SEO frustration: when investing resources is not enough

by Sampie
6 replies
  • SEO
  • |
Hi all, I'm a new user of this forum. I'm not used to write in forums but I wanted to share some thoughts about this crazy topic that SEO is.
So I have a graphic design website, users can design their own logo online with an online application and download them 100% free. I don't want to write the url here because it's my first message and I don't want to be spammy, if anyone is curious about it I can send it.

My website is focused in spanish language and it's ranked on first Google page when looking for "free logos" in spanish (logos gratis). In fact I have two pages ranked in top 10 with some keywords wich is pretty good.

My analytics on this month:


Sessions: 58.939
Average Session length: 00:03:46
Bounce Rate: 10,70 %
Pages/Session:2,79

Some metrics:
PA: 35
DA: 23

Mobile Speed: 62 / 100 (working to improve this)
Computer Speed: 87 / 100

I think those are pretty decent numbers, but over the last months my rankings and stats are being falling progressively. Not something dramatically, but falling. I have to say that I've never cared too much about SEO or optimizing page until 6 or 7 months ago.
My website have a blog and I write about 3 or 4 posts / month.

My frustration: there are two competitors that doing absolutely nothing seo related on their page are ranking above me and some others competitors.
It's so frustrating to invest so many hours optimizing website, trying to improve Google insights metrics, trying to make it useful to users ... and see some competitors doing nothing are ranking so well.
These are some Google Insights metrics about one competitor in particular:
Mobile Speed: 25 / 100
Computer Speed: 30 / 100
PA: 27
DA: 14

Website has no blog, and very few (and poor quality).
Another thing I've investigated is that it's owner has about 10 domains related to the same topic in different languages (spanish, english, german ...) and in their footer some of them are linked to each other, creating some kind of PBN (as far as I know they are penalized by G ) , as the websites are almost identical each other.

The only thing I think it has on his favour is that his domain has the main keywords on it's name.
It's really annoying read Google pushing us to improve metrics, page load time, user experience ... and watch the big G not applying their own rules (or watch someone bypassing that with other techniches)
Funny thing is that websites are ranking with free logo keywords (in spanish) and website is not offering them free! User has to pay when downloading his logo.

I know I may not be the only person on this planet with the same kind of frustration, and of course complaining in a forum will not improve any ranking.

I just wanted to share my situation and read some similar cases about what I've called "SEO frustration" : investing hours and hours in optimization and watch competitors bypassing you in visits with doing almost nothing, or at least, nothing labeled as White Hat.

Thank you for your reading and your thoughts, any suggestion or comment will be appreciated
#frustration #investing #resources #seo
  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
    The thing is - Google has never said any of the things you have been concentrating on beats getting links. Be careful the blogs a d posts you read with all their theories. Google depends on votes and quality links coming in will beat almost any other factor because for search engines links are votes.
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    • Profile picture of the author Sampie
      Thanks for writing. I agree that some of those metrics are "invented", as PR is not reliable any more. But some others like speed insights are provided by Google so it's assumed by everyone as a quality signal.
      You say links, in this case I have more links pointing to my website than two of my competitor above me, at least "visible" links.

      So there are no reasonable arguments to justify those rankings, or at least no obvious arguments.
      Really really strange.
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  • Profile picture of the author Aayushg416
    Use bitly to create personal url shortner with subdomain of ur site domain this will also madk u on the top also google likes updated feed so don't forget to add more keywords and update ur posy
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Classic example of what I was talking about. That advice is meaningless to ranking sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author Woomeister
    Logo sites are renowned for 'breaking the rules' or black hat tactics as many are just arbitrage sites. As such they will be adding back links and using their own PBN, cloaking links etc etc.

    What are you competitors on page metrics, uniques visitors etc? The metrics you used as a comparison have no basis for google ranking so are useless really.

    Have you analysed your competitor back links or just counted them? By analyse I mean to look deeper into their relative strength.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    OP hasn't told us anything.
    • No keyword
    • No domain name
    • Nothing

    I have no idea how you think anyone can provide an answer.

    BTW, page speed doesn't matter for SEO. If the page takes a month to load on a browser you have bigger problems than ranking pages like zero traffic conversions so ranking a page would be a waste of time.
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