How to unrank your content by following expert advice [rant]

[GiantsCauseway]

Hi,

As you can probably see from the title, a massive rant is coming up. I must admit I no longer understand SEO and I just wanted to see if you have any ideas what might be wrong.

So, I read this blog post on MOZ https://moz.com/blog/influence-googles-ranking-factor - where the chap is improving ranking of content that is already ranking reasonably well.

I've got two bits of news for you. The good news is - yes, you can change your articles' ranking in an afternoon.

Bad news - your articles drop out of Top 100.

I'll give you a bit more details hoping you can spot what's wrong.

Disclaimer - I'm not calling out BS, I'm sure the blogger is a genuine person and he's probably has had success implementing this.

The site is in a narrow but popular ecommerce niche where the Top 20 results are taken by various retailers who have simply copy/pasted product descriptions from the manufacturer's websites.

The link profile strength is varied and I'm not making this up. The Top 20 sites range from DA:4 to DA:56. When I saw this I said to myself, it should be fairly easy to rank because surely the backlinks ranking factor weight is not as heavy in this niche as it is in other niches. My site is DA:18 which is much better than DA:4. So, even if I make my pages tiny tiny bit better than this DA:4 site, I should outrank it, right?

Well, I managed to outrank it with really crap content. So, I got to rank two high-traffic keywords in #8 or #9 with very little effort. And I wish I stayed there because what followed just completely ruined my rankings.

I won't repeat what was written in the blog. If you're interested, go and read it, but I used it as a blueprint and bingo, indeed Google changed my ranking in just a couple of hours.

Wait, I lost more than 90 positions!!!! I'm now outside Top100. Now even irrelevant sites in Chinese and Russian are in front of me. They don't even sell the products. No, they're even in different niches altogether but they still outrank me.

I now know exactly what Alice in Wonderland felt like. I want out please!!!!

[DmitriiK]

Hi there,

I know it's been a while, but were you able to figure it out? What happened after you requested a fetch?

I'd love to do some type of case study on this with you if you still didn't recover.

[GiantsCauseway]

Why was this marked as "answered"? I don't know what I'm more shocked about - my discovery on Google or your lack of reaction here...

[GiantsCauseway]

Update. I checked Google cache on all my experiment pages and it was out of date. So "fetching as Google" adds the page to a queue and it takes several days for the queue to be processed. Judging by my recent experience, Google withholds queued pages from the index until it's got a chance to re-crawl the page. I don't think I have a problem with this, but...!

Now all my experiment pages are back exactly where they were (no, dear Mr Jeff Baker, no improvement whatsoever), however, I still think this is really bad news, and here's why:

1. You can't listen to "experts" too much even if they publish on authoritative sources. That's why it's important to keep a few test sites so that you can test theories before you apply them on your client sites.
2. Content is not king. You won't be able to increase your ranking by purely providing better content without improving on other factors
3. If you have a stronger link profile, you can afford to serve your visitors crap content

Indirectly, Google is encouraging people to buy links. Next thing I'm going to do after hitting the "Post" button on this page is contacting my link broker whom I stopped using in 2013. Who is the winner in this situation? Nobody, apart from my link broker. I'll tell you who is the main loser in this situation - the visitor. He will be served crap content because from today I will stop caring about providing valuable content to my visitors. Thank you very much, Google!

Conveniently, comments are closed 30 days after MOZ guest posts go live, preventing people to call out BS. Well, I guess it keeps the circle of friends happy, which is the most important thing, right?

[GiantsCauseway]

Thank you, I did check Copyscape and it is not copied.

The original post is here: https://moz.com/blog/influence-googles-ranking-factor - I did check a few of their own site (Brafton) and their articles are ranking reasonably well. I wouldn't say amazing, it is hit and miss but some of his own content ranks pretty well.

So, I can now officially confirm that I'm NOT going mad. I have since done another two experiments and both backfired spectacularly!

Experiment 1 - improve a product description of another product. For the previous experiments I also embedded useful YouTube videos in the description. To make sure it's not the iframe that causes ranking to disappear, I didn't include a video this time. Just took the description from 56 words of nonsense to 300+ words of content that answers buyers' questions.

Tank!!! From #9 to #Nowhere

Experiment 2 - a completely different website with a different audience, different link profile and different buyers intent (lead gen site)... Identified a static page (not a blog post, not a product description) that ranks #17 for a super popular lead gen keyword. It had very average 500-word content. I improved the structure (H1-H3) and added 400 fresh words based on real-life questions that this business receive from potential customers. Sounds useful to you? Sure it does. Google downgraded the page to #27

I am massively worried now. I think I'm giving up SEO and I'm not joking. If this is how Google rewards valuable content, my other option is to make a really crap spam site with copied content. But hey, I just don't want to do it.

I will do another experiment. I will revert one of the product descriptions back to the super-crap content that it used to have, however, knowing Google I doubt that I will regain the positions. I will report back.

In the meantime, if you've had similar experience, I suggest we join forces and challenge Google's staff on Twitter or other social media.

[effectdigital]

Do you have a link to the post? Would be interesting to have a look at it now, compare it to Wayback Archive version, look at the differences etc. Can also run it through Copyscape to see whether by random chance you have typed something very similar to something else well known on the web :') unlikely but... monkeys in a room with a typewriter, and all that. There are any number of variables which could have contributed to this, or it could be a legitimate Google glitch

[GiantsCauseway]

Hi Alex,

I took two product descriptions. Both pages were very similar - just a couple of sentences taken from a manufacturer's brochure.

I went through competing pages with a critical eye, made a list of topics that would match the buyer's intent and crafted original product descriptions that answered a lot of questions.

So I took it from less than 100 words of nonsense to nearly 500 words of in-depth human-generated content.

I didn't do anything else at the same time because I was keen on finding out how much truth there is in the "give Google amazing content" lie. My thinking behind this was that all competitors were ranked with copied product descriptions. So if I can provide original descriptions, I'd be rewarded, all other things being equal.

As for reverting back, no I didn't revert back. I don't know why, I probably don't see a point because rankings now seem completely random.

I've had lots of success both prior and post the 2012 "scare campaigns" however in the last year or two it's just sliding downhill slowly but steadily and I have no idea why.

[Xiano]

Hi,

I find that very interesting. Obviously, the post was a bit of a plug for Marketmuse, but I always felt that the underlying advice was solid.

Are you saying that you simply went from having a very focussed single topic page to a more in-depth article and found that you lost rank? Was there anything else you did at a similar time? I assume you have now reverted your content? (And has that had any effect?)