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Hey WA warriors. Hope you're having a great day wherever you are!
My site is still languishing in the doldrums after HCU. No real change since the big G annihilated so m
Recovering from google hcu? what do you think of this strategy?
Hey WA warriors. Hope you're having a great day wherever you are!
My site is still languishing in the doldrums after HCU. No real change since the big G annihilated so m
Hey Rohan,
Still mulling this over, but my initial thoughts are NO!
Yep 100% HCU is sitewide, so it kinda feels likes a "penalty".
However, "putting loads of articles in draft" could also be considered "writing for search engines and not for people", i.e. I'm trying to "trick" Google until I sort my site out.
I will do a write up eventually of how I have "partly" recovered from HCU 2022, but it's much the same as I've spoken about before.
PLUS
I mentioned in my last post, if you've been "hit" by a specifically-named Google Algorithm Update you can typically expect that no matter what you do with your website, improvements WON'T be seen until the NEXT TIME that specifically-named algorithm update comes around.
If I had to guess, I would say there will be an HCU in the first quarter of 2024, so let's go with February.
That gives you around 10-11 weeks to "sort your site out".
Just take it ONE article at a time.
Putting loads of articles in draft is much the same as what we tell newbies about NOT aiming for perfectionism.
It's almost like a newbie saying, "I am going to write 100 articles FIRST, and once I get to 100 I will start publishing them to my website."
We would ALL say, write one, publish, write the next one, publish, and so on.
So, do your updates in exactly the same way.
Here's a quick, "What I Did to Recover" on the Exercise website.
Checked traffic in GA from 1st January 2022 (you can do it from 2023 now).
Any article that had less than 30 visits in that time I deleted.
227 articles deleted
Articles that had dropped off page one, checked out the top 3 ranking articles, compared to mine, rewrote.
I've now also started adding FAQs to ALL articles, so that's going to take me at least another 7-8 months in total.
My FAQs are typically 5 "questions" either taken from People Also Ask or I type the "keyword" into Reddit and look for similar questions.
Each "answer" is of a decent length, typically 200-300 words.
So, my FAQ is usually over 1,000 words.
I place it right at the end just before the conclusion, therefore the main part of article, and the keyword it is focused around is at the beginning of the article.
I added a LOT more videos to explain nearly every heading/subheading and FAQ, and I also added more related images.
I got rid of ALL my product reviews (YUP), and just kept one which has regular sales on a weekly basis.
I then created a PAGE in the same style as LinkTree, but with some writing.
So, I made my own banner in canva (300 x1000), then had a short 150-word "review" of the product.
I've done this for 4 products total.
I have one page for "exercise products" and another page for "Diet & nutrition products"
Then I have "directed traffic" through other sources (Pinterest & Quora).
I started the "pure affiliate marketing" (via Pinterest & Quora to these landing pages) on August 28th 2023.
Got my first sale around 3 weeks later, and sales have been increasing every month.
So far in November I've earned $264.38 in "pure affiliate marketing" using this method, so this should be my first $500 month.
So realistically, it's taken me 3 months to that level, just by pinning (a LOT) every single day, and answering at least 1 (usually 2-3) Quora questions a day.
And my Quora answers are mini-articles, 700-800 words, Featured Image, and a relevant video or 2, plus, I'm NOT placing links in about 70% of my answers, but I have my Quora profile "optimized for clickthrough rate" ("this is who I am here's my website, here's my 5 most popular articles, here's the workouts and diets I recommend" so my profile page has about 8 anchor tect links on it).
I also went a bit mad last year with Link Whisper, so I've actually deleted over 2,000 internal links on the site.
I've rewritten any article introductions where I feel it's obvious that I've tried to "squeeze the exact keyword in", and just made it far more natural sounding, even if this means NOT using the keyword, but rather something similar, LSI, or a variation of the keyword.
I've removed the H2 tag I used to have straight after my introduction, which was always the EXACT keyword (a bit too much like "keyword-stuffing")...
Eeerm, that's all that comes to mind so far, if I remember what else I've done, I'll add it later. LOL!
Make sense?
Partha
Makes perfect sense Partha, thank you so much!
This is where the real value is in WA. People like you who really take the time to help other members as opposed to a quick and often generic response which, in reality, is of no help at all.
There's plenty of that.
Simply, my big bottle neck at the moment is time. Even with a 10-11 week window it's not going to be enough for me to fix everything before the next HCU.
I'm still tempted to draft a good chunk of my posts just to see what happens :-)
But I'll probably follow your advice tbh.
Thanks again Partha, you're truly 1 in a million!
Easier said than done, don't look at the "big picture".
In fact, one of my tips about "To-Do Lists" (may write about this in the future, LOL) is to STOP putting tasks on a to-do list, instead use time slots.
So, rather than write an article, get 3 new keywords, give 2 comments.
Your list says
60 minutes in total on article writing
30 minutes in total on keyword research
30 minutes in total on comments
As weird as it sounds, this actually is far more "motivating".
We typically feel at our best from a "sense of achievement" or a "sense of fulfillment", so if you're not getting everything done on a to-do list you feel like a failure.
That mindset sticks, and goes into your next working day too, and this is when "can't be bothered" or work is a real struggle because you don't feel you're going to get done what you initially set yourself to do.
So, just set yourself a certain aount of TIME on specific subjects.
Trust, with a sense of achievement, you're far more motivated, and you're likely to be really productive (plus, I know it must be really difficult with work as well).
And again, NOT looking at the big picture, rather than saying I've got 10-11 weeks to do Everything, it's I've got 10-11 weeks to get as much done as I can.
This way, once more, motivation is high, and you may end up updating about 50% of your site.
50% is better than nothing because you got demotivated at the size of the task on day one.
Amazing response :-)
You should definitely take up motivational speaking Partha. You always come out with the exact thing I need to hear at a particular point in time.
It's true, I am prone to seeing the glass half empty. Drives my wife mad :-) I think I get it from my Dad ... he is definitely a depressive and that had a lot to do with alcohol.
That's something I've nearly given up now and I feel so much better for it.
Funnily enough I've just completed a time management course as part of my job and it basically says the same things you're saying here :-)
... and actually I took your advice previously about setting a 'daily number of words' target for article writing. That was hugely productive and I wrote more than I've ever done before in a certain time frame.
... although I did find there was not enough time left to actually publish the articles. Still have some waiting to be published now :-)
Back to this specific question ...
I did think of another reason NOT to go down the 'mass draft' route. Even though most of my articles have been hit, they may still get the odd one or two reads a week and if the quality shines through, the lower bounce rate may begin to factor into Google's algo.
We'll see!
My latest attempt is an article which dials back on the exact match keyword (as you mention above) and is heavily source linked. I've tried to link out to an authority anywhere I make even the slightest claim or statement of 'truth' ... and the title tag of the link gives the user more info about where the link leads ... so hopefully pretty helpful.
It took me forever to get it done though!
I'm interested to see what happens.
Thanks again Partha ... you're a star!
Hi Partha,
I had been doing all of that since the core update in March, post by post.
According to one of your blog posts here ( or 2-3), and one of Vitaly's classes.
Remember that I wrote a post about how my organic traffic was up again?
So what I did in those months:
- look up the LSI keywords in GSC , vieuwed the most, and adapted the keyword in title, first paragraph.
- added related LSi keywords in h2 headings.
- also deleted a lot of posts, especially lots of roundup reviews.
- chanced header pictures with canva/wrote titles on them to show in the picture already what the topic was about.
- created extra internal link when uodating a post
-added faqs
- sometimes rewrote a lot of things with the help of chatGPT, because my English can be crap. ( although no one ever noticed on social media that I'm not native English )
- havent raised the amount of work on any social media traffic though, but still adding regular youtube vids and always create an extra ( crappy , but still works) of the same project for Pinterest.
Still, I got hit again ..
Now, the ones most hit, i'm taking another look ( most were already updated with the methods above) , and checking again what the competition is doing and improving search intent. ( as with Jays classes).
I must say: lots of the competitors above me ARE CRAP. Seriously!
Like posts with 30 pictures, just one line under the pictures, leading to 30 other websites. Or a post with a small listicle, and thats it!
I seriously dont get it and yeah , i hope that the next simular update will get us all back.
I think google just wants us to pay for adds.
Just one or two posts so far I was like: ok, for this one the competition is better.
Lizzy
See more comments
I really didn't want to have to shift focus like this but the recent Google updates have been a bit of a reality check for me.
Cost of living is now biting hard and I ha
Hey Rohan,
Not for PPC, but I do have landing pages set up for Clickbank offers (500-word ChatGPT-created CTA for a Clickbank product), and then I'm just sending traffic to these (social media, including a bit of "blackhat" LOL).
A couple of these include pages created on established sites, so they already have all the "legal stuff" set up anyway.
BUT
I have two sites where I have nothing more than the 500-word ChatGPT "mini-review" and affiliate links, with NO legal pages or disclosures.
Sure, it is under one of the FTC guidelines that we should disclose whether we are potetialy making financial gain from the information we provide, but is everyone on the internet really doing this?
As with most things that you aren't doing to the "letter of the law", you may get away with it for a while, for years, or even forever.
I know that on the sites that I have NO disclosures they may "get into trouble" at any time, but for now, I'm enjoying the traffic and the sales.
Sure, it may all fall apart in a few months time, but it would've been a fun ride, and I earned some decent money.
I could say "Do as I say, NOT as I do", LOL, but I know you're an intelligent enough guy to come to your own decisions
Partha
Perfect Partha. As usual, exactly what I needed to hear ...
"Wink wink, nudge nudge ... say no more"
:-)
See more comments
Anyone sending ppc traffic to clickbank landing pages?
I really didn't want to have to shift focus like this but the recent Google updates have been a bit of a reality check for me.
Cost of living is now biting hard and I ha
Hey Rohan,
Not for PPC, but I do have landing pages set up for Clickbank offers (500-word ChatGPT-created CTA for a Clickbank product), and then I'm just sending traffic to these (social media, including a bit of "blackhat" LOL).
A couple of these include pages created on established sites, so they already have all the "legal stuff" set up anyway.
BUT
I have two sites where I have nothing more than the 500-word ChatGPT "mini-review" and affiliate links, with NO legal pages or disclosures.
Sure, it is under one of the FTC guidelines that we should disclose whether we are potetialy making financial gain from the information we provide, but is everyone on the internet really doing this?
As with most things that you aren't doing to the "letter of the law", you may get away with it for a while, for years, or even forever.
I know that on the sites that I have NO disclosures they may "get into trouble" at any time, but for now, I'm enjoying the traffic and the sales.
Sure, it may all fall apart in a few months time, but it would've been a fun ride, and I earned some decent money.
I could say "Do as I say, NOT as I do", LOL, but I know you're an intelligent enough guy to come to your own decisions
Partha
Perfect Partha. As usual, exactly what I needed to hear ...
"Wink wink, nudge nudge ... say no more"
:-)
See more comments
When I try to visit the 'Customizer' section under the 'Appearance' menu in WP it looks like it's not loading the CSS or something
Any ideas how I can fix this?
Thanks Tony. That's odd a few people are having trouble seeing the screenshot. Looks fine here.
Have you reached site support?
Have you installed a plugin or changed something lately which might broke it?
Hey Abie, thanks. Maybe a plugin yeah ...
I should probably go through the process of deactivating one by one before I contact support.
I just thought maybe one of you super cool people here had seen this before ;-)
I suggest opening a help ticket with Site Support and letting them try to troubleshoot and suggest a fix.
-Mike
See more comments
How do I fix my wp customizer?
When I try to visit the 'Customizer' section under the 'Appearance' menu in WP it looks like it's not loading the CSS or something
Any ideas how I can fix this?
Thanks Tony. That's odd a few people are having trouble seeing the screenshot. Looks fine here.
Have you reached site support?
Have you installed a plugin or changed something lately which might broke it?
Hey Abie, thanks. Maybe a plugin yeah ...
I should probably go through the process of deactivating one by one before I contact support.
I just thought maybe one of you super cool people here had seen this before ;-)
I suggest opening a help ticket with Site Support and letting them try to troubleshoot and suggest a fix.
-Mike
See more comments
Hi all,
Vetting guest posts has become a whole lot more challenging with the onslaught of AI writing tools out there.
Has anyone else here been using GPT Zero? I'
I haven’t used it, but I’ll take a look. I don’t put much faith in AI detector apps.
Initially, I evaluated various apps and amused myself by putting the same text (including context I wrote) in all of them and getting vastly different results.
I wouldn’t be overly concerned about other peoples’ content that comes up AI positive.
Let’s face it, the vast majority of writers are now using AI to some degree, including the professionals.
Google has stated that they won’t penalize purely on AI detection.
The content either adds value, compared to what currently exists or it does not. Of course, accuracy, grammar and plagiarism are still important.
Just my opinion. 😎
Frank 🎸
Thanks Frank, appreciate your time :-)
I ran an article through it which was partly AI generated and partly my own writing. The detector was 95%+ accurate.
If these free detectors can get this close I'd imagine Google can spot AI generated text a mile off and almost certainly is collecting lots of info as we speak.
Interesting times ahead ... I wonder how long it will be before the great AI spam google update ;-)
See more comments
Has anyone used free open ai detector, gptzero?
Hi all,
Vetting guest posts has become a whole lot more challenging with the onslaught of AI writing tools out there.
Has anyone else here been using GPT Zero? I'
I haven’t used it, but I’ll take a look. I don’t put much faith in AI detector apps.
Initially, I evaluated various apps and amused myself by putting the same text (including context I wrote) in all of them and getting vastly different results.
I wouldn’t be overly concerned about other peoples’ content that comes up AI positive.
Let’s face it, the vast majority of writers are now using AI to some degree, including the professionals.
Google has stated that they won’t penalize purely on AI detection.
The content either adds value, compared to what currently exists or it does not. Of course, accuracy, grammar and plagiarism are still important.
Just my opinion. 😎
Frank 🎸
Thanks Frank, appreciate your time :-)
I ran an article through it which was partly AI generated and partly my own writing. The detector was 95%+ accurate.
If these free detectors can get this close I'd imagine Google can spot AI generated text a mile off and almost certainly is collecting lots of info as we speak.
Interesting times ahead ... I wonder how long it will be before the great AI spam google update ;-)
See more comments
Hey Rohan,
Still mulling this over, but my initial thoughts are NO!
Yep 100% HCU is sitewide, so it kinda feels likes a "penalty".
However, "putting loads of articles in draft" could also be considered "writing for search engines and not for people", i.e. I'm trying to "trick" Google until I sort my site out.
I will do a write up eventually of how I have "partly" recovered from HCU 2022, but it's much the same as I've spoken about before.
PLUS
I mentioned in my last post, if you've been "hit" by a specifically-named Google Algorithm Update you can typically expect that no matter what you do with your website, improvements WON'T be seen until the NEXT TIME that specifically-named algorithm update comes around.
If I had to guess, I would say there will be an HCU in the first quarter of 2024, so let's go with February.
That gives you around 10-11 weeks to "sort your site out".
Just take it ONE article at a time.
Putting loads of articles in draft is much the same as what we tell newbies about NOT aiming for perfectionism.
It's almost like a newbie saying, "I am going to write 100 articles FIRST, and once I get to 100 I will start publishing them to my website."
We would ALL say, write one, publish, write the next one, publish, and so on.
So, do your updates in exactly the same way.
Here's a quick, "What I Did to Recover" on the Exercise website.
Checked traffic in GA from 1st January 2022 (you can do it from 2023 now).
Any article that had less than 30 visits in that time I deleted.
227 articles deleted
Articles that had dropped off page one, checked out the top 3 ranking articles, compared to mine, rewrote.
I've now also started adding FAQs to ALL articles, so that's going to take me at least another 7-8 months in total.
My FAQs are typically 5 "questions" either taken from People Also Ask or I type the "keyword" into Reddit and look for similar questions.
Each "answer" is of a decent length, typically 200-300 words.
So, my FAQ is usually over 1,000 words.
I place it right at the end just before the conclusion, therefore the main part of article, and the keyword it is focused around is at the beginning of the article.
I added a LOT more videos to explain nearly every heading/subheading and FAQ, and I also added more related images.
I got rid of ALL my product reviews (YUP), and just kept one which has regular sales on a weekly basis.
I then created a PAGE in the same style as LinkTree, but with some writing.
So, I made my own banner in canva (300 x1000), then had a short 150-word "review" of the product.
I've done this for 4 products total.
I have one page for "exercise products" and another page for "Diet & nutrition products"
Then I have "directed traffic" through other sources (Pinterest & Quora).
I started the "pure affiliate marketing" (via Pinterest & Quora to these landing pages) on August 28th 2023.
Got my first sale around 3 weeks later, and sales have been increasing every month.
So far in November I've earned $264.38 in "pure affiliate marketing" using this method, so this should be my first $500 month.
So realistically, it's taken me 3 months to that level, just by pinning (a LOT) every single day, and answering at least 1 (usually 2-3) Quora questions a day.
And my Quora answers are mini-articles, 700-800 words, Featured Image, and a relevant video or 2, plus, I'm NOT placing links in about 70% of my answers, but I have my Quora profile "optimized for clickthrough rate" ("this is who I am here's my website, here's my 5 most popular articles, here's the workouts and diets I recommend" so my profile page has about 8 anchor tect links on it).
I also went a bit mad last year with Link Whisper, so I've actually deleted over 2,000 internal links on the site.
I've rewritten any article introductions where I feel it's obvious that I've tried to "squeeze the exact keyword in", and just made it far more natural sounding, even if this means NOT using the keyword, but rather something similar, LSI, or a variation of the keyword.
I've removed the H2 tag I used to have straight after my introduction, which was always the EXACT keyword (a bit too much like "keyword-stuffing")...
Eeerm, that's all that comes to mind so far, if I remember what else I've done, I'll add it later. LOL!
Make sense?
Partha
Makes perfect sense Partha, thank you so much!
This is where the real value is in WA. People like you who really take the time to help other members as opposed to a quick and often generic response which, in reality, is of no help at all.
There's plenty of that.
Simply, my big bottle neck at the moment is time. Even with a 10-11 week window it's not going to be enough for me to fix everything before the next HCU.
I'm still tempted to draft a good chunk of my posts just to see what happens :-)
But I'll probably follow your advice tbh.
Thanks again Partha, you're truly 1 in a million!
Easier said than done, don't look at the "big picture".
In fact, one of my tips about "To-Do Lists" (may write about this in the future, LOL) is to STOP putting tasks on a to-do list, instead use time slots.
So, rather than write an article, get 3 new keywords, give 2 comments.
Your list says
60 minutes in total on article writing
30 minutes in total on keyword research
30 minutes in total on comments
As weird as it sounds, this actually is far more "motivating".
We typically feel at our best from a "sense of achievement" or a "sense of fulfillment", so if you're not getting everything done on a to-do list you feel like a failure.
That mindset sticks, and goes into your next working day too, and this is when "can't be bothered" or work is a real struggle because you don't feel you're going to get done what you initially set yourself to do.
So, just set yourself a certain aount of TIME on specific subjects.
Trust, with a sense of achievement, you're far more motivated, and you're likely to be really productive (plus, I know it must be really difficult with work as well).
And again, NOT looking at the big picture, rather than saying I've got 10-11 weeks to do Everything, it's I've got 10-11 weeks to get as much done as I can.
This way, once more, motivation is high, and you may end up updating about 50% of your site.
50% is better than nothing because you got demotivated at the size of the task on day one.
Amazing response :-)
You should definitely take up motivational speaking Partha. You always come out with the exact thing I need to hear at a particular point in time.
It's true, I am prone to seeing the glass half empty. Drives my wife mad :-) I think I get it from my Dad ... he is definitely a depressive and that had a lot to do with alcohol.
That's something I've nearly given up now and I feel so much better for it.
Funnily enough I've just completed a time management course as part of my job and it basically says the same things you're saying here :-)
... and actually I took your advice previously about setting a 'daily number of words' target for article writing. That was hugely productive and I wrote more than I've ever done before in a certain time frame.
... although I did find there was not enough time left to actually publish the articles. Still have some waiting to be published now :-)
Back to this specific question ...
I did think of another reason NOT to go down the 'mass draft' route. Even though most of my articles have been hit, they may still get the odd one or two reads a week and if the quality shines through, the lower bounce rate may begin to factor into Google's algo.
We'll see!
My latest attempt is an article which dials back on the exact match keyword (as you mention above) and is heavily source linked. I've tried to link out to an authority anywhere I make even the slightest claim or statement of 'truth' ... and the title tag of the link gives the user more info about where the link leads ... so hopefully pretty helpful.
It took me forever to get it done though!
I'm interested to see what happens.
Thanks again Partha ... you're a star!
Hi Partha,
I had been doing all of that since the core update in March, post by post.
According to one of your blog posts here ( or 2-3), and one of Vitaly's classes.
Remember that I wrote a post about how my organic traffic was up again?
So what I did in those months:
- look up the LSI keywords in GSC , vieuwed the most, and adapted the keyword in title, first paragraph.
- added related LSi keywords in h2 headings.
- also deleted a lot of posts, especially lots of roundup reviews.
- chanced header pictures with canva/wrote titles on them to show in the picture already what the topic was about.
- created extra internal link when uodating a post
-added faqs
- sometimes rewrote a lot of things with the help of chatGPT, because my English can be crap. ( although no one ever noticed on social media that I'm not native English )
- havent raised the amount of work on any social media traffic though, but still adding regular youtube vids and always create an extra ( crappy , but still works) of the same project for Pinterest.
Still, I got hit again ..
Now, the ones most hit, i'm taking another look ( most were already updated with the methods above) , and checking again what the competition is doing and improving search intent. ( as with Jays classes).
I must say: lots of the competitors above me ARE CRAP. Seriously!
Like posts with 30 pictures, just one line under the pictures, leading to 30 other websites. Or a post with a small listicle, and thats it!
I seriously dont get it and yeah , i hope that the next simular update will get us all back.
I think google just wants us to pay for adds.
Just one or two posts so far I was like: ok, for this one the competition is better.
Lizzy