Questions created by polycountz
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Hit by an unnamed Google update on November 30th - Still suffering
Hi, Moz Community. Just decided to sign up for a free trial because I'm absolutely at my wits end here. Here's my site: cheapgamesguru.com I run a small PC gaming blog monetized by affiliate marketing. I do all the writing, SEO, etc. myself. The content I write is, from what I can tell, fully complying with Google's guidelines, and in and of itself is pretty informative and high-quality. My site was started in December of 2015, and it was doing very well for a good 10 or 11 months - until late November of 2016. Then something happened. My traffic started plummeting - I went from getting nearly 300 organic users a day (Not sessions - actual unique users) to 80, then 40, and now I'm lucky to get over 15 a day. I do not do ANY black hat SEO whatsoever. I have not taken part in any shady link building schemes, nor do I try to trick Google in any way. I just write good content, do good keyword research (Targeting only low-hanging fruit and low-difficulty keywords using KWFinder), and do my best to provide a good user experience. I run no ads on my site. Glenn Gabe wrote about a potential Google update on November 29th, but the stuff he said in his article doesn't seem to affect me - my mobile site is perfectly fine, according to Google's own metrics and testing tools. Here's the article in question: http://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/november-30-2016-google-algorithm-update/ At first, I thought it was possible that this was a result of my competitors simply doing far better than me - but that doesn't seem to be the case, as their rankings did not actually move - mine simply pummeted. And many of their sites are far worse than mine in terms of grammar, spelling, and site speed. I understand backlinks are important, by the way, but I really don't think that's why my site was hit. Many competitors of mine have little to no backlinks and are doing great, and it would also not make much sense for Google to hit an otherwise great site just because they have few backlinks. A friend of mine has reached out to Glenn Gabe himself to see if he can get his input on my site, but he's had a busy schedule and hasn't gotten a chance to take a look yet. I recently obtained a backlink from a highly relevant DA 65 site (About a month ago, same niche as my site), and it now shows up in Search Console and Ahrefs - but it hasn't affected rankings whatsoever. Important Note: I'm not only just ranking poorly for stuff, I'm ranking in position 100-150+ for many low-competition keywords. I have no idea why that is happening - is my site THAT bad, that my content deserves to be ranking on page 15 or lower? Sorry for the long question. I'm struggling here, and just wanted to give as much information as possible. I would really appreciate any input you guys can give me - if any SEO experts want to turn my site into a case study and work with me to improve things, I'd also be open to that 😉 I kid, of course - I know you guys are all busy. Thanks! P.S. I've attached a picture of my SEMRush graph, for reference, as well. mhgSw
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