This site is an extremely interesting case. Brand in the finance sector. Destroyed by the HCU update 2023. Backlinks from digital PR (and paid links), albeit some of the digital PR ones are totally off-topic, and some look like paid DPR placements. The site increased its content by 1000 pages in a year, so I suggest that it might have used AI content to scale. The site is well-designed, with lots of E-E-A-T elements. My gut says this site was hit by multiple factors: a bit of waffly content, some link devaluation, and AI content. It looks like they've deleted over 1000 pages a matter of weeks after being hit, so perhaps they took a chance. An interesting case, might reach out to the owners of this one.
AI content and YMYL industries don’t mix well 😂
SEO is dead SEO doesn't work SEO is a waste of time What have you got to say now? SEO is dead - for those who don't play by the rules SEO is dead - for those who have no clue about copywriting SEO is dead - for those looking for a shortcut to fame and glory Everything is dead if you play and game it Agree? Andrew Holland
What a case! What's the implication of deleting such a massive number of pages from an SEO standpoint Andrew Holland? 🤔
I’d love to see this site’s branded keyword impression volume plotted against the referring domains, it will probably show a big disparity (judging by what’s left after the traffic drop). This indicates that link acquisition is unnatural, or that genuine PR and brand building is failing badly. Either way, those ranking gains are probably unwarranted from any perspective but SEO. This is what happens when SEO exists in a bubble. Too many SEOs don’t consider what Google can measure, despite the available evidence, and what it tells them about the real world. Too many businesses fixate on “quick wins” and don’t like putting in the hard yards.
Similar pattern to one of my clients. With content creation happening that fast Google will often throw tons of queries at the site and see what sticks/gets CTR. E.g. maybe they write a post on "best credit cards for low credit" and Google starts ranking them position 5 for "low credit options". Then core update hits, Google realizes the site wasn't a good fit for many of those queries to begin with, strips away the poor fit terms, and some of the good fit terms for good measure. Now the page isn't ranking for "low credit options" or the dozen other secondary keywords it was ranking for before, and has dropped two positions for the core keyword. Tough spot to be in. One of my clients did similar with human writers. We doubled content production speed and saw great results for 6 months. Then big drop. We're re-evaluating and realizing we never really had that traffic to begin with, and setting a new baseline for future improvements.
It's crucial to consider the quality and relevance of backlinks, content scalability, and overall site design for sustainable success.
You won’t find a page that got affected by the HCU and recovered. If you find one/ or consulted one - let everyone know ;)
Its better to delete the AI written pages and content rather than continuing with them and facing a strong backlash later. It was never sustainable. Quality over quantity 💯
Growth / Growth Eng
7moSo I’ve seen some patterns with sites hit and not hit amongst ones I own. YMMV. The ones most effected by the update had elements of: - Programatic SEO content (e.g. glossary type content) - Pattern-based content - Predictability of content (think heavily templated pages) - Relatively new domain age - Weak external linking - Weak backlink profiles …etc The sites least effected had this in common: - Older domains - Much more backlinks - Less content volume ^ neither group of sites used any paid backlinks, all acquired organically over time. One strange outlier part on the technical SEO side is my sites that were not effected had technical SEO issues and were not as optimized, compared to the sites that were.