Sounds like you are doing everything possible. Perhaps you can increase your monthly posts to 8 per month. In most of the niches we are competing against some sites that generate posts a lot more frequently than twice per week.
Patience is important. You might also look at adding some video to your site. Just thinking.
Ray

Check if the keyword has a low OSR.

Hang loose. Lots of helpful ideas covered here. Cheers AJ

I think you've gotten a lot of great feedback here based on the information you gave. Based on the training, the major ranking factors are: Amount of content, amount of internal links, amount of external links, low keyword competition, high search volume keyword, a post length of 1500+ words, age of site, age of content, images with alt text, headings and subheadings to improve scannability, and others you can find in Jay's SEO training.

Based on your post, you only told us about your posting frequency, age of site, and niche. At 5 times per month, in a broad niche like health, that probably wouldn't be enough. Take a look at your successful competitors (especially the solo startup bloggers who are getting some level of success). Are they posting 5 times per month? Are they posting on health as a whole, or have they niched down into a narrow sub-niche for now? How are you generating your content ideas? Are you mingling with your target audience and making sure your content is relevant to them?

Health is a very broad niche, so you're probably targeting broad keywords and topics that high authority sites are competing with you for. I would recommend choosing a subniche within the health niche, and focusing on that for a while, then piling subniches until you have a health authority site. For example, you could focus on weight loss smoothies, then pile on top of that another subniche like weight loss supplements.

Those were examples off the top of my head, but I was trying to illustrate smaller sub-niches within "health"--that broad niche is probably a huge part of your problem.

Added to that, most people think they're doing everything right. Unfortunately, if you're not getting optimal results, there's probably a missing piece somewhere. You should definitely try the feedback feature here (like the other member suggested), or reach out to a more established member. Don't wait until you're frustrated before you reach out for feedback or connect with the community. Stay connected, so you can constantly get feedback and ideas from others.

Hi,

To reallystart ranking, people here at WA recomend posting more frequently than 5 per month. 3 per week is often given as the minimum you should aim for, but the higher your posting frequency, the faster you climb in rankings.

Are you trying to rank only for one keyword, or a different keyword for each post? If you are only trying to rank for ONE keyword and targeting the SAME keyword every time you post, you may need to go back and redo Kyle's SEO training.

SO, unless you have more detai, that is my input: Post 3 times a week minimum, target a different keyword each post, research keywords properly.

Not seeing your site I can only guess but I would say there are several factors.

5 posts per month should be enough but your site is still on the young side so it might take more time. I don't have any videos and I rarely post even as much as you but I have many posts that go straight to the top 10 on Google and have had many in position 1.

Here are the factors that I would consider:

1) How competitive are your keywords? The standard guidance here is to make sure the QSR is under 100. That is way too much competition when your site is new. I make sure that my keywords have QSR under 40. You need to find the low hanging fruit to get some traction. Many of my keywords have QSR under 20. That way I can instantly rank high and quickly get to the first page of the search results. Yes, there is less traffic. But it is better to get some constant traffic on the first page of search results than be buried so far down no one sees your posts and the result is no traffic at all.

2) With the latest Google update last summer health is one of the niches they are cracking down on and expecting us to have experience (which is not clearly defined) in the niche. That means doctors, clinics etc will get the top spots in the search results. It means if you are a regular person with a health niche, it will be harder to rank. My second site is in the health niche and I have let it go dormant since I don't have time to work on that and my primary site enough. I am trying to get my first site up to a higher level of traffic and sales and then I will go back and put more time into my health site.

However, I still get a trickle of traffic to my site even though I have only a handful of posts on it. Most of that traffic comes from Quora however rather than organic searches. I know I will have to work harder to get a steady income from that site. It is NOT impossible though. You can establish more credibility by linking to other sources in your posts, writing long, comprehensive articles and other tricks to make Google think you have experience in the field. Also, keep in mind that other search engines besides Google have not implemented these new standards (that I know of) so perhaps we will get more traffic from them in the future.

Look up the "Medic" update on Google to read more about all this. Basically niches like money and health were affected most.

Jessica

Hi

How old is your site? What niche are you in?

To answer your question: if your articles are not super-long posts, then yes, posting five times per month is not enough.



Best,
Alenka

Nadia’s was a great suggestion. You could also see how your ranking on google is going. Look up some of your older articles, Jaaxy has a great tool for that. It might be pleasantly surprising and give you encouragement?

did I do something wrong or am I just lost don't know where I am at or what I am doing now

Hi
Why don't you submit your website for feedback on your content? People will give you more insight.