9 Months in, and I got nothing

31 replies
I own a website that deals with self-help for anxiety and depression and have been posting long pieces of content onto it almost daily for a while.

I started posting fewer and fewer articles over time, by now I write about one article a week.
All of my attempts at building backlinks were a failure, and despite being very meticulous with my SEO and content, I am yet to get and first-page rankings for any of them.

In fact, because of my lack of success, Google seems to have started deindexing my pages one by one, at least according to GSC.

I honestly don't know what to do, I put a lot of time and effort into my work and got absolutely nothing in return.

I honestly feel that my website is better than the vast majority of sites in my niche, but the big competitors seem unbeatable, and even long tail keywords fail me when it comes to getting some traffic.

Any suggestions? A person who would like to review my website perhaps?
#months
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  • Profile picture of the author clairelynn23
    Just curious. Have you consulted or spoken with anyone who is an expert in today's SEO environment? Also, how old is your site/your domain? Did it have previous backlinks? SEO is so tough IMO.
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    • Profile picture of the author Justsomeguy41
      I have been following Backlinko, Moz, and Search Engine Land for a while now, but haven't managed to get anyone to give me one-on-one help - experts seem to be very evasive.

      My domain is an original, there wasn't any website that had it before I did.

      Believe me, if I was getting some minimal results I would be perfectly happy, but I got about 150 ranked keywords (in about 114 articles) before Google started deindexing my pages.

      I am at a complete loss, nothing that I do seems to work.
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  • Profile picture of the author jamie3000
    Ummm if google is deindexing your content and it's all unique and hand written then you may have some sort of technical problem. Are you copying internal content? Do you have reliable hosting? Doing any weird redirects? Are your backlinks quality?
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    • Profile picture of the author Justsomeguy41
      I write all of my content myself and put a lot of time gathering resources for research.

      I do post the same call for action at the end of each of my articles and an HTML email registration form, something that amounts to about 2% duplicate content on average (according to some website that I forgot)

      I got no backlinks, that's one of my problems haha
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      • Profile picture of the author jamie3000
        Have you checked the Google cache for a few of your pages? Just to see what Google sees. It's weird it's deindexing them.
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        • Profile picture of the author Justsomeguy41
          Yeah, I know.

          Honestly, it's driving me insane. My cache seems to be perfectly normal.
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          • Profile picture of the author jamie3000
            Is your website shared hosting? Who are your neighbours?
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            • Profile picture of the author Justsomeguy41
              Yes, it is.

              I joined Wealthy Affiliate a while back and they provided the hosting to my website ever since.

              I took the year-long membership route, and I don't quite regret it yet.

              They recently did a huge update to their side speed, bumping my score at google's page insights to an impressive 96%.

              I actually asked there as well, none of their members have been suffering from this type of problem.
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  • Profile picture of the author dburk
    Originally Posted by Justsomeguy41 View Post

    I honestly feel that my website is better than the vast majority of sites in my niche, but the big competitors seem unbeatable, and even long tail keywords fail me when it comes to getting some traffic.

    Any suggestions? A person who would like to review my website perhaps?
    Hi Justsomeguy41,

    As you no doubt realize, how you feel about your website doesn't count in Google's eyes.

    I'm happy to take look at your website if you want to share a URL.

    A will make a few comments based on what you posted:

    Content length has nothing to do with SEO. I know there is a lot of hype about content length lately, but I think it is a bunch of hooey.

    Google, and user's in general, always want to see value within the most concise presentation as possible. Stretching out the length of your content does not necessarily increase the utility value. If you can say it with fewer words, users will appreciate that and so will Google.

    If you want to create a lot of value and need to generate more content to increase value that is fine to do, but simply rehashing the same old stuff over and over is not creating additional value, no matter what supposed "guru" claims it does. It's all about the usability and value of your content that matters.

    SEO is just something we do to make it easy for search engines to understand what our content is about, but SEO alone does not create value within our content, nor does using more words, nor does making redundant content. I suspect that you may have fallen for that link bait.

    What about marketing analytic software, have you implemented analytics to study your user's behavior to gain insights about your content and targeting choices?

    Marketing is all about segmenting, testing, and analysis. A lot can be learned even from relatively small amounts of data. Marketing is a science, and as in all scientific endeavors the scientific method is your friend. Implementing a testing regime based on scientific methodology will certainly help you to discover the truth behind your issues, without it you are just guessing. Science is your friend. A/B Split Testing is your measuring stick, and segment by segment analysis is your guide.

    Your data is trying to tell you something. Are you listening?

    HTH,

    Don Burk
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    • Profile picture of the author Justsomeguy41
      Hello Don,

      Thank you for your time, I'll send you my URL privately, any input you might have will be utterly amazing in my eyes.

      I am not looking for any review about my design or anything like that mind you, I just want to figure out why my articles are getting deindexed and why my rankings are so low.

      Best of wishes,

      Vlad
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  • Profile picture of the author Kurt
    Have you checked the Wayback Machine to see if someone owned the domain in the past? It's possible they got it banned.

    Also, is your site hosted on a shared IP? It's possible another site on the same IP is hurting your site.

    Have you accidently added a "no index" tag to your pages, maybe in Wordpress admin?

    Also, Google is only one way of getting traffic. Have you tried Youtube, Reddit, FaceBook, et al?
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    • Profile picture of the author Justsomeguy41
      Hello Kurt,

      Yeah, I did, not such thing actually.

      And no, I didn't try using any of those methods, although I was looking into Reddit, but I am not sure how to promote my stuff there without coming off as spammy or avoiding black/gray hat SEO.

      Cheers!
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  • Profile picture of the author Coropo
    Originally Posted by Justsomeguy41 View Post

    I own a website that deals with self-help for anxiety and depression and have been posting long pieces of content onto it almost daily for a while.

    I started posting fewer and fewer articles over time, by now I write about one article a week.
    All of my attempts at building backlinks were a failure, and despite being very meticulous with my SEO and content, I am yet to get and first-page rankings for any of them.

    In fact, because of my lack of success, Google seems to have started deindexing my pages one by one, at least according to GSC.

    I honestly don't know what to do, I put a lot of time and effort into my work and got absolutely nothing in return.

    I honestly feel that my website is better than the vast majority of sites in my niche, but the big competitors seem unbeatable, and even long tail keywords fail me when it comes to getting some traffic.

    Any suggestions? A person who would like to review my website perhaps?
    I have been there. Did the exact same thing a long time ago. Spent lots of money creating content that no one reads which unsurprisingly, resulted in zero revenue.

    I honestly think one of the biggest mistakes newbies make is relying on SEO for traffic.

    First of all, you have incorrectly equated "more content" with "better SEO rankings". It doesn't work that way. I had a site with only 6-pages and it ranked among the top 3 for some very competitive keywords. It made about $1,400 per month before I sold it for $10,000 on Flippa.

    Secondly, here's a fun fact: Google controls your rankings, which means SEO is unreliable.

    If you want to grow and scale, then you need a method that is consistent and reliable.

    And if you believe your content is amazing, then you should engage with your audience as much as you can, join forums, Q&A sites like Quora and just engage. Have a link back to your site on your profile, and then drop a link to a relevant blog post whenever appropriate.

    That way, you are validating your content, building backlinks AND you are building consistent streams of traffic. When you have traffic coming in, you can start measuring the value of each visitor, optimizing your site for better performance and ultimately start scaling with other traffic methods.

    Basically, spend less time creating what you think is good, and just start engaging with people - They will tell you what you need to create. One piece of content that tons of people love is much better than a million pieces of content no one ever reads.

    And when people love your content, it's so much easier to get it ranked on Google - Because that's exactly what Google wants to rank high: Valuable Content.
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    • Profile picture of the author Justsomeguy41
      Hello there,

      At first, I just made a lot of content, content that I thought was high quality (I made a point to be better than the high-ranked pages).

      I tried getting backlinks via some methods published on Backlinko, but I got nowhere, most competition in my niche is either too big or isn't good enough to try and get a backlink from.

      And when they are just right they typically ignore me.

      I actually thought about getting into websites such as Quora, but I have been a bit reluctant to do so - Can those get me penalized due to being spammy?
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      • Profile picture of the author Coropo
        You should absolutely get into sites like Quora where you can engage with people - It's honestly the FASTEST free way to get reliable traffic.

        It's honestly hard to say what Google would do... I mean, that's the big problem, right? Can you imagine having a ton of page 1 rankings, everything is great, then overnight, you lose everything? It's happened like a million times by the way.

        The point here isn't to focus on Google as the primary source of traffic, but to make it your secondary source. I.e. If Quora links boost your rankings, great. If it doesn't, no worries because you are still getting traffic from Quora itself.

        You really don't need to worry about being a spammer unless you care more about getting traffic than helping others. If you care about helping others, everything you say is going to draw the right kind of people to you - And that's going to build relationships, which results in backlinks, press releases and many other manifestations of publicity. But in the end, you have to understand, you aren't in the business of building backlinks. You are in the business of building relationships.
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        • Profile picture of the author Justsomeguy41
          Thank you for your comment, I'll be sure to try it out.

          All of that being said, how did build up your website to that level of income? How long did it take? I worked on my website for about 9 months for nothing, I am a bit twitchy when it comes to starting new things haha

          Cheers!
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          • Profile picture of the author Coropo
            Contrary to popular belief, how long you work has nothing to do with how much money you make.

            I remember once spending about 1 month of intense effort setting up a webinar, only to have it completely bomb. I barely made anything from all the traffic I sent to it. ($1,400 from 1,500 registrants, I was expecting at least $30,000.)

            On the other hand, I once had an insight into a Clickbank product, decided to setup a quick redirect campaign to the product directly from a bridge page - Ran a Facebook Ad that promoted the page. Whole setup took me about 20 minutes and it ended up making me over $30,000.

            Like I said, making money doesn't have anything to do with how long you work - It has to do with taking the right actions at the right time, which really boils down to 3 simple things:

            1) How well you understand what your audience desires (market)
            2) How able are you to fulfill their desires (offer)
            3) How well are you able to communicate your ability to fulfill their desire (message)

            Your effectiveness at these 3 primary things is ultimately what will determine your success. Everything else is secondary. The reason why most people never get far is because they don't invest in their understanding to correctly apply these 3 things. They focus on the hip new tactic, which will only produce temporary results at best.

            So, I know that was a long-winded answer, but I figured this would help you more.

            To be more specific, the 6-figure business I built and sold last year took me almost exactly 1 year to build. I believe it started generating 5-figures about 3 months in and I ended up selling it for 210k. That vertshock site I sold for $10k took at least a few months to rank - And I spent A LOT of time building it and getting it up there. It was just rookie shit I was doing because I didn't really know what the hell business meant.
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            • Profile picture of the author Justsomeguy41
              Alright, so what are some techniques/resources that I may use that will prove useful to me?
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanbiddulph
    What have you done offsite?

    Guest post? Comment on blogs?

    Get offsite, share those helpful depression and anxiety articles for big, targeted audiences, and you will gain traction.

    First though; feel your loss. Feel your frustration. Sucks of course, but you cannot take that energy to your offsite campaign.
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    • Profile picture of the author Justsomeguy41
      Thank you for your comment.

      Question is, how can I share my stuff without coming across as being spammy? Is there like a guide for this sort of thing?
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  • Profile picture of the author Rory Singh
    Trying to build content so that Google will rank your site and hopefully send boat loads of targeted traffic your way is a tough process.

    Why not use Social Media Platforms and even Forums in your niche.

    If you go to those types of communities and add value along with building your brand...You...you will have an opportunity to put your rich content 'in front' of your target market.

    Your 9 months in and feeling frustrated.

    This is Entrepreneurialism so you are on the right track...just as long as you don't quit.
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  • Profile picture of the author echelon
    Are you following a particular SEO course? Like a training from Mike Long / Greg Morison? I think hat it is beneficial to try to follow a blueprint. That way you may be in the position to ask questions to the course vendor.
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    • Profile picture of the author celente
      Originally Posted by echelon View Post

      Are you following a particular SEO course? Like a training from Mike Long / Greg Morison? I think hat it is beneficial to try to follow a blueprint. That way you may be in the position to ask questions to the course vendor.
      ive actaully done that course and it is great.

      But some of the biggest secrets I learn from SEO do not get shared in here. Infact I have come across them by accident, so you really have to keep working hard and you find the really killer stuff.
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  • Profile picture of the author Profit Traveler
    Banned
    Go back to the Basics if you want revenue.

    No need to knowledge your prospects to death. Tap into their problems and serve them up a solution.

    Be creative.

    Use Memes and graphics. Espeically with anxiety issues so much you can do.

    Then give them an irresistible freebie offer.

    ReFocus your state of mind to building a list in Self Development and train yourself and implement what you learn in regards to that. Should make considerable difference.

    Art
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  • Profile picture of the author newbieleoling
    Some tips for you here hope it help.

    1. Each article content you must control the number of keywords appear in the articles. Especially when you write Long content, they tend to forgot about limit use of same keyword as Google don't like it all.

    2. Have you try share your content on Facebook to drive traffic.

    3. Create some videos to boost your website. Google now like viral content and videos find ways to please Google if you want go for seo method.

    4. Specify what is the website purpose and are you going to monetise it through what ways. Once decide then build on it. Don't blindly just post content then notice you wasted lots of time.

    5. Check out what your competitors do and copy them.

    Good luck
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  • Profile picture of the author mrjackpowers
    If Google is deindexing your pages, you need a new linking strategy. My guess is, they think your site is spam because you're either:

    1) Attempting to build links on low-quality sites.
    2) Webmasters are reporting you to Google because your link building attempts are too spammy.

    Sorry if this sounds harsh, but hey. You don't want to get anxiety and depression over your linking strategies do you? I suggest doing some real, non-spammy blog commenting and sending guest posting requests to authority sites.

    You may have to send up to 100 requests to get one agreement. But if your content is good, you can build up a reputation and your link profile while getting a lot of quality traffic too.
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    • Profile picture of the author Justsomeguy41
      You know what? I think that this might be it!

      I got about 3 backlinks and they are all trash - Irrelevant, low-quality, and give me a stupidly high bounce rate with minimal stay-time.

      I tried to get them removed for a while now, but I get ignored by those site owners all the time.

      Any ideas?

      Cheers,
      Vlad
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  • Profile picture of the author agmccall
    All the answers here are pure speculation. You really should just post your URL so people can actually look at the site and give better advice.

    al
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    "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." Thomas Edison

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  • Profile picture of the author FNIvan1243
    Hi,

    I think you need check again your content, backlink , because YOU THINK IS NOTHING, GOOGLE THINK IS ALL,

    If don't have problem, please see your competitor and study them.
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  • Profile picture of the author Justsomeguy41
    Here's another question: I changed my website from http to https, does that count as duplicate content? is there anything I can do about it?
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  • Profile picture of the author fearlesspioneer
    You've got some experiences. Learn from your failures and you will be better.
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