I am attempting to optimize by doing the following: Deleted content that didn't get traffic at all, posts with no views. Minimized home page to 400 words per post, giving bigger chance to full post pages. Added no-index to my categories and archives, leaving them for human access only. No-followed links on posts to downloads etc. Tweaked titles and removed blog name from them, also improved meta tags specially the description to include the post summary. look what happened: What did I do wrong above? plus what keywords shall I include on my meta tags? I mean shall I look at my highest incoming search terms or shall I generalize them from my niche, and how much is the limit for keywords.
Instead of deleting content, find why the content is not ranking, if there is duplicate content, keyword density or stuffing problem then correct them.
It sounds like most of what you did was remove stuff (pages, content, de-indexing categories, links, etc.). That most likely wouldn't help traffic, but certainly has the potential to decrease traffic. In addition to Alex's suggestion, I would recommend looking at what traffic you lost (search, referrals, direct, etc.) and see if you can figure out what caused the drop. In addition to the sources of traffic, you may need to check the keywords (if the traffic loss was from search) and you may want to see if any specific pages saw a big drop. You may find that a page (or category) you removed or de-indexed was getting some traffic or that many of them were only getting a little, but it would add up to a big decrease. Kurt Steinbrueck OurChurch.Com
I couldn't agree more Kurt. Instead of deleting, wissam should've just improved the other contents. However, in my case I did what he did on a new site. I set the categories and archives to no-index. Also, I don't include the blog name on the pages and posts. But as what I have said, I am doing it on a new site and not on an already established one like his. My blog is more than a year now and I am quite happy with the traffic and income. In his case the site is a bit established already so creating alot of changes instantly would really affect the site.
Thanks lesterj and TonyGE for the advice, yeah I guess you both are right, let me answer you lester, the traffic was not from categories and archive, also it was not from home page, I lost search position for keywords, as more sites show up with that content and same keywords. and seems like no matter what I write anymore get ranked on first page like before, I don't look for niches I just write and when something start getting hits I improve it. so I shall now remove the no-index tags, another question, do I need to put back full posts on home page? or keep the summary and read more links? my site is on my blog to the left.
In my opinion, you should only display summary on your homepage because it would create more duplicates if you will display the whole article there. Imagine you have a post then you put it under, lets say, 3 categories. You will now have the 5 the same content; 1 on the homepage, 1 in each category and the actual post itself.
That's logical, guess the summary will do the trick for now, and for sure I am going to need to see whats wrong with the meta tags I recently added, I didn't had meta tags before, now I do, and it's not helping, I will need a way to find out what keywords shall I put in there.
Wissam, a well known member, so it's nothing to say but, as I experienced I'm performing very well. Use Google's disavow tool remove your unwanted links, Now start new work, like search engine submission, article posting, and participate in hot discussions like forum, yahoo answers, review sites and more.
Do you recommend a tool to check my backlinks before I get rid of them?, my PR is 3 and I been away from SEO for 2 years many things changed man, Google was not this harsh back in the days, and I am glad it is, finally I need to man up and get some serious SEO going. also I think it's my grammar that is destroying everything.