Anyone Else Having Issues with Google Rankings?
First a couple of questions for you:
1. How have your Google Rankings been going since the core update in June? Have you notices any changes good or bad?
2. What is your niche?
3. What is your theme and do you use a theme builder?
I have been on a mission to figure out why Google has stopped ranking my pages, and I've been coming up with some new interesting things that could be the cause.
If you're having trouble, these may help you solve some of your problems. At least it will give you something to experiment with.
First, A Little Background Information
My site was bee-bopping along and doing pretty well. I was ranking in the top spots for a couple of my articles on Google. This was a few months ago.
Then, it just stopped.
I thought, "Well, I'll just write even better content."
I've been creating articles with a minimum of 1500 words, and most of them are over 2000 words.
I've been using these guys to add to my articles:
I kept thinking, "Now Google will rank me!"
But nothing.
I changed my theme.
I changed to the beta servers and now my site is super fast.
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/cld111/blog/oops-and-thank-y...
"NOW Google will rank me, for sure!"
NADA.
I asked for advice from Kyle.
He told me to make my homepage a blog roll because it will make it easier for Google to find my new posts.
I use Jay's ranking system - every. single. time.
NOTHING.
(Bing loves me though, so there's that...)
So what to do...?
I know There's Something That I'm Missing
Not to toot my own horn (toot toot), but I know my content is as good as what's currently ranking in many cases. So, I KNOW I'm missing something. Something's not connecting right with Google.
I've been on a search to figure it out.
Here are a couple of interesting things that I discovered that may be causing problems:
1. At some point my journey, I started using underscores in my images. For instance, easy_cash_4_ads_review.png. I JUST read that that's a big no-no. Oops! You are supposed to use your keyword in your image, but dashes instead of underscores.
From the css-tricks.com forum:
"Underscores are seen by search engines generally as “word combiners”, and hyphens are seen as “word separators.” Scott was right, never use underscores for anything. You can make a sure bet that this issue reflects one of the many, over 200 factors that Google takes into account when evaluating your website. They’ve inadvertently stated this in the past, even Matt Cutts has stated plenty of times himself not to use underscores."
Did you know that? I sure didn't.
2. The reason I asked what theme you use and if you use a theme builder is because I started suspecting that there's something about using Thrive Architect that is causing an issue. I'm reading conflicting reports on it, but some people say that it absolutely causes a problem in Google.
For those of you that use Thrive Architect, have your site rankings changed since the update? If you use another site builder, have your rankings changed?
3. I found a website where you can check your SEO, and I put my latest article through there. Some of the issues that are marked say "Link to a sitemap.html".
That came up a few different times. Does anyone know what that means or how to do that? It seems to be semi-important. I already add my sitemap.xml to Google and Bing, and this seems to be something different.
Today I created my blog post right in Wordpress using the new content builder (which is WAY better than what it was when it first came out), and we'll see if that helps.
Does anyone know if I can go back and re-name my photos, or should I just worry about it going forward? Also, thinking of completely removing Thrive Architect and see what that does, but that's daunting because I'll have to redo a LOT of my posts. UGH.
What do you think? Worth it or no?
Thanks for reading!
- Christina
Recent Comments
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Sounds like you're doing everything right. So sorry for your frustration. I haven't used Thrive Architect but I was using a page builder at one point and it slowed down my site significantly.
What is the beta server? Thanks for the info on underscores and hyphens. I had no idea!
The beta servers are the new servers that everyone will eventually be moved to. They're really fast. :)
- Christina
Great post, I sure learned a lot from it. I currently use a free theme ( which I started to hate) and I don't like the results I am getting at this moment. There are so many problems and questions I have and I wish I have answers to them sooner better than later. I am hungry to learn everything so fast.
But since I believe I have problems because of my theme how to fix this problem, is it a "must" to buy a new theme? and if yes what is your recommendation?
I already posted around 12 posts on one site and 5 on the other site. both of them still not ranked (Yes they are new) but I want to make sure from now that I am doing fine not screwing things up! so my other question is. What are the plugins that will make my website looks professional and attractive and good at the same time?
I just think your sites are too new to tell what's going on with them. I would give it more time.
As far as plugins, I don't think I have any that really make my site more attractive (except Thrive Architect).
I just bought a new theme that i really like fro StudioPress. It's nice and clean. But again, I don't know that you need to worry about that yet since you're still brand new.
Patience, my friend. :)
- Christina
Okay then, I will just continue my work and worry later about the techie stuff! haha.
Thank you for this helpful post I saved it too to always come back and refresh my memory!
One plugin I will recommend immediately for that is Shortcodes Ultimate. It's awesome.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/shortcodes-ultimate/
I have always used a free theme and I do quite well. I do not think anyone starting out needs to buy a theme. You just have to search around to find a good free one.
Hi Christina
I actually blogged about this a few days back, my MMO site took a nosedive after the June update and hasn't recovered. Luckily I also run a niche website which is doing much better despite having fewer posts.
For my MMO site, I use the Extra theme from Elegant Themes, its very code-heavy but still load relatively fast. I use the same for my niche website.
I think the reason my site took a downward turn is because of backlinks.
I hardly build backlinks to any of my sites, however, the websites that have taken my place in the SERPS, have some high authority domains linking back to them.
I really cannot think of any other reason as to why these sites started to take over the positions I held on the SERPs.
I am going to try an experiment by purchasing backlinks for my MMO site, it took such a nosedive traffic-wise, that even if Google penalises me it won't make a difference. However, I don't believe I will be caught because the agencies I am looking to hire have a stellar reputation and they are not going to be cheap.
It took me a long time to get to where I was before June update, my weak point has always been content creation, I just cannot churn out content on a daily basis, if I could I probably would have carried on with my MMO site but its too difficult creating content for 1 site let alone two.
All the best with your situation.
Thanks so much for your thoughts.
Good point about backlinks. I know I don't do enough to try to get some. Please let me know how your experiment goes with buying them. I'd love to hear...
- Christina
SiteSupport has looked at the back-end of my website before to see if there were any major issues. I kept getting messages from Google saying that I had issues. Don't we all!!
They SiteSupport guys are so super technical and smart. I love those guys. It is worth a try.
I also find the MMO niche to be so competitive and a bit discouraging. For this reason, I started a niche site and I have a lot of fun with it and my pages are always on the top 10 pages of Google.
I am also still doing SAC too. I have 50 posts on my MMO site so far. No results though. Surely one of them will take off with all of the work I am devoting to it... Praying...
Well, I checked in Search Console and there aren't any major issues in there, so I don't think it's that.
I was really excited about this MMO niche, but now it's kind of bumming me out.
It's not worth it if you can't get anywhere with it. I have another niche site I'm going to concentrate on a bit more for now and see if I can drum anything up with that.
- Christina
I think that is a great plan. The MMO niche was bumming me out too. I am still pursuing it but I can't put all of my eggs in one basket so to speak. :) And, the whole idea is to be doing something that you enjoy that you can make money with!!
Yes! Totally agree. I will certainly still work on my MMO site, but I've been wanting to work on my other site anyway. It's another passion of mine, and I'm going to have a lot of fun with it!
- Christina
It's worth posting on Twitter and other social media as much as possible too, Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest even, so you have exposure over a bunch of platforms people will search on.
And then of course you can also link back to your site from YouTube, should you fancy making videos. I wouldn't rely on Google alone right now, it's ever so unpredictable.
Just focus on your niche site. MMO is so hard to rank these days. I have 2 MMO sites now with well over 1000 posts between them, and both sites get hammered every time Google rolls out a broad core update.
My first site I spent months improving after it got hit with last year's August update, but all those improvements did nothing.
Kyle suggested I start a brand new MMO site. I did, and diligently added over 200 posts to it with all posts being 2000+ words (nothing less). The only post with WA affiliate links is my WA review.
The new site has never got off the ground, and since mid July, traffic is less than half of the paltry amount of traffic is was getting.
Way too much work for no pay off.
I've since started a best of site following Dylan's training and see how it goes. I'm not going to bother with MMO anymore.
Wow, interesting. I'm sorry to hear that your MMO sites aren't doing very well.
I'm definitely going to work on my other site much more. I'll still work on my MMO site, but not at the same level.
Thanks for your input!
- Christina
I have noticed on my bootcamp site that Bing and Yahoo love all of my information articles and Google loves all of my reviews. In fact, Google rarely ranks any of my information articles, but they have no problem putting a review on the front page.
Right before the algorithm change in June, I swapped to the Divi theme for a more professional look and did a major change to the look of my site. Around June 5th my organic search traffic doubled, but I don't know if it was the algorithm or more from all the changes I made to the appearance and function.
I know others who have very successful sites with Thrive Architect, so I don't know if you'd need to change that. I don't necessarily think that the Divi theme itself made a difference to Google with my traffic increase. I made a lot of changes with things like featured images, everything on my sidebar, my menus, etc. So I would say that those things probably made the difference more than just what theme I had.
But from what I see on my site, if you want Google to take notice--write plenty of reviews and get comments on them. That's the only way I finally got good rankings!
Hope that helps!
Janelle
Thanks for that, Janelle. I do write lots of reviews and I usually request comments, so that's not the issue, I don't think. Bing and Yahoo rank my review posts, and usually almost immediately.
Funny how quirky they are.
- Christina
That is interesting to hear. I always wonder why so many give the advice to not start adding reviews (with links) until you have a lot of informational content first. I don't follow that path. I think you might as well take advantage of the opportunity to give information and have reviews in the same post. I have always done this and most all of my posts have links.
I started getting sales right away and am now getting sales every day from Amazon, so it works for me. I have gone through slow periods where I don't get a lot of sales but that is largely due to my own lack of time to work on my sites and recently due to the Google update. Now things have picked back up.
Jessica
I did the same thing, started putting my affiliate links in and writing reviews.
I've never really bought into the theory that you have to wait until you start getting a lot of traffic to put in affiliate links. If you have a niche that's not super competitive, it only makes sense to try and get sales as soon as possible.
My experience has been the same as yours as far as slow periods. I've had a few due to lack of time to keep up with adding a lot of content at times.
Congrats on getting Amazon sales every day!
Thanks. It is only 1 more day than last year so nothing earth shattering yet...I can hope though!
I see a lot of people spend 6 months writing before adding any links...I feel bad for them because they get discouraged in that time.
The number of the post don't matter!
Frequently like I side this morning on my blog here, have too many post is very bad for your website.
Google don't like too many pages:
google like few page with fresh original, unique and deep researched topic.
Why is that is long story but maybe some day I'll write why you must publish not too much articles
Interesting. I know that Brian Dean does very well with not many, but super well-written posts.
- Christina
Christina, I have had to decrease my posting the last 4 weeks. From 3 a week to 1 a week. Since then I have seen a boost in my overall ranking.
This is interesting news to me.
Laura
Hi, is not easy find what your problem is, particularly without see the back-end of the website.
Last google update for what i Know penalized many website of the niche Heath and medication.
Yes you must have sitemap which link all yours webpage, even better if you have sitemap wich include videos and images
I have sitemap Of course, but .xml not .html
what someone told you is not true for many factor:
medium length domain on first page are 1890 words long.
2-4 only exact keywords is not true at all.
The first keyword go on the first paragraph if possible, but don't have the power of not ranking if you don't do.
I use classic editor and after the update I ranked few post on first and second place for keywords up to 22000 research month.
I f you send to me private message I can do 2-3 different audit for your website(of course free) and we'll see if there is something not so good.
SEO is complex field, but with patience you can find the problem (almost)always.
If you have daily back-up you can try another thing, but you must have some expertise or some good software for that.
Great post Christina, I've been facing these issues and I also use Thrive architect.
It's tough to say for me because several of my post still rank well but in general my traffic has gone way down. I personally think it's just because of all the competition within the make money online niche because wealthy affiliate promotes it's so hard. So my traffic actually was around 1000 to 1500 new users per day about a year ago and then it drops down to about 700 per day in Feb 2019 and then after the new update I was around 200 to 300 per day.
That totally sucks with almost 500 posts.
I figured it was because of all my alt tags were keyword stuffed and so that was maybe a penalty. I'm currently working on updating all my all tags to be just solid descriptions of the pictures. My hope Is that this would improve my overall rankings and traffic back to the plus 500/day level.
Like you, I see several post with a 10 spot ranking in Google and then a number one spot in Yahoo and Bing.
I actually took the private coaching with Jay and got great tips and some advice for my website, but the big suggestion was to add YouTube videos because of the increased competition in my niche. That helps a little bit but overall it just seems like a ton of work for some super average results. The other thing is that the MMO niche in general has gotten more competitive so even if I get 100 new invitations in a week or two, only like 5% are buying versus 12% - 15% like a couple years ago.
If it is Thrive architect then that would be pretty disheartening because I put in thousands of hours to update my website with this theme as well as all the additional updates.
I would love to hear what you find out because I'm not sure what more can be done.
Thanks for taking the time to write this post.
Todd
Hey Todd, thanks so much for writing.
If it's just a matter of there being too much competition, then that really sucks. Because I don't know how to do any better at this point.
UGH.
Maybe it's time to move to another niche? I hate to give up on this one, but I can't sit here forever and go nowhere with it.
In any case, I'm going to test out not using Thrive Architect and updating my images and see how it goes. I'll keep you posted and let you know if anything happens with it.
I hope it's not Thrive Architect because I really like using it. But at least if that's an issue, it can be fixed.
- Christina
I’d love to hear what you find out Christina. If it is Thrive architect, I think that could be something that could be presented to them. In the past they have had issues with their architect Builder and had resolved several issues related to it. As a matter of fact I found that they have been one of the companies (like WA) that continues to strive to improve upon their products. So I'd like to know if it's Thrive architect as well since it took me three months to update my site last year to it.
I'm getting to that point as well though where it's just not worth it to produce more content. It's either produce more content that's perfect and do a YouTube video and then hope you can get the number one spot for a review that hopefully will bring people in and convert to sales.
Again, part of the blame is all the competition out there that's outside of wealthy affiliate but also wealthy affiliate as well. They're constantly try to get people hyped up to promote their product and Company rather than striving to focus on helping people build their own Niche websites within whatever Niche or passion they want. They have people give up too quickly when they don't know what niche to select.
Look forward to your findings.
Best,
Todd
Very good point. I know almost all of the top 10 people in Google are WA people. Good for them. Bad for us. lol
- Christina
You ain't kidding... I know, it's downright depressing. We'll see how the alt tag update goes. Seems some pickup in traffic. I really think it's just the niche. But yeah, it sucks to be going backwards instead of launching forward.
Cheers
Have you looked in search console?
Do you have keywords that were ranking high now on 2nd page of Google? What sites now out rank you that didn't before? Why? Is there content better? More authoratative?
Have you noticed a decline in rankings Or has just a couple of high performing pages no longer performing?
Has traffic bounced back at all? Remained steady? Continue to drop?
What about creating YouTube videos pointing to your most popular articles?
Just a warning, I wouldn't spend an insane amount of time on it. Unless it's a huge keyword, I'd focus more on creating or improving content.
The keywords that were ranking high are still ranking pretty well. One of them isn't because it's not as relevant anymore (a review post of a bad product).
As I mentioned in my post, I have been concentrating on creating even higher quality content than I was before. Google isn't ranking anything new of mine that's significant.
It's like they're completely ignoring almost everything I put out there.
My traffic should be WAY higher than it is. It was almost 3k / month and now it's declining again. It should be much higher at this point. I'm 10 months into it, and I have over 200 posts on my site.
My traffic goes up when a Pinterest pin gets some traction or when Bing ranks me.
I'm telling you, there's an issue with my website speaking to Google. I just know something's off. I understand I won't rank for everything, but I am producing high-quality content and I should rank for some things...
I have to spend time on it because I'll never get enough traffic if I don't.
I appreciate your questions and ideas. I do have a YouTube channel, but I haven't been focused on it too much at this point.
- Christina
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...still 15 days-ish new and havent launched a page yet [deep diving in training still] But I did end up doing a quick search on "theme" based on a few comments. "Divi Theme" seems to be a topic of discussion - how do I search a specific theme [ive tried the search but it still pulls up a variety/mix-mash of other themes]
I guess what im also trying to say is how do I avoid Thrive [if that truely is a possible concern]
Thanks for sharing - super curious about themes in general now.
Thrive is a paid theme, so you won't find it on the the site here. I don't know if it's the issue. It's just a suspicion. Many successful bloggers use it, so...?
In any case, nothing for you to worry about yet. Just keep doing the training!
- Christina