I run a job board site and I believe SEO is going to be key for driving traffic to it, but it's my first rodeo and I regularly feel confused about whether I am on the right track.

To give some background, I started a niche job board 2 months ago. It's specifically around helping people find tech-jobs in locations where there is no income-tax. Right now my main markets are UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The idea is to list only high quality jobs that are suitable for skilled international expats - saving people time from having to pour through thousands of job listsings on indeed / linkedin and the various job sites in the gulf states.

It's been online for 2 months, I've not had any major promotion to drive direct traffic or anything, but currently it gets ~600 clicks a month through Google search with about 6k page views. I've also got around 40 newsletter signups.

I think my on-page seo is fairly good, SEMRush ranks it a 94, and tell me the average job board usually scores an 82 and a top 10 website 92. I have also started writing long form content around some pillar pages for some select keywords I am targeting. I also got my first top 10 serp result today for a keyword I targeted.

A lot of what I've targeted, and some real low hanging fruits are just not ranking at all. I've heard SEO takes a long time.. but I always get this worry that maybe I am doing things very wrong and that I won't realise it for a few months.. it's causing me to tinker a lot with the pages and continuously think about content.. but is this the right approach? Do I need to just be more patient and wait for google to trust my site? It's a completely new site after all. Or is it good just to keep on coming up with content ideas and pumping it out in a set of interlinked pages?

I really want to set realistic goals around my SEO efforts and not overdo it if the additional efforts will not make a difference. I am worried about burning out a bit. Does anyone have experience with this - what advice would you give me?

Also, are there SEO mentors, people that maybe just give you an hour of their time once every few weeks and tell you what you need to do... For me it would be ideal if I had someone who treated me like a worker at their SEO agency.. who was ultimately keeping an eye on my site, but having me execute all the work myself. I don't know if a service like that even exists?

Thanks!

Does anyone know when to post a Youtube video? I've heard people say that sometimes are better than others--for example, between 6 and 9 pm on weekdays.

However, why would that matter? Does Youtube weigh more how the video performs in its initial hours and then either puts it in front of more people or puts it in front of less people?

I'm asking because I have a number of videos I've posted, and I also have an email list and social media accounts. So I don't know if I should post a video as soon as it is done, and then a few days or weeks later promote it on my email list or social media, or if I should post it and promote it at the same time.

Does this matter? How does this algorithm work?

SEO was hard enough to justify because you can’t see an outright ROI, but seeing all the recent posts make me even more skeptical

I invested about $11,000 one year in SEO, $4,000 on a “converting” website, and now seeing SEO confidence at all time low, I’m not sure I could invest in any more SEO

Google's John Mueller was asked when can a site expect to recover from the September 2023 helpful content update, assuming the site took all measures to "fix" their site. John Mueller said you can assume "bigger changes would be visible when the next core updates happen."

This came up on X:

Question: Assuming a site hit by HCU in 2023 has fixed everything that caused the sitewide classifier to be applied, what is the timeframe for the site to start climbing again?

Answer: "Fix" is hard to say when it comes to relevancy, but I'd assume bigger changes would be visible when the next core updates happen.

John Mueller recently said it is not only possible to recover but also to grow after the helpful content update, for those sites hit by it.

Many hit by that September helpful content update were expecting to recover with the March 2024 core update but there were no recoveries that we saw and sites hit by that September helpful content are now about 7 months with little to no Google organic traffic.

Also John said it may just take a lot of time to recover from that helpful content update. This is despite Google telling some people it can take weeks (then said several months) to recover.

Source: SE Roundtable

I'm a photographer in NYC and was wondering if this practice is actually causing my rank to lower. I have a normal portfolio page with lots of sections including a faq, keyword copy, and a gallery featuring images of my work.

I've gotten into the habit of late of putting links to recent events I've shot on my main page, and when you click on it, you'll be taken to a gallery of that specific event (so as a consumer you can see exactly what things look like when I've shot them).

Example:
Event 1 for XX Company - Link to gallery
Event 2 for YY Company - Link to gallery
Event 3 for BB Company - Link to gallery

This being said, the individual pages themselves are pretty thin content, with only a couple paragraphs of the job description, as well as 10-15 sample images.

Could google see this potentially and penalize me, thinking the small, sample galleries that are pertinent to specific jobs are actually thin content?

I baught a domain without checking its history and now when i checked i saw there were like 15 to 20 Chinese pages which i requested to remove in gsc, also it shows 18k pages not indexed and has a spam score of 28% what can i do to clean it

As per the title.

Has anyone taken Matt’s personal branding course?

I’m a big fan of Matt and admire the SEO empire he’s built, but id like to hear what others thought of his PB course before pulling the trigger.

It’s not that I don’t think it will be good, or is too expensive, but there are so many courses out there and I’d like to commit with 1 from start to finish.

I’m also an SEO, which is why Matt’s seems to be the best option for me.

Looking forward to your thoughts

TIA

Are you worried from new Google update?

Don’t worry

• changes like these can be tough, but they’re also a chance to improve.

• Here are some easy tips to help you get your visibility back on track:

1️⃣Creat Great Content 📄Make sure your content is original, helpful, and interesting. Good quality content is key to doing well in search results.

2️⃣Improve User Experience (UX) 🖥️Your website should be easy to use, fast, and look good on mobile devices. A great user experience keeps visitors coming back.

3️⃣Use Structured Data 🧩Add structured data to your site so Google understands your content better. This can help you show up in special search features.

4️⃣Stay Updated with SEO Trends 📚Keep learning about the latest SEO tips and changes. Adjust your strategies to keep up with Google’s updates.

5️⃣Monitor Your Performance 📊Use tools like Google Analytics to see how your site is doing. This helps you find what’s working and what needs improvement.

6️⃣Build Quality Links 🔗Get links from other reputable websites. Good backlinks can boost your site’s authority and rankings.

7️⃣Focus on Local SEO 🗺️If your business serves specific areas, make sure your content is optimized for local searches. Keep your Google My Business profile updated.

• Changes in Google’s algorithm are a normal part of online marketing.

• By focusing on these tips, you can improve your website’s visibility and rankings.

Let’s use this update as an opportunity to make our websites even better! 🚀

Any point missed guide me in comments 👇

#SEO #DigitalMarketing #GoogleUpdate #ContentStrategy #UserExperience #Analytics #LinkBuilding #LocalSEO #SearchEngineOptimization

Is there any definitive tool to confirm whether a website is labelled unhelpful by Google? Because, every indicator in search console shows everything alright, there are no penalties whatsoever, spam score is 3%?

In the span of last 4-5 months Google has completely wrecked our content-based website (news, mostly). We used to get 1,5M views a month, today we're down to 200K overall (not just from Google) and it's not enough to survive in the market.

It's been a fun ride, I really believed we can become a really big brand, but shit happens. Sad to see that a lot of low effort websites with AI content outrank us these days.

We used to get a lot of traffic via Google Discover / News. Now we're at 0. The search traffic is down by 90%. We have a really good content reviewed by many people, extremely fast, modern website with everything done by the book, but Google still destroyed our website. We have and have always had different traffic sources but that's not enough.

I don't know yet how I'm gonna communicate this to my team, but I know for sure it's gonna be hard.

I'm not mad anymore, I'm just sad to see everything and everyone go, it's a end of an era for me. I'm starting another business in next 2 months, e-commerce this time, but no fucks given about SEO. Just PPC, as Google wants these times.

I'm sharing this with you all because I know that many people here are going through the same story. Stay strong. Good luck to everyone!

PS. no, I won't share a link.

My website has lost millions of views, dropping to less than 1000 daily views, regardless of whether I publish a single news article or 50 news articles. The number of views remains the same. This happens even though all my articles are original, covering critiques of games, movies, series, or exclusive information that I have firsthand. It doesn't matter if the article is 300 words, 600 words, 1500 words, or 2000 words—if it is original, it has no effect.

My site has no political, gender, or racial bias.

Therefore, I believe legal action is necessary to prompt Google to manually review our situation. We suspect an undisclosed penalty due to our higher ranking compared to most mainstream sites in my country. This suspicion is reinforced by the fact that on Bing, our content consistently ranks on the first page.

If you were looking to acquire a business or start a business with a $2M budget, what would you do?

I love getting SEO’s thoughts on this as they are often the best at vertical understanding and realistic goals.

Oh man, this is terrible. This AI Overview resulting in 90% of my searches.

"This is the end, my only friend, the end..." - The Doors

Hello! I'm a solopreneur who owns a VERY small tutoring company, so I do my own blogging. I recently learned that my many posts with the KW tag "SAT tutor" are competing with one another, so I want to diversify my keywords. Should I put, for example, "French tutor" and "French tutoring" in SEPARATE blog posts, or does Google consider such close KWs the same thing? Thank you!

Hey SEO mates,

I am curious to know if someone who got hit by Google's Spam and Core update can recover their blogs. I've gone through dozens of Reddit threads; some say yes, you can recover, while others say it depends.

If you have recovered your blogs from the Core and Spam updates, like those in October 2023 or March 2024, what did you do to recover? Your tips can help me, as some of my blog posts disappeared from SERP in October (Spam and Core) 2023, and more disappeared with this March update.

Yes, some of them reappeared in November and December 2023, and some in January and February 2024, but with this March update, most of the posts disappeared again.

Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

I have a guy who told me to just learn SEO,EEAT GUIDE And Internal Linking and he'll hire me for writing articles for his website. How should I get started? I have zero seo knowledge i have got a opportunity and want to work on it.

Hi everyone!

My company's website was unindexed for almost a year because of a weird redirection issue.

Last week this issue was fixed and we were able to index it again and with the help of Google Search Console quickly we got back to the top places of search results (its a big company here in my country).

However Im finding that a couple of times a day, when searching the company's name the website wont show at all (like if it was unindexed again), and then it will show up again later.

I really dont have a clue of why this might be happening, everything seems ok in Search Console and other SEO tools I used to test.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Friends,

Leave your questions about SGE and I will do my best to answer them over the coming weeks/months. All grounded in data and analytics.

CONTEXT: My name is Nicolss Garfinkel. I run a marketing&analytics agency and we’re building some pretty cool SEO tech as well.

Over the next 3 months we’ll be publishing insights about SGE to help the community make smart, data-grounded decisions about their SEO strategies.

Right now, we’re working on building data pipelines to gather SGE data.

Would love to crowd source some of the most burning questions people might have.

I am a Mental Training (aka Mental Coaching) practitioner for athletes aged 8-18. My service incorporates elements of sports psychology to help players focus on what matters most to improve performance. This is an emerging yet highly competitive space!

According to SparkToro, the phrases "Mental Training" and "Mental Coaching" receive around 400 searches per month. However, I suspect that many of these searches come from practitioners themselves. In contrast, "Sports Psychology" gets over 20,000 searches per month.

My website is up, and I'm preparing to produce a series of short videos this summer to drive traffic. However, given the search frequency data and the competitive landscape, I'm unsure about the best keyword strategy to adopt.

What would be a good next step in optimizing my keywords and overall strategy to effectively reach my target audience?

Thx!

When the HCU hit, I thought Google made a mistake when penalizing our website. I thought that the algo was going after low quality content and that, for some reasons unknown, wrongly flagged our website.

Now, I know that Google is purposely trying to make their SERPs worst in such a way that people now need to perform multiple searches to find what they are looking for, thanks to Ed Zitron's article The Man Who Killed Google Search.

While the article is blaming Prabhakar Raghavan (who oversaw the decline and fall of Yahoo Search) for making Google's SERPs shitty, it's clear that he was not named head of search by mistake. As a result, it's pretty clear that the current CEO of Google Sundar Pichai is embracing this strategy to juice up profits short term, while knowing full well that making Google Search shitty will lead to market share loss and could even turn Google into the next Yahoo longer term.

So it's not just HCU impacted publishers (and March core impacted publishers) that have an incentive to see Pichai go. Alphabet shareholders have the same incentive, unless they don't intend to hold the stock for more than a couple of months.

So here is the idea: Let's try to make the hashtag #pichaimustgo trend on social media. Many of us are already posting a lot of disturbing stuff about what is going on at Google. We could just add #pichaimustgo in our posts and see what happens.

Again, it's probably too late for most of our businesses to recover from this, but it would be cool to bring down Mr Pitch-AI with us, no?

I built my first website in 1998 and have been working online ever since.

Some years have been great, and others, forgettable. But the one thing I have learned is that today is not tomorrow.

Yes, it's a tough time right now for niche bloggers.

But I get a lot of direct and referral traffic, which must mean that I'm doing something right.

Sure, it's not nearly enough to break even on my costs when Google decides to throttle my site. But I have hope that there will be a new tomorrow again.

So, I'll keep publishing new content, even though I know Google and other AI tools will steal it.

Why? Because I won't be silenced. I have something to say, and I will keep doing so, no matter what.

I have a domain that is expiring on 25th this month. It was hit by the match Google update and the impressions and traffic have dropped significant. I have some keywords that are ranking number one and those letter ranking in page two. I was considering registering another domain and writing fresh content for the keywords that are ranking high and let this one expire. Or are renew it with hopes that it will again momentum again. What do you guys think? What should be my best option? Thank you

I am a healthcare provider that was told I could be published as a top ten provider for my region in my specialty by a healthcare magazine (digital and print w 140k subscribers). They require you to pay $3000 for the reprint rights/to be on the list. I know it boost my credibility and trust just in general, but I am interested in the impact it'll have on my SEO. Curious peoples' thoughts on how the magazine with a DA of 21 (via Moz) or Domain Rating of 49 (ahrefs) would impact this. Wondering if $3000 just spent on optimizing blogs or other SEO strategy could have a better result or open if anyone had thoughts on how to weigh this decision.

I am working on a webshop and rewriting the names of products.

Old Name (on croatian): "Aloe vera I zmajsko voće gel"

Old name: Aloe Vera and Dragon Fruit Gel

The URL for old is /aloe-vera-i-zmajsko-voće/

Should I change the URL so it matches the new name or leave it the same? Some of the pages are already ranking, but not that high.

How do I begin working in SEO without a degree in marketing or any SEO experience?

I took Moz’s SEO course and learned a bunch from videos on skillshare and now I want to work for a company or agency so I can learn more from people farther along. I worked for free for a small business and learned a lot from trial and error but ultimately I feel like I didn’t do a good job. How can I get a position where I can improve at a faster rate by working under other people?

Has anyone had experience embedding product markups from individual product detail pages onto the category page? If I take 3-4 structured data elements from the product detail page, including information on images, they could theoretically appear in the rich snippet of the parent page. Sometimes you see several images for one category. How does it work?

Just curious about how the redirection from twitter.com to X.com will work. Won't this impact traffic growth, backlinks, and site authority? 😅

View Poll

Hi everyone.. Can you please share some screenshots of the AI Overview results you are getting from the US, including the search box. I am located outside the US and the rollout will happen later there.

The rollout has already started, correct?

Across Reddit there are a lot of stupid things said every day, but my current favorite has to be:

Don't listen to the trolls saying SEO is dead, they are just trying to sell a course

I have seen this a hundred plus times over the past few months, yet I have never once seen anyone who is saying SEO is dead try to sell a course before, during, or after their post

The people who are saying SEO is dead are the realists

The people who are pretending it isn't are the ones who are still invested in the (dying) industry and need to keep newbies in as long as possible

(this last point is the main point of the post... really was not creating this to get involved in yet another is SEO dead debate)