Although I only understand about 3/4th of this ( and that is even because you explained the Reddit thing to me before a thousand times lol), I am actually happy that here on your own platform, you can finally be totally upfront and honest about this, and I can't wait to see any results.
So people: I am now cooperating with Partha for Reddit and it's been a ride so far hahahaha! But indeed, be very careful with their rules, and even Ai pictures (in my case)
Although my Google traffic has been going down to almost zero, my general traffic on GA4 has been slowly rising, because I am on Pinterest, Youtube, Facebook page and 2 FB groups, and now I am slowly integrating my older blog posts on Medium and Reddit is for Partha. (and he is even working on Linkedn, what? hahaha)
I see it as an investment for better traffic to my site.
I also got hit in March 23, got back up by deleting some of these crappy roundup reviews and updating other posts, and I had been doing that all spring and summer, while the numbers were growing again.
Then came along September, hit again. I was like: nah, tired of this. (what's left to update anyway?) I mean, I'm sure that I probably do have some crappy posts left on my site or are irrelevant to my niche, but I had a site-wide -classifier (pardon my English if this is not the correct term, sorry Diane and Partha- yeah, you too lol!) punishment anyway, I do think so.
But, I still saw Pinterest growing, put a LOT of time on my Youtube videos already and FB groups, and I was like: no, fuck that! (wow , i can finally use that word on a platform hahaha)
And I also saw one article of my own, ranking in Reddit, one that I had summarized with chat GPT for Reddit, so quite crappy to be honest, ranking above my expanded own blog post, which is now all the way down, under a 1000 ads and thus under the crappy Reddit post.
As you say Partha, and I repeated the same "elsewhere", billion people can be on google, but if they can't find you, because you disappeared in the Serps, what is the use? Apparently, that makes me the "bitter one".
I think I was one of the first persons thinking: well, if Reddit ranks my own crappy summarized post way above my actual post on my blog, why not JOIN Reddit? If you can't beat the "enemy" , join them!
By the way, do you guys know Niche site Lady on Twitter? She was also hit by Google, but is thriving through Facebook, love her! https://twitter.com/NicheSiteLady
I am also going to try to get to a 1000 followers on TIKTOK, to get a clickable link in my bio and when I have some time left, I will also put my crafting videos on Rumbler. But first, got to fill in medium, my Facebook agenda, while continuing with 1 blog post per week on both of my English sites, to keep it fresh (those still take me about 2 days work, because there is hardly use for me to use the AI writer in my niches), ànd I am translating my personal travel story to Dutch on a new domain. ( I can't do those 150 posts per month Partha hahaha NO WAY!). It takes me longer then I thought it would, oh well, it's an experiment.
(at least I'm not competing in Dutch with sites like Reddit, Quora, big dutch travel companies, just booking), but competing with actual social media like Instagram that I will be on anyway)
Great oversight thanks!
Lizzy
@ohnoo_not_her I never knew you were such a troublemaker, Lizzy!!!
Hahahahahahahhahahahhahahahhaha!!
I always thought you were just a lovely, nice and sweet person (you ARE btw), but you've got this other side to you too!!
Who knew???
Hahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahaha!!
And I LOVE the "other side"
I think we're going to have to start calling you
Lairy Lizzy
(and yes, I know that you've just gone to Google "lairy" to see what it means 🤣🤣🤣🤣)
@partha euhm, I went to look up "lairy", but I'm not sure if that is a compliment, depending on which dictionary you go look hahahahaha!
(I'm sure by the way that Partha will share my Reddit process in a few months? weeks? hahahaahha), keep posted!
It is time to really focus on social media right now. Reddit is something that I will have to add on my daily list. So how do I even really use Reddit? And by that I mean is there a specific way of doing it, is there anything that I would need to think of when posting/commenting on Reddit, etc. I am still kinda new to this, so I don't really know how to use Reddit to drive in traffic.
Lol, you won't see me telling you that I am doing good in Google in a year! Haven't reached the 500 visitors!
@jonathan I'll do a write-up on Reddit very soon.
Basically, just be a "normal human being" on Reddit, hahahahahaha!!
It's the same for any platform.
If you think about it, act in the same way as I did at WA.
Be knowledgeable, provide help whenever you can, provide comments and encouragement for others, write really helpful posts, above all, DON'T go into this thinking "How can I get traffic, how can I make money, etc."
More often that not, if you act like a "normal human being" and are extremely helpful, things will start to happen, and then you can subtly promote (as I say, I will do a write-up soon).
Going back to my example of me @WA, imagine if I now said I have a product that I have created for $50 (I haven't btw, hahahaha!!), how many people at WA do you think would buy it?????
That is marketing, be the most knowledgeable and helpful person you can and you'll never need to "sell" anything, people will come to you and literally "ask you" to sell them something!
Act online in the same way you would in the real world! That's it!
Very interesting and scary 
I need to sleep on it, but many things here are like what I read from John Muller and after researching in Excel the research from Steven (link whisper), where he took many websites that had lost their traffic or increased it.
It is important to use one's own photos, for example, but many sites make that impossible.
I was thinking about 2 things, well a lot more, so I want to ask about 2 things.
1. I have 2 sites. One looks to have a good possibility to raise because I have a good site on Facebook for it, and it works fine. Plus, it is a travel site that had a push if Steven is right in his research.
But both you and John Muller talk about the difficulty of getting up again after hitting down. (I have not been so disappointed after I lost a cup final!).
But at the same time, I read between the lines that if we can come up with something new, it is possible.
I have over 400 posts and well over a million words on my main site, which is about sports gear. With a purpose, the name builds an umbrella for many types of sports. Do I read correctly that if I start writing about new sports (I am an Amazon affiliate, and Amazon is a problem too, even though there are some new good things), would it be possible to get success in that?
2. The algorithm hit. Is it possible to see if my sites have been hit by it? Other than having traffic on almost cero?
3. Do I understand it right that I can cope/past the articles from my sites and publish them on Linkedin (never had big success there), medium, and Reddit? I was started on Medium and got a warning after 4 posts that they were thinking of closing my site even though I couldn´t see anything wrong. I wrote them, and it will be open, but explaining to them was very "soft."
@noteboom Hey Johann,
1) I think the main point I'm trying to get across is "STOP TRYING TO RECOVER"
If you think about it, EVERYONE has done everything to "rank in Google".
Your site then gets "hit" and you lose all traffic, so what does everyone do, try to fix their content, again just to "rank in Google" (even I did this too).
What I'm saying is, you put all this hard work into trying to "fix" everything JUST to "PLEASE GOOGLE & TO RANK IN GOOGLE".
So, what do you do if you spend 12 months trying to "fix your website" JUST to "rank in Google", but after 12 months you haven't improved at all?
OR
You spend all this time "fixing everything" to "rank in Google", it works, you're traffic goes up again, and then when one of the updates, let's say in December 2024 comes, Google HITS YOUR SITE AGAIN and you lose all your traffic AGAIN!
At the moment, you are simply trying to PLEASE ONE MASTER!
Sure, I understand that Google often provides the "best" traffic and the "most" traffic, but you work harder than ever before and still you get nothing from Google, or you do improve, and then Google hits you again.
Personally, I would say, if you have 400 articles on your website this is more than enough to work with.
So, aim to improve the traffic to your website from "other channels", as you've mentioned, Facebook.
If you think about it, every article on your website is getting ZERO traffic (after March 2024) from Google.
So, every NEW article you add to your website will ALSO get zero traffic from Google.
So, you can do one of two things.
Try and fix every article on your website (by adhering to Google's "helpful content" and "spam" guidelines and then cross your fingers and hope for the best.
OR
Use other platforms to get traffic to your website (you have loads of content, i.e. 400 articles to send people to).
Sure, you can still add articles to your website to keep it "fresh", but for now, focus on getting traffic to your website from other sources.
By the way, getting traffic from EXTERNAL sources can actually IMPROVE your ranking in Google.
Google will see people coming to your website, and interacting on your articles, they will then your brand and website name all over the internet, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Medium, etc.
This is a "sign" to Google that you are "popular", so often they improve the rankings on your most "popular" articles.
So, sometimes, just ignoring Google and working on other things can actually improve your ranking in Google.
2) No. Algorithmic penalties are usually either content or link related.
In most cases, it will be content (unless you're regularly purchasing spammy backlinks).
A MANUAL ACTION (which you can see in Google Search Console) means that a HUMAN BEING has MANUALLY looked at your website, and then placed a "penalty" upon, as I say, this can be seen in GSC.
BUT
An "algorithmic penalty", there is NOWHERE you can actually "see" this, but it is obvious, i.e. you lost traffic DURING an algorithm update, and the traffic DID NOT RETURN once the algorithm update finished.
I will say that the last 18 months of algorithm, helpful content, and spam updates have been very different from anything we've had in about 7 years (since the YMYL aka "Medic Update" of 2017)
I don't want to make false accusations or predictions, but it really does seem like Google planned this.
It's almost like Google are saying, "If you're a big brand, especially one that pays for ads, we won;t touch you, If you're website is based around a real business, we won't touch you, BUT, if you have created a website with the sole purpose to "make money online", we're going to kill your traffic completely"
So, the "real recovery" is to make your website look like a real business, a real brand, and increase your authority (all of this can be accomplished OFF your website, i.e. putting content on external websites and linking back to your website, getting involved on a daily basis on social medai, thinking about creating your own product or tool, e.g. a 100-page ebook of "My 20 most helpful articles" is a PRODUCT! You can create tools with the help of ChatGPT, although some coding knowledge will also help, you can perhaps add an e-commerce platform, such as Shopify, to your website, etc.)
But, as I've said above, perhaps it's time to NOT focus on "recovering", but rather seeing where else you can get traffic from.
2) No, okay, avoid Reddit for now, it does take some "skill" to market on Reddit, and I will teach that over the course of about 10-15 post here, but Reddit is so easy to get banned from, so don't do anything there yet.
Linkedin, NO, slightly rewrite your articles before placing them on Linkedin (again, in the future I'll create some posts about that, but Linkedin is doing great at the moment, so if you can slightly rewrite your articles, perhaps may just summarize your articles (about 750+ words on Linkedin is fine), and then post them there.
3) I'm not sure what the issue you're having with Medium, the only possible thing I can think of is, Medium absolutely hates AI.
I'm not sure how they detect it, but they seem to be very good at it, and anyone using AI will usually get warned, and then banned.
So, if it's obvious that your website articles have been written with AI (can I just say that EVERY SINGLE ARTICLE I have seen written by ANYONE at WA using the AI Writer, it is OBVIOUS that it is AI, and the quality is NOT that good).
So, if you want to use Medium, DO NOT use AI in your articles.
If you're 100% sure that the articles on your website HAVEN'T been written with AI, then you can simply use Medium's import tool
Wth Medium, you DON'T NEED TO REWRITE
If you use the link above when you add your website url, Medium will automatically have HTML code inside the article that states that your website article is the ORIGINAL.
So, Medium is definitely the easiest way to get backlinks, ranking, and traffic, just make sure that YOU ARE NOT USING AI ON MEDIUM!!
@partha Thank you!
I was not using AI on Medium.
It looks like they thought 3 party was using my Medium account because I wrote a article about one company, for me Icelandic travel site, because it has one of top 3 show in Iceland.
That company had of course nothing to do with it except it allow me to use their photos which I did in mix of my own.
I complained about it, and they fixed it, but after a little, we are not sure of the tone!
But as you told me, and Diane, I can cope/paste it, I will start there.
Sports gear are in problem on Facebook, I at least, but the travel site love it! So I start with Medium and wait for your wise words about Reddit!
Even proven by what I said above about a Flickr "article" (I actually think it is less than 150 words) is ranking on page one for - Unlock Your Glutes Review- when this was one of the most popular exercise products in the late 2010s/early 2020s so probably easily has over 1,000,000 "reviews" written about it.
Interestingly, I'm seeing a DA14 site ranking at #3 for this keyword (I'm using a fresh incognito window in Chrome, region set to US) ... the domain is 12 years old.
Maybe a Flickr of hope?
@rohanm Hey Rohan,
This is EXACTLY what I've spoken about above.
It may be a DA14 website, but it's a REAL Business.
They have an e-commerce section on the website, you can book appointments to see a physiotherapist, etc.
So, regardless of authority, a real brick-and-mortar business, a real online business, Local SEO, and International SEO have been left untouched for the last 9 months (Let's see what happens in August/September and November/December though, LOL).
Plus, if you put that site through https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker
You'll see some pretty decent RELEVANT HIGH AUTHORITY sites linking to it.
Keep an eye on the site, that's jumping to a DA30+ after the next series of updates (August/ September)
a real brick-and-mortar business, a real online business, Local SEO, and International SEO have been left untouched for the last 9 months
@partha Hey Partha ... very interesting thread! Thank you for all the time you're putting in here 😎
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