It has been a while.
I’ve stepped back to focus on our business, travel with my wife, focus on my mental health, plan for my future, and look inward.
Enough about my personal life. I need to share my thoughts, projects, and tests. Let’s get back to work.
Multiple algorithm updates took place in the last few months. We crumbled and came back. I lost an important content website that was generating good income. Yes, you can say a lot happened since my last post.
We’ve dedicated countless hours and resources to ranking our eCommerce web asset as a team. It’s a troubled child and is starting to mature.
In this post, I’ll focus on how testing might have revealed why Google ignored our website.
To be honest, it still doesn’t make sense because I really focused on pain points, but it seems like Big G was playing hard to get.
You’ll be surprised at what worked.
If you haven’t read my last post about revamping our product template, I suggest you do so before reading this post.
What did I do before taking SEO into my own hands?
If you’ve followed my work, you’ll know that pain point SEO is a big part of how I like to work.
I have access to industry experts, videos, high-quality images, and great people who help us build our various businesses.
Nothing was working in this case. It was as if Google decided that even though we tried our hardest, they would ignore our efforts.
I decided to ask for help. Some of the best SEOs in the world gave me great advice. We even hired an agency out of London to dig deeper.
No one found glaring issues. Yes, there were small issues, but nothing major.
Everything started to hurt. I felt like we were cursed. It was the first time one of our web assets had struggled so much.
Since the September 2023 algorithm update, we continuously lost more traffic.
There is an uptrend, and we’ll talk about it later.
There is an uptrend, and we’ll talk about it later.
Taking matters into my own hands
I trusted others to help me do the work, and it had been a long time since I got my hands dirty with SEO. It was time to get back.
I wanted to test every element on a popular product page. This is not to knock the people who helped me. I just felt that knowing the industry, I should be the main cat drilling into the SEO.
How did I test SEO?
This might shock some of you, but I wanted to innovate the industry by relying on media-rich product pages.
For example, I would display a video of an important staff member in a video backing our brand on every product page. I also had how-to videos that were directly related to our products.
If you’ve noticed my previous product template, I wanted to be detail-oriented with top-level details above the fold.
I looked at the top-ranking product pages on Google, and they honestly sucked. I couldn’t imagine why Google wasn’t picking the best brand for the top position.
Then, something hit me like a brick. It was obvious. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Stay true to how you want to improve the industry, but give Google what it wants: A simplified product page.
What did I do?
- I removed product specifications and put them below the fold.
- I removed all videos on product pages. This one hurt, but I had to see if it worked.
- I flattened the FAQ section by removing the accordion and personalized it.
- I changed the meta tags to what I thought would improve our rankings. This meant returning to the basics, putting the main keyword at the beginning, and entering a savings amount if a buyer chooses us.
Not all of these tests were done at the same time. I gave a week to every test and gauged my rankings. For example, removing the FAQ lowered our rankings, so I had to put it back.
Our rankings now?
Third nationally. The trend was upward before the May update, but I truly believe my changes had a positive impact.
Note: Google kept picking the wrong page for this keyword. My changes finally put the correct URL at the top of search for this key phrase.
Did the May algorithm update help us?
You bet your bottom dollar it did, and positively so. All our numbers look good.
These are not famous SEO numbers, but the gradual upward trend is a good sign.
May just looks epic for us on Ahrefs.
I don’t want to speculate, but it looks like we might break free. For now, we’re the fastest-growing website in the industry (even though we’re not the biggest yet).
Final thoughts
Do I think we’re finally in a positive ranking state? I believe so, and let’s hope it stays this way.
As long as we continue doing what we’re doing, there is no way we won’t get noticed.
In June, I’ll discuss how we’re diversifying traffic. At the moment, we’re doing very well with this and will continue to dominate the industry.
Until next time, I’ll catch you all in the next post.
