3 ms·

With your approach I'm sure you'll get back to normal traffic very soon. I think your conclusion is right. It's not one thing that cause the drop but a combina

With your approach I'm sure you'll get back to normal traffic very soon. I think your conclusion is right. It's not one thing that cause the drop but a combination of things. Let's forget one sec about the traffic you had before and focus on the current situation. - Page speed: It's one of the most important ranking factor. You don't have to get 100 score, but passing the core web vitals score and having higher score on mobile is recommended. https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjohnnyreilly.com%2F&form_factor=mobile https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjohnnyrei... A cool trick to improve the result fast is by removing the lazy load effect from the LCP: https://i.imgur.com/rOOWm91.png https://i.imgur.com/rOOWm91.png - Add a robots.txt You have plenty of pages in the site, it might be good to make sure only things you want to be indexed are getting crawled. https://i.imgur.com/ONSiQjQ.png https://i.imgur.com/ONSiQjQ.png - Add bio (one liner) here: https://i.imgur.com/SXbWVwU.jpg https://i.imgur.com/SXbWVwU.jpg Great smile. The bio should show your readers your expertise in the topic. If you want to take it to the next level, Quora is a great inspiration. In every Quora answer you can write a different On-liner/byline. - Internal linking: I love your blog archive. It's a great idea. Try to make more strategic articles stronger. More internal links to the article will signal search engines this page is indeed important. - Add Privacy policy & Terms of use pages I can help you with analyzing the traffic drop if I'll understand which pages were your largest traffic generators. Let's try to understand what happened to those pages, and how it's possible to make them stronger. I worked with several large companies who had traffic drop after migration. Sometimes companies spend so much time and effort looking for the reason for the drop instead of just focus on recovering. I'm up for analyzing the drop but if the reason is not obvious (Google Penalty for example), I recommend to focus on the future rather than the past. I would love to help you (As a case study) with analyzing what caused the issue, and to give tips on how to move forward and get more traffic. Edit: We wrote a SaaS SEO guide that cover several related topics: https://growtika.com/saas-seo/ https://growtika.com/saas-seo/

johnny_reilly 4y ago
Thanks for the tips! > A cool trick to improve the result fast is by removing the lazy load effect from the LCP: https://i.imgur.com/rOOWm91.png https://i.imgur.com/rOOWm91.png Haha, ironically I'm responsible for wholesale lazy loading of images in Docusaurus: https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus/pull/6598 https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus/pull/6598 Generally that's a good thing, but it's not good for title images that appear "above the fold". I wonder if there's something we could do to determine whether an image is "above the fold" and so not apply lazy. Something to ponder. > Try to make more strategic articles stronger. Not sure I follow your meaning here, do you literally mean applying bold to certain articles? Or something else?
- slorber 4y ago
  We could apply lazy loading only after the 2nd image maybe
  - johnny_reilly 4y ago
    Yeah - primitive but probably reasonable. Would be happy to experiment with that. I've also been pondering things we could do around open graph images as well, would be nice to use image CDNs like Cloudinary for open graph images in the same way we can for blog images https://johnnyreilly.com/2022/12/26/docusaurus-image-cloudinary-remark-plugin https://johnnyreilly.com/2022/12/26/docusaurus-image-cloudin...
    - birken 4y ago
      Changing all images to be lazy loaded is not a good idea for SEO reasons (and perhaps not a good idea for regular usage of the site either). If it were, browsers would just do it automatically. Using hints on your images is only useful if you are doing it strategically, which means only lazy loading images that are offscreen on the initial page load. Otherwise you are not actually giving useful hints to the browser on how to load your page in the correct manner, and thus you are just better off letting the browser use whatever internal logic it has to decide how and when to load the assets. Basically you can think about the optimal, minimal set of resources to render your page being: - HTML - Required CSS - Above the fold images Then at that point, download all of the other things to make the page work in the way you want (javascript, etc). Anything else is delaying the initial page-load. Because your images are lazy loaded, your page load looks like the following: - HTML - Required CSS - Some above the fold images (profile.jpg, etc) - Massive, >300kb blobs of javascript (runtime-main.js, main.js) - Above the fold images in the post This is not good. It doesn't make sense for your page to download 300kb of javascript before downloading the 18kb image that is above the fold. Now you can partially solve this problem by making the javascript asynchronous, but that still is just another band-aid on the problem, as then the javascript and above the fold images would download concurrently, which is still not optimal. What you want to do is have above the fold post images be loaded eagerly (the default), and then lazy load ones that are lower on the page. If you aren't going to do that, you probably are better off just not having the images being lazy loaded at all, especially if your page includes 300kb of javascript which is likely going to be much larger than the combined size of all the images on the page.
johnny_reilly 4y ago
Yeah I'd love to get your help! My email address is johnny_reilly at hotmail dot com or you can DM me here: https://twitter.com/johnny_reilly https://twitter.com/johnny_reilly or here https://fosstodon.org/@johnny_reilly https://fosstodon.org/@johnny_reilly
kshay 4y ago
> It's not one thing that cause the drop but a combination of things Let me propose a bold generalization based on observations of sites of all sizes wrestling with Google over the last 20 years, and to which there are certainly exceptions (this case may be one): It’s always one thing. Of course, there are always a multitude of improvements that can be made to nibble around the edges and get incremental improvements in various metrics. And a gradual change in traffic may have several simultaneous sources. But when the effect is an identifiable precipitous drop in search traffic, almost all the time, it turns out there was a single reason, whether a change Google made or a change the site made. This may be a totally unhelpful observation, and feel free to ignore it. But in these situations I’ve come to find it’s more fruitful to look for A Cause than to approach it as “a little here, a little there.”
- johnny_reilly 4y ago
  I've listed all the causes I can think of. Does any strike you as "the one"?
  - kshay 4y ago
    Honestly, the thing about other sites using your GA tag seems like the biggest red flag/potential for some Google algorithm to have actively started penalizing you. The timing doesn’t quite track, but maybe some interaction between that and the spam update?
dazc 4y ago
> Add a robots.txt Likely not the cause but not having a robots.txt can cause weird crawling problems. Since it takes two minutes to set up, why not. And, here's a tip, don't try and be clever, keep it simple: User-agent: \* Disallow:
Growtika 4y ago
Edit II: Few more tips: - The drop might be related tO Google algorithm update. This link can help with understanding if the traffic drop is in correlation with your traffic drop: https://ahrefs.com/google-algorithm-updates#october-2022-spam-update-2022-10-19 https://ahrefs.com/google-algorithm-updates#october-2022-spa... - Google search console: Check if there was any penalty More info here: https://searchengineland.com/google-penalties-manual-actions-notifications-guide-388509 https://searchengineland.com/google-penalties-manual-actions... EDIT III: This thread might be useful You can find more related threads of people who suffer traffic drop after Google algorithm update (October 2022): https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fsupport.google.com%2Fwebmasters%2Fthread%2F+traffic+drop+spam+update&rlz=1C5CHFA_enIL975IL976&oq=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fsupport.google.com%2Fwebmasters%2Fthread%2F+traffic+drop+spam+update&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.4823j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fsupport...
lelandfe 4y ago
> You don't have to get 100 score, but passing the core web vitals score and having higher score on mobile is recommended Note that they don't have a CWV score yet due to low traffic. But a 39 performance score from the simulated Lighthouse is often more than enough for a passing grade. That is: if a Moto G4 can do OK, your normal users will likely do great. For instance, a site I made[0] has a 22 from Lighthouse, but a passing CWV grade, so further improvement to the LCP, FID, and CLS would confer no direct Google SEO benefit.[1] (But it may help things like bounce rate, which may confer second-order benefits) > by removing the lazy load effect from the LCP Indeed. Even better, making it high priority instead of normal: https://addyosmani.com/blog/fetch-priority/ https://addyosmani.com/blog/fetch-priority/ [0] https://i.imgur.com/TGD1sj2.png https://i.imgur.com/TGD1sj2.png [1] "For example, a page with an LCP of 1750 ms (better than the “good” LCP guidance) and another one with 2500 ms (at the “good” guidance) would not be distinguished on the basis of the LCP signal" – https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/104436075/core-web-vitals-page-experience-faqs-updated-march-2021 https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/104436075/core-...
- johnny_reilly 4y ago
  This is very helpful, thank you. Raised a ticket against Docusaurus to track this: https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus/issues/8552 https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus/issues/8552 will experiment

johnny_reilly 4y ago

Thanks for the tips! > A cool trick to improve the result fast is by removing the lazy load effect from the LCP: https://i.imgur.com/rOOWm91.png https://i.imgur.com/rOOWm91.png Haha, ironically I'm responsible for wholesale lazy loading of images in Docusaurus: https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus/pull/6598 https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus/pull/6598 Generally that's a good thing, but it's not good for title images that appear "above the fold". I wonder if there's something we could do to determine whether an image is "above the fold" and so not apply lazy. Something to ponder. > Try to make more strategic articles stronger. Not sure I follow your meaning here, do you literally mean applying bold to certain articles? Or something else?

slorber 4y ago
We could apply lazy loading only after the 2nd image maybe
- johnny_reilly 4y ago
  Yeah - primitive but probably reasonable. Would be happy to experiment with that. I've also been pondering things we could do around open graph images as well, would be nice to use image CDNs like Cloudinary for open graph images in the same way we can for blog images https://johnnyreilly.com/2022/12/26/docusaurus-image-cloudinary-remark-plugin https://johnnyreilly.com/2022/12/26/docusaurus-image-cloudin...
  - birken 4y ago
    Changing all images to be lazy loaded is not a good idea for SEO reasons (and perhaps not a good idea for regular usage of the site either). If it were, browsers would just do it automatically. Using hints on your images is only useful if you are doing it strategically, which means only lazy loading images that are offscreen on the initial page load. Otherwise you are not actually giving useful hints to the browser on how to load your page in the correct manner, and thus you are just better off letting the browser use whatever internal logic it has to decide how and when to load the assets. Basically you can think about the optimal, minimal set of resources to render your page being: - HTML - Required CSS - Above the fold images Then at that point, download all of the other things to make the page work in the way you want (javascript, etc). Anything else is delaying the initial page-load. Because your images are lazy loaded, your page load looks like the following: - HTML - Required CSS - Some above the fold images (profile.jpg, etc) - Massive, >300kb blobs of javascript (runtime-main.js, main.js) - Above the fold images in the post This is not good. It doesn't make sense for your page to download 300kb of javascript before downloading the 18kb image that is above the fold. Now you can partially solve this problem by making the javascript asynchronous, but that still is just another band-aid on the problem, as then the javascript and above the fold images would download concurrently, which is still not optimal. What you want to do is have above the fold post images be loaded eagerly (the default), and then lazy load ones that are lower on the page. If you aren't going to do that, you probably are better off just not having the images being lazy loaded at all, especially if your page includes 300kb of javascript which is likely going to be much larger than the combined size of all the images on the page.

johnny_reilly 4y ago

Yeah I'd love to get your help! My email address is johnny_reilly at hotmail dot com or you can DM me here: https://twitter.com/johnny_reilly https://twitter.com/johnny_reilly or here https://fosstodon.org/@johnny_reilly https://fosstodon.org/@johnny_reilly

kshay 4y ago

> It's not one thing that cause the drop but a combination of things Let me propose a bold generalization based on observations of sites of all sizes wrestling with Google over the last 20 years, and to which there are certainly exceptions (this case may be one): It’s always one thing. Of course, there are always a multitude of improvements that can be made to nibble around the edges and get incremental improvements in various metrics. And a gradual change in traffic may have several simultaneous sources. But when the effect is an identifiable precipitous drop in search traffic, almost all the time, it turns out there was a single reason, whether a change Google made or a change the site made. This may be a totally unhelpful observation, and feel free to ignore it. But in these situations I’ve come to find it’s more fruitful to look for A Cause than to approach it as “a little here, a little there.”

johnny_reilly 4y ago
I've listed all the causes I can think of. Does any strike you as "the one"?
- kshay 4y ago
  Honestly, the thing about other sites using your GA tag seems like the biggest red flag/potential for some Google algorithm to have actively started penalizing you. The timing doesn’t quite track, but maybe some interaction between that and the spam update?

dazc 4y ago

> Add a robots.txt Likely not the cause but not having a robots.txt can cause weird crawling problems. Since it takes two minutes to set up, why not. And, here's a tip, don't try and be clever, keep it simple: User-agent: \* Disallow:

Growtika 4y ago

Edit II: Few more tips: - The drop might be related tO Google algorithm update. This link can help with understanding if the traffic drop is in correlation with your traffic drop: https://ahrefs.com/google-algorithm-updates#october-2022-spam-update-2022-10-19 https://ahrefs.com/google-algorithm-updates#october-2022-spa... - Google search console: Check if there was any penalty More info here: https://searchengineland.com/google-penalties-manual-actions-notifications-guide-388509 https://searchengineland.com/google-penalties-manual-actions... EDIT III: This thread might be useful You can find more related threads of people who suffer traffic drop after Google algorithm update (October 2022): https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fsupport.google.com%2Fwebmasters%2Fthread%2F+traffic+drop+spam+update&rlz=1C5CHFA_enIL975IL976&oq=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fsupport.google.com%2Fwebmasters%2Fthread%2F+traffic+drop+spam+update&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.4823j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fsupport...

lelandfe 4y ago

> You don't have to get 100 score, but passing the core web vitals score and having higher score on mobile is recommended Note that they don't have a CWV score yet due to low traffic. But a 39 performance score from the simulated Lighthouse is often more than enough for a passing grade. That is: if a Moto G4 can do OK, your normal users will likely do great. For instance, a site I made[0] has a 22 from Lighthouse, but a passing CWV grade, so further improvement to the LCP, FID, and CLS would confer no direct Google SEO benefit.[1] (But it may help things like bounce rate, which may confer second-order benefits) > by removing the lazy load effect from the LCP Indeed. Even better, making it high priority instead of normal: https://addyosmani.com/blog/fetch-priority/ https://addyosmani.com/blog/fetch-priority/ [0] https://i.imgur.com/TGD1sj2.png https://i.imgur.com/TGD1sj2.png [1] "For example, a page with an LCP of 1750 ms (better than the “good” LCP guidance) and another one with 2500 ms (at the “good” guidance) would not be distinguished on the basis of the LCP signal" – https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/104436075/core-web-vitals-page-experience-faqs-updated-march-2021 https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/104436075/core-...

johnny_reilly 4y ago
This is very helpful, thank you. Raised a ticket against Docusaurus to track this: https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus/issues/8552 https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus/issues/8552 will experiment