I have a WP site, I started it in 2017 as a hobby, adding posts from time to time. The organic traffic was going up slowly but stable. It is a travel site about Mexico, in total, I have 950 posts. 450 posts are dedicated to cities and mostly have copypasted content from Wikipedia, which I modify from time to time, adding and removing copypasted texts. I can't say those posts are 100% copypasted. No. But I have no idea about the % of original content because I used to modify them from time to time since 2018. Other almost 500 posts - my own different topics, 90% written by me. Organic traffic always was to these posts. From February I started to add posts more frequently, and I used GPT to correct and organize new posts. I never posted automatically created content, I always tried to read and modify the AI-written posts, checking and proofing the information. 25.04.2023 I installed a plugin for optimization and I think I damaged the sitemap. 06.05.2023 the traffic dropped, and I lost 50% of organic traffic. 07.05.2023 I fixed the sitemap problem and from the mid-June, the traffic started to increase. At the same time, I decided to improve SEO and modified a lot of old posts. I never changed URLs, I just added a little bit more text to old content (just light modifications) and added personalized meta description. I also started to add more new posts. But the traffic dropped again. I have no idea what's wrong with my site, whether it is because of partially AI-generated content, or because I chose the wrong keywords, but I don't see any improvement. I attach screens with organic traffic stats here (month+organic traffic). I can't understand if the problem is AI-generated text (not exactly automatically generated, but written based on my provided information and then modified by me again), the sitemap issue (already fixed), my wrong SEO optimizations which I started in July, or whatever else... Previously I had at least 10 topics with daily 5-10 organic traffic only to each one of these posts. Now these posts have 1-2 daily organic traffic and some of them even lost it. I didn't modify these posts, so the drop is not because I wanted to improve them and did something wrong. My site is mentioned in my signature. Organic traffic was to Blog's posts.
Are you saying about MexicanRouters or FantasticRoutes? There are two websites in your signature and its seems like you are talking about MexicanRoutes because there are some SEO issue according to our first view. So confirm about site first then we can let you know some details.
Your Home page title using two times Mexico, generally we should try to use each word single time, In title each word should start with capital letter (leave stop word like or, and etc.). Your blog page using H1 multiple time. Your blog detail page title is not according to SEO guide as i define for home page. In blog details page your title containing another keywords and body heading tags other. There can be more issue but its according to our first view. You need to work on on page because these issues are effecting your online status. For more details we need to audit your complete website or you should audit your website.
Thanks, What is "2 times Mexico"? The blog page displays posts' titles and they are usually h1. What does mean this: "..blog detail page title is not according to the SEO guide... On the blog details page, the title contains other keywords, and the body heading tags are other. No, this is not the reason.. All you say is just for improvement and all these details not so critical to lose 60% of traffic on 6 years old site with stable traffic...
Current Title : Mexico tourist guide | Best travel destinations in Mexico Can be like this : Best Travel Destinations & Tourist Guide in Mexico According to SEO each page should have 1 H1 ... You should H2 on place of H1. Example Blog Title : Best foodie destinations in Mexico Suggested Title : Best Foodie Destinations in Mexico At this blog your tile "Best foodie destinations in Mexico" and your H2 tag "Exploring Mexican gastronomy" ... not any other related keywords there in another heading tags. Improvement is name of SEO ... If you are not doing does not mean your competitors are following same rules ... They are doing better and thats why your position is going down. Note one thing Google algo update in 2023 targeting poor contents and SEO (on page specially). Your niche market is very competitive so you can not ignore any mistake (small or big) otherwise competitors can go ahead than you. And as i told you that its just our first view and find these issues, there can be more and for that need to check all things deeply.
But why the title is wrong? The topic title is Best foodie destination in Mexico And "Exploring Mexican gastronomy" is the paragraph title... Why do I need to use the title for the heading?
Okay, I changed the site title and changed blog h1 to h2. But I don't understand your suggestion related to the post title/heading issue...
Maybe you think "Exploring Mexican gastronomy" is the post title? No, the post title doesn't display on the post, it is there, but not shown... I change the template file and make the title be shown, but all crawlers can see it... "Exploring Mexican gastronomy" is just a heading of the paragraph.. Post needs more titles... it is normal
If text hidden then its another minus point. Anyway we suggest you what we can, if you want to restore your ranking and traffic then need to work on your site. Thanks and Good luck.
There is no hidden text, and the post's title is not hidden, it is just not shown on the post page, but all crawlers see it. If I remove the SEO title, Google shows in results the post title correctly. See the attached screenshot, Google does see the title of the post, but this post has no SEO title, so what Google sees is the post's title. Besides, all issue started exactly the day when I accidentally damaged the sitemap and GSC for more than 1 week didnt have the working sitemap. See my traffic stats attached in my initial post. The traffic improved but then dropped again... And exact on that time I decided to improve SEO and started adding meta descriptions to randomly chosen posts, fixed some minor CSS issues (inscreased the text size, removed or added font-weight etc). Ok, let's do the most simple thing, what do you thing about the site content? I mean blog posts? Title, content, meta description, etc... Could it be related to the use of GPT¿ But I repeat, I don't just paste an AI renerated content. I use GPT to check and organize sentences, make them easy for reading, make English more fluent etc.. The problem is a drop of 60% of traffic, Google wouldn't drop so many traffic just because minos SEO issues... You advices could help to improve the site SEO and bring more traffic, but I am talking about the sudden DROP of traffic... it must have some other issue.... Previously I even didnt have SEO title and meta descriptions, and even didnt have ALT on all images but traffic was good. Since I try to improve it, I added all ALT, I added meta description to a large amount of posts, I corrected many minor errors and really did a lot of work last 3 months, and start adding content more frequently, but the traffic continue dropping... By the way, I satrted to use GPT from february, and the traffic dropped in May, 1 day after I damaged the sitemap. *** Ok, I moved the title to the below feature image space, but this can't be the reason of so significant traffic drop.
Ok, I think I removed the H1 tag from the site title, and now it has only one H1 tag. I also changed to H2 all posts' titles that appeared on the Blog page, previously they had H1 tags. I placed the post's title below the feature image and made it bigger than the H2 tag, previously H1 was smaller than H2. I also changed the site title and tagline: from "Mexico Tourist Guide | Best travel destinations in Mexico" to "Best Travel Destinations & Tourist Guide in Mexico". But my doubts are more about the content quality, the use of AI, and if I got some kind of penalty from Google for something. According to GSC, everything is Ok, there is no penalty, but it seems now Google doesn't show in GSC if there is a problem or not. What do you think about the content quality and the use of AI for creating the content? Could you please check some of these posts, they were created with the help of GPT. Could you tell me if they are of poor quality, or have the wrong keywords? https://mexicanroutes.com/how-often-are-earthquakes-in-mexico/ https://mexicanroutes.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-live-in-mexico-city/ https://mexicanroutes.com/who-owns-mexican-archaeological-sites-and-pyramids/ https://mexicanroutes.com/volcanic-activity-in-the-valley-of-mexico/ https://mexicanroutes.com/the-rustic-charm-of-a-mexican-hacienda/ https://mexicanroutes.com/is-it-safe-to-swim-in-cenotes-in-mexico/ https://mexicanroutes.com/digital-nomads-in-mexico/ https://mexicanroutes.com/are-there-sharks-in-the-riviera-maya/ None of these posts have organic traffic, but they are informative enough. And I tried to use the relevant keywords and create good meta descriptions. I also always try to make the URL concise and to the point, and previously it worked. My other suspicion if this drop is due to the fact the site doesn't pass the Google core vital test. My results are not so good, but also not awful. I tried to optimize but still have an average result.
No comment now mate ... you are already SEO expert so please share what do you think about drop traffic suddenly? ... Google update algo how many times in few months? .... Most surprise for me that you are saying few minor SEO mistake should not effect website ... But what about your competitors, If they are following SEO rules then he can go ahead or not? Any way i show you example of one blog and about your all blogs have same issues, so can count how many pages have issues? Take care of your website or you will see result soon. Thanks
In general, you have no idea. All these small details are not so critical, all 3 corrections that you recommended were not the reason for the drop in traffic, since all these mistakes were made after the traffic dropped... I mentioned the date in my initial post describing my steps on the site since January and asked to compare it with the attached traffic stats. It's clear the cause is some technical issue or wrong keywords or maybe the % of AI-generated text reached the limit. In May the traffic could drop due to the sitemap, and then due to SEO errors. This is what I asked, to evaluate posts, their quality, URL, SEO description, title, etc. The first drop was fixed because after I fixed the sitemap the traffic started to increase, but it dropped again after I started SEO improvement, adding meta description, and SEO title, and improving the content on many randomly chosen posts. All these corrections could make posts lose their ranking words. Maybe the improvement really works and I still don't see the result and the actual drop is due to new obtaining of positions. My site jumps down from first positions and its places occupy sites with the same SEO minor issue as my own. None sites are perfect and most of the Google rules are suggestions only. I checked a lot of sites from the first positions and each one has some minor issues.
I was tired and have stopped posting new content. I posted only a few articles in May, and since then, nothing... Suddenly, two weeks ago, Google brought all my old traffic back. So, no matter how much effort you put in, the results still depend on what Google decides.