A new customer drops from the HCU

good morning,

I've taken over a file from a new client and I don't really understand his downfall since September 2023, he started losing his keywords on September 18, the day of the HCU and his site is falling, he's in the process of rewriting his ecommerce site, he has a blog where he writes articles about his products.

It's an ecommerce affected by the HCU.

I'm not sure how to get it back.

Organic traffic divided by 5, his blog went from 110k per month to 22k, his ecommerce site from 400 views per day to 30 views per day in his country.

It's complicated, because sites with 4 lines are passing him by.

Do you have any ideas?

In June 2023 it had 904 keywords in the top 3, today 185. It is currently losing 5 top 3 keywords every 2 days.

in SEOby Moleque-Brasil

92%

15d

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Toamasina-Santos

15d

nothing impressive but backlinks from the national press and blog. Thennil has quotes in the international press with his name in an interview but without backing

WebLinkr

Verified - Weekly Contributor

15d

Thats not a very comprehensive piece of analysis, and its certainly not convincing. u/bigtakeoff is making a valid point: look at the dramatic rise in ranking before the peak, which looks like a massive cliffs edge - this is also in part to how SEMrush calculates positions but it looks like they ranked really quickly in sprints and the most recent one was immediately followed by a complete drop off - as this is the only way SEMRush is going to register ( it has access to maybe 5% of global search terms, so the fidelity is pretty low).

Now, people always seem to want to believe meteoric growth like this is possible and so we seem pre-conditioned to go wow - that's great. But tell me how a site got from these positions suddenly? Like that's not how topic authority and cornerstoning work - that looks like guest posts.

Link Spam (to use the official Google term from their guide) is not about spammy links or how many links or how often, its not a scale of good/better - its binary. If a link from a site on a keyword matches, and the incoming link has lots of authority, that page is going straight to one. Ranking from inherent authority is weeks. And there are a lot of keywords piling up from the looks of it.

Link Spam actually looks legit - like a keyword in a blog post on a site that matches the topic usually exactly matches the slug or phrase of the targeted page. Its VERY difficult to root cause - because you have to look away from all the spam. And in SEMrush you can only turn off multiple links from domains or singular links - and its possible they bought more than one link from the same domain in a PBN

Toamasina-Santos

14d

I've noticed an increase in ranking on certain terms. There has been no change. A category page that was first and then dropped to 30th position came back in the top 5 like a bullet. Here, I didn't understand a thing, in two days. It's as if a penalty had been removed from the algorithm.

It has no pbn or anything, it was white from white.

For the increase, in August 2022, my client wrote 5 articles a day for 9 months. His blog went from 200k per day to 1 million. Recipes and explanations of his products.

Here, I'm trying to have opinions with you to try to build a plan.

Since I don't have a big team, it's a good way to exchange ideas.

Thank you for your ideas.

I like Gleen on twitter and he was talking about how some hcu sites are coming back to life, but slowly. Let's say that from September to 15/05 it was falling, here we notice a small rise.

Now I have to tackle a second question: why did his Google merchant go from 120 views a day to 0 from October 2023 to January?

WebLinkr

Verified - Weekly Contributor

14d

I've noticed an increase in ranking on certain terms. There has been no change. A category page that was first and then dropped to 30th position came back in the top 5 like a bullet. Here, I didn't understand a thing, in two days. It's as if a penalty had been removed from the algorithm.

Still super broad: Whats the time frame? Going to the top 5 and dropping again after 48 hours or so or oscillating is standard SEO (based on the thin details you've provided - you've written words but the word count 100:1 detail count). If keywords oscillate but don't hit a good CTR, they drop. Osciallating is good because settling on position 30 = bad - you might as well give up on this URL and try again. A penalty is unlikely - it would mean all of your pages stopped and/or you couldn't find the domain in search at all.

It has no pbn or anything, it was white from white.

I don't know that you can fully validate this - I know I would struggle

For the increase, in August 2022, my client wrote 5 articles a day for 9 months. His blog went from 200k per day to 1 million. Recipes and explanations of his products.

Impressions? Visits?

Here, I'm trying to have opinions with you to try to build a plan.

This doesn't make a lot of sense, how is this helping me understand what you're seeing?

Since I don't have a big team, it's a good way to exchange ideas.

I've been a team of 1 for 20 years, I don't think headcount is a problem here

Thank you for your ideas.

I like Gleen on twitter and he was talking about how some hcu sites are coming back to life, but slowly. Let's say that from September to 15/05 it was falling, here we notice a small rise.

This is the problem when you don't have a lot of technical knowledge. What Glen is talking about is nebulous; its not a hard fast fact - its just hot air designed to manage his relationship with his followers because that's the stat that makes him an expert. I'm not saying he's wrong but you've moved from hard data to emotional views, its not helpful

Now I have to tackle a second question: why did his Google merchant go from 120 views a day to 0 from October 2023 to January?

I don't know - its the first time you brought up merchant?