-
What is wrong with the SEO that I am doing?
I have launched about 10 sites on my own accord – just for me – since I began developing them over the past 6 – 8 months. Here are the details of each and their results. Keeping in mind that none of these are my first site ever. Not doing any link building right now – concentrating entirely on content creation and optimization to see where the content settles on Google and where to go from here.
All domains in these scenarios are entirely clean (except for 1 in the logistics shipping site group that I was using to test out some link building tools).
I also don’t brag about these sites. I don’t tell anyone about them. They are strictly for me for my own testing and implementation.
It seems to me like something’s wrong in a core part of my SEO processes. Either in a step I’m doing (or not doing) or the technology stacks I’m using below or what. I don’t see how I could launch these sites and everything’s a terrible flop with absolutely zero performance, despite doing things differently from site to site (except for some core technical SEO processes).
I don’t see how the results are all the same when on just about every 2-3 sites I may:
Use a new server.
Use something different like Generate Press as the framework or an entirely different WordPress theme (fishing site has a premium theme from Premium Coding, contractors site is using the Generate Press basic theme).
Yes, I have checked whether or not Google is reading the links and the content. Google is reading both just fine. None of the links are JavaScript-based.
Use something different in terms of content length (all while observing quality and minimum of 600 words of content per page).
Look at the competition to determine appropriate content levels and so on.
Every single SEO step is tight. I don’t overlook anything. Still, it seems like nothing budges. Ever. And real projects are tanking even with increased effort as well as high-quality effort. You would think with the fishing site at 180 pages of content it would be out-performing the contractors site but it’s all…the freaking…same. It’s absolutely no traffic or rankings and real projects begin tanking badly shortly after I’m brought aboard despite increased hard work, effort, and a focus on much higher quality.
Note: I am not a black hat and I don’t practice black hat SEO techniques. Maybe some are borderline at grey hat, but not on every site, only on the test sites on my own, not excessively, and I prefer being aggressive where it makes sense while also observing all proper Google-friendly SEO best practices.
What in the world am I missing by having the exact same results in different niches?
By the way: none of the sites below (except the last one) have any types of author details or public domain information – except the very last real site and still, it’s private whois. This is intentional since E-A-T and YMYL are not in Google’s core algorithms. So, I’m working on ranking the old-fashioned high-quality way without E-A-T and YMYL considerations.
=======================================
1st 2 sites on Digital Ocean, 3rd site on InMotion Hosting.
1st 3 sites: All logistics shipping sites
Minimum 40-50 pages of high-quality content
Each site has a different topic focus (they are not all the same site)
Domain: Clean.
Keyword-optimized.
Properly siloed.
Minimum 800 – 100 words of content per page.
Homepage has the best content.
​
All checked:
Discourage robots from indexing the site is unchecked.
Nothing wrong with noindexing via HTTP headers.
Nothing wrong with noindexing via robots.txt.
Nothing wrong with redirects.
Nothing wrong with https:// (https redirection plugin set to force all redirects from http://).
Nothing wrong with JS links causing issues with indexing.
No algorithm hits.
Google can read everything.
​
Results: Almost no traffic.
No rankings. No impressions. No clicks. Nothing in GSC.
No traffic in GA.
Yes, both GSC and GA are all verified and added to the sites properly.
Shipping site 2: No clicks. Many impressions from unrelated keywords. Avg. position: 45.2
Shipping site 3: Avg. Position 72.9
=======================================
New dedicated server with Namecheap.
4th Site: Contractors site
Domain: Clean.
Keyword-optimized
50 pages of content.
Just revamped the homepage content 10 days ago using Frase.
Minimum 800 – 1100 words per page. 3,000 words on the homepage.
High quality content.
Almost no rankings. Google won’t go past the home page.
​
All checked:
Discourage robots from indexing the site is unchecked
Nothing wrong with noindexing via HTTP headers
Nothing wrong with noindexing via robots.txt.
Nothing wrong with redirects
Nothing wrong with https:// (https redirection plugin set to force all redirects from http://)
Nothing wrong with JS links causing issues with indexing.
No algorithm hits.
Google can read everything.
​
Results: Almost no traffic.
I got one page to the first page with an obscure on-page SEO tactic as a test. That’s it. And it wasn’t even an intended page. It was a random one. That was frustrating as hell.
No other rankings. No other impressions. No other clicks. Nothing in GSC.
No traffic in GA.
Yes, both GSC and GA are all verified and added to the site properly.
===========================================
Same dedicated server with Namecheap.
5th site: Fishing Site
Domain: Clean.
High-quality, user-centric, very interesting highly customized theme
180 pages of content developed over 3 months.
Heavily siloed and customized per sub-topic theme.
​
All checked:
Discourage robots from indexing the site is unchecked
Nothing wrong with noindexing via HTTP headers
Nothing wrong with noindexing via robots.txt.
Nothing wrong with redirects
Nothing wrong with https:// (https redirection plugin set to force all redirects from http://)
Nothing wrong with JS links causing issues with indexing
No algorithm hits.
Google can read everything.
​
Results: Almost no traffic.
No rankings. No impressions. No clicks. Nothing in GSC.
No traffic in GA.
Yes, both GSC and GA are all verified and added to the site properly.
===========================================
It’s also worth noting that another unrelated site I recently gained control of is now losing traffic quite significantly. This site is entirely unrelated to any of the above sites and is on their own server. They did very minimal link building and were on a traffic upswing. This traffic loss is despite:
Tripling the content production (still with a focus on high-quality content) and significant social promotion. Instead of three times a week, content production is more frequent. Also continuing the same high-quality. Also has a focus on hitting a score of at least 90 in Rank Math for every post.
===========================================
-
19 Replies
-
*A website URL is worth 1000 words.*
-
No impression? WTF, I started my blog on Blogger and bought a domain within 3 article I got like 1000 impression, currently it has more than 100k impression and 5 k organic traffic
-
Something is very wrong if you aren’t even getting impressions.
-
Thinking what can be wrong.
-
Started my blog 7 months ago. New domain and everything. Hardly any impressions and very few clicks. Seems like mine flattened around Nov Dec. In my opinion its got to be something Google is doing.
-
“No traffic in GA”
Google analytics should detect when you visit your own site, and give you “1 current user” at least. If it is not doing this, it is not set up correctly.
Make sure your tracking code is in the Head of every HTML page, and there are no syntax errors.
Note GA launched a new (GA4 I believe it’s called) platform, if you are viewing your GA4 dashboard, but have the legacy tracking code, you need to change your code or switch to the older dashboard. -
Hey bud here are a few things that stood out to me
1. Are you 100% sure they’re being indexed (check in search console and google the url itself)? Hide site from search engines box isn’t checked in WordPress settings?
2. How old are the sites? Sounds like they could still be in the sandbox.
3. “No EAT or authors because they are not part of the core algorithm” – that’s not true… EAT is super important.
4. “At least 600 words” – that’s not a lot of words if your competitors are writing 2000+. Get surfer or market muse and check.
-
“I have launched about 10 sites on my own accord – just for me – since I began developing them over the past 6 – 8 months.” That many sites within that time frame is impossible to do with any level of quality, especially the level you need to rank well in any competitive space. I’d guarantee that’s a large part of the problem here, but you also seem to be doing something odd as even if these aren’t the greatest sites you should be seeing at least some traffic. One thing I noticed is your mention of a redirection plugin, that can easily cause issues like this if it’s misconfigured or simply doesn’t work right. If I was you I’d pay very close attention to what you did to the “unrelated site I recently gained control of” since you should have less to sort through on that one. Also, fwiw you mention quality a LOT throughout your post and almost everything you’ve written here indicates low quality.
-
Probably misconfigured your wordpress sites
-
So what do u want?
-
Are there impressions in search console?
It sounds like you are publishing a lot of content, which if you do not have a good strategy for that can actually be a problem and cause a weak internal link structure.
No links is a big red flag to me. Links are the #1 ranking factor in every major search engine. Considering that you have none, it sounds to me like the sites are performing pretty much exactly as they should.
-
If you want to PM me a link, I can take a quick look.
-
Do linkbuilding.
​
“I’ve tried everything except for this one fundamental thing.” Try that.
-
You need authority to rank especially in competitive niches. Backlinks and domain age contribute to authority.
In search console, are your sites not even showing anywhere? Not even on page 10? Sounds like they aren’t.
EAT matters and it sounds like somehow you have not convinced Google.
I assume that you’re meeting all the google page experience criteria – mobile, load time etc.
-
The only answer is link building. Assuming everything else is correct (and it sounds like it is) then you need to build links to build authority.
The “sandbox” is also real. You don’t apply for it. It just happens for any new site. The duration of the sandbox depends on the conditions the site meets. Is it a brand new site/domain? or existing domain with new site? These impact duration. Even if it’s an established domain, but new site that’s a different theme than the original (for example, used to be electrician’s site, now is electrical parts – it’s similar niche but different).
Some “proof”: I launched a brand new site with new domain 2 years ago. Took me 8 months to get ranked with link building.
2 months ago I re-launched another site, older established domain with new site. It lagged for 2-3 weeks total, and has already recovered and improved in ranking in many cases.
Log in to reply.