Recover from Google HCU in the next 6 months
Here's my SEO strategy to recover from Google HCU in the next 6 months.
Hey, Rafiqul here. Welcome to the #103rd episode of Content Marketing VIP, which delivers actionable insights, SEO case studies & free resources every other Monday.
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Recently, one of my sites got hit in the 2023 September content update and the overall site traffic is down by more than 30%.
When I aligned Google update timing, there was a clear sign that Google’s HCU was the primary reason for the overall traffic downfall.
In this newsletter, I will be sharing the roadmap I have to reverse the hit in the next 6 months.
So, if you’re also dealing with a site that got hit by core updates, this newsletter issue will help you think holistically to improve SEO performance.
Before diving into the roadmap, here are background insights about the site:
Niche: Career in tech
Website active age: 1.5+ years
60+ human-written articles and 30+ glossary pages
Multiple expert writers (recently onboarded)
Lacks topical coverage around individual niches
Lacks social media following and engagements
Monetization via display ads paid guest posts (only for relevant sites), & brand features.
To prepare the recovery roadmap, I have created the following four stages:
Stage 1: Auditing the current state (site level and page level)
Stage 2: Quick SEO win strategies
Stage 3: Long-term SEO strategy
Stage 4: Execution
Stage 1: Auditing the current state (site level and page level)
Generally, the Google HCU is related to page-level content issues. However, it is important to look at the broader image and identify issues from a site level.
So, I divided the current observable issues into two buckets:
1/ Site level audit
The website only receives traffic from organic searches. No followings on social media.
The backlink profile is poor considering the authority sites in the niche
There are only a total of 29 referring domains that give backlinks to this website from content (excluding links from directory listings, Quora, Reddit, etc.).
Also, only ~10-15 sites get 2k+ organic monthly traffic.
Seems like a niche blog, not a brand (which Google might give importance to nowadays), as there are almost zero branded searches.
2/Page-level audit insights
Articles published in the last 6 months are well-optimized
There are some old articles (~20) that are poorly written in terms of unique information
Almost ~10 articles that were driving maximum site traffic require fresh and updated content (important note).
Internal linking can be improved
For example, when I checked the number of inlinks to article pages, I found some articles only have 3-4 internal links coming to the page.
This is a missed opportunity to pass maximum PageRank from high authority sites to new pages or low authority pages.
Almost 10+ pages have declined traffic in the last 3 months compared to the previous 3 months (via GSC)
Getting the ranking position back for these pages will quickly boost the site traffic.
Almost 60% of backlinks point to the homepage, but only a handful of backlinks point to individual articles.
Stage 2: Quick SEO win strategies
One strategy that I am currently working on is updating page content for two types of pages:
Pages that need to stay relevant and fresh information (e.g. Best AI documentaries in 2023)
Pages with traffic decline (only if it is older than 3 months)
This will allow me to get the initial boost and stop further traffic decline in the coming months.
Stage 3: Long-term SEO strategy
1/ EEAT
Improving the EEAT deserves a dedicated newsletter issue. However, the following are the quick changes that I will be doing:
Making the LinkedIn page active and publishing content (repurposing articles)
Creating a YouTube channel with 2-3 introductory videos (and try to publish informational videos at least 1 per month)
Creating dedicated author and expert pages (since there are 10+ tech experts and contributors)
Using schema to markup tech experts as contributors and person schema for dedicated author pages
Creating/updating important pages— about us, homepage, contact, editorial policy, careers page, website accessibility, etc.
Inviting more experts and showcasing them as content contributors
Making transparent about the content creation process, founder, and other members.
Publishing review articles (since we don't have any product, we will ask readers and individual bloggers to share their experience about our free eBook and templates on LinkedIn, personal website, or Medium)
If you want to turn your niche site into a brand, then you also need to work outside of your website. Adding schema, author bio, and other similar tactics is not enough.
NOTE:
One advantage this website has is there are 10+ tech experts from top universities who have contributed to some of our articles.
So, I will use the contributor schema on the blog pages to indicate to Google that these experts are connected with the content we are publishing— not a direct ranking booster, but will help to establish a connection between the website and niche experts.
2/ Backlinks
Continue with homepage link building via Featured and HARO
Guest posting to pages that are ranking on the second or third page with first-priority
Paid backlinks from highly relevant sites (high traffic and med-high authority)
Report pages (link-bait) or original research pages by turning publicly available data.
3/ Content strategy
One major issue that made the site traffic decline is that the website has content over several topics, not on a focused niche.
The primary goal is to cover several a topic from the TOFU to the BOFU stage.
Here’s a sample example:
Consider, that a data science training center wants to improve topical coverage in the data science career niche. Here are the topics that must be covered:
The idea now is to build a similar topical map for multiple subtopics in my niche. This will help Google to understand brand positioning and what this website is good at.
Stage 4: Execution
When you work with multiple writers who have good knowledge in their domain, it is important to have clear guidelines and SOPs to train them.
It includes guidelines for doing content research, formatting the content, and sentence structuring.
Here are the ways I have built the documentation:
Divided content writing part into several buckets— researching, understanding the brief, writing guidelines, and formatting
Then creating documentation for each step
Let’s see how the project goes.
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NOTE:
The approach and plan outlined in this newsletter may not be a perfect fit for your website. Therefore, I recommend evaluating your site's current state before making a long-term plan and significant changes such as removing pages.