format meatier. Help people choose which one is right FOR THEM. Explain why you chose what you chose. Use descriptive headlines so people can skim. People want to see pics before they click through.<p>7. I highly recommend learning more about what constitutes good content vs bad content.<p>Resources:<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;backlinko.com&#x2F;seo-this-year#rankbrain" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;backlinko.com&#x2F;seo-this-year#rankbrain</a><p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@laurenholliday_&#x2F;here-is-the-real-reason-no-one-is-reading-your-content-63c62de6649d" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@laurenholliday_&#x2F;here-is-the-real-reason-...</a>
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albertgoeswoofover 6 years ago
The authors site (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodcheapandfast.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodcheapandfast.com&#x2F;</a>) is really annoying BECAUSE of the SEO content, there’s like a page of pointless text about each category and then each product has a bunch of text about it which is totally useless.<p>Is this really the best way that google can distinguish good from bad content? IMO google results are starting to become stale and it makes the internet feel a lot smaller, this is probably why. I know there are tonnes of far more interesting things out there but they seem to come up less and less now.
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babaganoosh89over 6 years ago
Seems like the amount of affiliate links is the issue. I guess it&#x27;s hard for search engines to tell the difference between spammy review sites made for affiliate links and the author&#x27;s site.
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larrymcpover 6 years ago
This article is pretty hard to see in its default rendition. Light text on a light background? Not sure that&#x27;s the best design choice...
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_robbywashereover 6 years ago
It&#x27;s true, Google and other sites will deindex a site like this into oblivion - as at first, it has many of the characteristics of a spammy affiliate site.<p>I think there is a real need for this kind of information, and I would even suggest Google or (any search company really) go as far as to build a feature&#x2F;small-platform specifically for content like this. _Quality_ affiliates linking.
sixtypoundhoundover 6 years ago
Intrigued, I fed your site into a couple of CI tools. Some initial thoughts....<p>- Keyword targeting: seems like you&#x27;re targeting a lot of product based keywords; these tend to be hotly contested, generally favoring brands and top retailers for top slots - Not quite enough content on the pages, in terms of word count... - As you mentioned, Google is probably seeing the Amazon links on your landing pages and penalizing your rankings<p>So - potential thoughts on how to change it up...<p>- Switch from talking about products to problems... probably can get rankings a lot easier for those keywords, especially if you&#x27;re willing to target long tail traffic. - Move amazon links off the landing pages; at a minimum, cloak the link but better yet try having a page or two that discussed the problem then make the user click to get to another page which recommends specific products - Also getting the vibe you might need more content density for each topic; more pages addressing a single area, with a higher word count.
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ggmover 6 years ago
I have enormously mixed feelings about anyone who says they are a professional in SEO. I don&#x27;t doubt there are people who show results to their clients, and they will range from amateurs to people who charge to do it for a living and they will be black, grey and white hatted variants.<p>My own experience is that carefully reading the google documents which return when you do the obvious searches on how to improve SEO are very clear: do some structural work, be very clear about your sites underlying page relations, proffer keywords which contextually make sense, but do not try and game the system.<p>If you pay search engines money they increase visibility of your site. If you host adverts since they place adverts it increases visibility of your site in their systems because its a &quot;virtuous circle&quot;<p>If you attempt to use other mechanisms to direct traffic to your site which the search engine can (a) detect and (b) proscribe, you will be penalised.<p>What else is there?
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nostrademonsover 6 years ago
Google in general doesn&#x27;t like anything that intersperses an additional page between the searcher and their destination.<p>Part of that is user experience - their goal is to get the searcher to the information they need as fast as possible, and it&#x27;s hard to slow them down more than by putting an additional page between them - and part of it is corporate strategy. Anything that helps organize the world&#x27;s information - particularly information connected to a purchase, which is Google&#x27;s revenue stream - is potentially competition.
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html5webover 6 years ago
Your website does not contain a single image. Try to use optimized images and use proper markup, use alt tags etc.
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bhartzerover 6 years ago
If you&#x27;re an &quot;SEO guy&quot; you should know that any SEO techniques that clearly violate Google&#x27;s Webmaster Guidelines are not &quot;white hat SEO&quot;.<p>For example, specifically take a look at the line that says, &quot;Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites&quot; in the Google Webmaster Guidelines.<p>How do you explain the hundreds of press releases, with optimized anchor text, linking to good cheap and fast dot com? Such as this one: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kitv.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;39477963&#x2F;presenting-good-cheap-and-fast-a-product-review-site-with-no-ads-trackers-or-slideshows" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kitv.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;39477963&#x2F;presenting-good-cheap-and...</a>
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swamy_gover 6 years ago
SEO is my main issue as well. I write good content, share with the right folks, write guest posts (that got featured of 4 different big websites), yet my traffic is tanking!<p>It was growing steadily, but after I switched to https, it started consistently falling, every day.<p>Google, I try to keep my website healthy and have good content, why are you testing my patience?<p>Is link building still the #1 strategy to boost your page rank? OR has the game changed?<p>Can anyone point to a good SEO guide? (Would be willing to pay $$$)
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bitpushover 6 years ago
Offtopic -<p>I dont understand HN ranking at all.<p>At the time of writing Apple&#x27;s earnings sits at #10 with 45 points (36 comments) and this one sits at #6 with 20 points (3 comments).
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corbpieover 6 years ago
meh, Have patience at the end of the day its an Affiliate website. Google has to sort through thousands of websites that appear similar and rank them.
_noqoover 6 years ago
Not an expert, but if you add &quot;The Best Cheap&quot; [1] at the beginning of every title tag of your product pages I guess Google bot will think is something shady.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=site%3Agoodcheapandfast.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=site%3Agoodcheapandfast.com</a>
markdownover 6 years ago
&gt; No ads, trackers, slideshows or <i></i>data-hogging images<i></i>*<p>No images? Why not hide the description too?<p>How a product looks is a significant factor when deciding whether to buy it.<p>Bring back photos if you want real humans to buy from your website.
sosukeover 6 years ago
Google doesn&#x27;t reward white hat SEO but it does punish black hat SEO. I wish they would do it more often of course but they do totally wreck black hat SEO techniques a couple of times per year.
mrfusionover 6 years ago
I have four 10-12 year old domains I was letting expire. This article inspired me to renew them just in case. They used to get good rankings, I assume they’re worth holding on to?
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terrycodyover 6 years ago
Sry, but you don&#x27;t know seo at all. pity for your years lost.
iamgopalover 6 years ago
Google ranking is actually real estate. It takes time and works to reach premium position.
franzeover 6 years ago
so, a google users googles<p>&quot;cheap smartwatches&quot;<p>sees a SERP with<p>&quot;The Best Cheap Smartwatches For Sale on Amazon in 2019 - Good, Cheap and Fast&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.goodcheapandfast.com%2Farticles%2Fbest-smartwatches&amp;oq=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.goodcheapandfast.com%2Farticles%2Fbest-smartwatches" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.goo...</a><p>comes to a page like <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodcheapandfast.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;best-smartwatches" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodcheapandfast.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;best-smartwatches</a><p>which is really slow for the first time mobile user according to PSI <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.google.com&#x2F;speed&#x2F;pagespeed&#x2F;insights&#x2F;?hl=en&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.goodcheapandfast.com%2Farticles%2Fbest-smartwatches" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.google.com&#x2F;speed&#x2F;pagespeed&#x2F;insights&#x2F;?hl=e...</a><p>where the headline is &quot;The Best Cheap Smartwatches For Sale on Amazon in 2019&quot;<p>and then a text blob that nobody reads (when was the last time you googled something and really really read the paragraphs of text? i mean stuff you googled and not hacker news comments. and don&#x27;t tell me your read the paragraphs of text on stack overflow answers)<p>knows nothing else what this site is (search users dont know your story, and dont reach your startpage (i.e.v what does the startpage of stack overflow lookn like?)).<p>then two list items with again textblobs, where the headlines link to amazon. giving the users no incentive to use your site more or google your brand in the future again.<p>if it looks like spam, uses words like spam and offers content nobody reads on a first user slow page, it probably is not a good search user experience.<p>please stop doing SEO, start thinking about the search user.<p>note: i wrote a book about it<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fullstackoptimization.com&#x2F;b&#x2F;understanding-seo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fullstackoptimization.com&#x2F;b&#x2F;understanding-seo</a><p>reviews on amazon: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.de&#x2F;Understanding-SEO-Systematic-Approach-Optimization-ebook&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B07L3BSQHG&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.de&#x2F;Understanding-SEO-Systematic-Approach-...</a><p>and .com <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Understanding-SEO-Systematic-Approach-Optimization-ebook&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B07L3BSQHG&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Understanding-SEO-Systematic-Approach...</a><p>disclaimer: i don&#x27;t know how googles algorithms work, and i so do not care
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josephjrobisonover 6 years ago
The space you&#x27;re competing in:<p>- Consumer product and tech reviews, vs heavyweights like &quot;Wirecutter, Consumer Reports, Cook&#x27;s Illustrated and Crutchfield&quot; as you mention, and also TechRadar, TomsGuide, Lifewire, etc<p>- That&#x27;s not as difficult as credit card or insurance industries, but there are sophisticated players. Do you truly believe your page on &quot;best video doorbells&quot; is a better result than ConsumerReports.org&#x27;s?<p>Your site:<p>- Has 121 backlinks from different domains (great). But Wirecutter has 20,000+<p>- Has links from big press, which is cool, but topically relevant linking sites is important as well<p>- Is thin on review pages. See your wireless earbuds page: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodcheapandfast.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;best-wireless-earbuds" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodcheapandfast.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;best-wireless-earb...</a> vs the #1 organic ranking site for &quot;best cheap wireless earbuds&quot; (4,000 searches&#x2F;mo): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techradar.com&#x2F;deals&#x2F;the-best-cheap-wireless-headphone-deals" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techradar.com&#x2F;deals&#x2F;the-best-cheap-wireless-head...</a> (very important)<p>- Doesn&#x27;t have many links to individual pages, so you&#x27;re not seeing page level link signals, mainly just to the home page (very important)<p>- Is young, and while that&#x27;s only one small part of it, is still part of it<p>Google broadly ranks on:<p>- Matching intent of query to the best page that serves the goal of the user, and is constantly testing - this does not mean they always reward long blog posts, as it depends on the intent of the query<p>- Topical authority and relevance - combination of keyword usage, topic coverage, etc<p>- Seems to reward topically relevant sites more than generalist sites, see the About.com split into different entities case study (though not always)<p>- Quality of backlinks at the page level, and also the domain level<p>- Relevancy of backlinks at page and domain level<p>- Quantity of backlinks at page and domain level<p>- Other link factors like referring link anchor text, placement on referring page, etc<p>- On-page optimizations (title tag, keyword usage in content, internal links, headers)<p>- Tons more, but the above cover ~40-90% of the factors, depending on query, industry, competition, intent, etc<p>Congrats on the press and growth!<p>If you truly want to optimize for organic, look at what competitors are doing, page by page, and model off them, with your own unique angle. Content &amp; links, content &amp; links, and repeat.
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the_other_guyover 6 years ago
it&#x27;s really really hard to rank post 2014 era just because you want it to work. The internet is a big-boys-only club now. Things were easy 10 years ago and those who benefited from the free ride by Google SEO, Facebook and Twitter around a decade ago, are now multi millionaires and billionaires and lecturing everywhere how to build a great business while it wasn&#x27;t actually their unique genius that made it happen in the first place.
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