Well.....1 SEO company is going to bite the dust
 

I tried it.....I stopped doing my own SEO and handed it to a "specialist" who has indeed dropped my traffic for the past two months.

Then he wants me to believe that my traffic has been dropping for quite some time, and he's trying to save it.

The graph HE gave shows growth for 5 months (with me doing it) and then a decrease in the two months he took over. Now I have one more month with him.

I think he didn't expect me to know as much as him, and well, this was a shitty experience.

Are there no legit SEO people?

Nope. The costs to make a site like say a tube, a blog, whatever are relatively low. Scripts, designs, hosting aren't really all that much money. If someone was able to effectively rank a site, they'd make their own and rank theirs instead of doing it for pocket-change for someone else, and even if they were to do it as a side project - they wouldn't help competition.

As for if it's his fault? I doubt it. Googles algo isn't a static thing. It's constantly changing and it's enough that they changed something in their algo causing you to de-rank despite yours or his best efforts.

Bare in mind that there also has been a core update not that long ago.

I don't know, just got a feeling that most of these SEO experts will just tell you you'll need backlinks and that's it, ignoring all other factors entirely. That's why I would rather not outsource this.

But if I did...
I would probably take a good look at their own website first.
For example, if a SEO company website doesn't even redirect http to https, therefore causing duplicated content, or doesn't know what a canonical tag or webp format is etc, you'll know you're dealing with morons instead of "experts".

Sorry to hear about your vendor problems girl :(

Finding a good SEO for hire is like finding a unicorn. There are a few here on GFY (WG and FB come to mind) but all of the ones I know are already working for big brands or ranking their own sites and laying low vacationing. They're not for hire and don't want the hassle of any sites but their own. Their knowledge is closely guarded and rarely shared.

Then why doesn't it de-rank when I'm doing it? Google works the same for me as it does for him.

I mean, things DO de-rank when I am doing it, but I quickly pick them back up with minimal effort.

When you have over 20k organic blogs and 50 new blogs per week going up, there is no reason for traffic to drop. I personally think it's prime real estate for a SEO company.

As you said the price of building a website is low, but you forget that, depending on the niche, you need a shitload of links when doing SEO and it could get quite pricey. Nowadays website owners need to have a budget in order to get their sites ranked. Not everybody are ready to spend tenths of thousands each month (for months) in link building.

I agree. There were two major Google updates in May and August, and a lot of sites lost their ranking for no apparent reason.

So there's a possibility that for whatever technical reason on your site you could have lost traffic. Doesn't necessarily mean it's SEO's fault. A day of downtime costed me more than 6 months of bad ranking. If your SEO was done correctly, you would gain all that traffic back in a few months. But if not, it's time to change companies.

There is. Feel free to hit me up either here in PM, or on Skype, username: nettrust

Yeah, looks like half of the internet got fucked by googles updates in the past months
You can't say It wouldn't have happened if you did your own seo

This shows how necessary it is to read read and read more to keep yourself current on any changes that can affect how you do SEO. I've seen some really good guys who've kept their clients moving forward while others fall behind using technics useful years ago.

Sadly you're right in that there are times owners do know more simply because they read and learn - I'm not commenting on your SEO person simply because I don't know why or what they were doing throughout the time. All I'm saying is that just doing basics doesn't work anymore - and ignoring areas you don't know is even worse.

I'd be happy just to go over it and offer some free advice if I can as it seems you're not the typical owner - and maybe help in figuring out a strategy that can happen where if you can maintain it on your own if you're interested in the help. Feel free to contact me.

i can only jugdge by my own experience , whenever i do significant onsite Seo changes on a exisiting site , especially within the adult sphere, there is no rush of new Traffic to expect, in most case chances are better you loose a bit traffic, that you had before until the google shuffle has settled and then you only see an increase when adding new content over time or other significant offsite seo is going on . i regular can monitor this when i do update sites that rank for years and then do massive content updates. ill allways loose a bit of traffic until it has settled down but most of the time it pickup after 3-6 month.

yea SEO changes all the time. Google changes direction every few years. you gotta hire one of these guys addicted to it (ie reading SEO blogs and watching SEO tubers every day).

your SEO expert was probably really good at it 3-5 years ago :upsidedow

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I remember back in 2018 (I think?) that Google just finished an update and everyone here at GFY was reporting a huge surge in traffic again and everyone was celebrating, throwing money around again for links, content and new projects.

This after years of Google ignoring porn so it was a breath of fresh air for us all. Now Google's last 2 updates this year have many feeling sad again.

None of the positive or negative changes had anything to do with our link profiles or on-site SEO etc. Google just 'choose' to give us love one day and then a few years later take it away. Of course if you have good content and lots of links you were doing better, but what I'm trying to say is that sometimes you have to just wait for big G to like you again.

The ones reading the "blogs" and watching the "tubers" aren't the ones who know what they're doing. In many cases, even the ones writing those posts and publishing those videos don't know what they're doing. There's a ton of misinformation out there.

If they own sites with a lot of SE traffic, they know what they're doing - especially if they're a smaller operation. Most of the big boys who dominate the SERPs do so because someone at the top or near it have a very solid SEO background.

Konrad was mostly right - there might be a couple guys around who like the guarantee of a pay check each month, but I would guarantee they have their own small network on the side also.

I know a Penguin who'd like to disagree.
Gone were the days of keyword rich sitewide backlinks and owning

There are some good points above.

Indeed, there are some great SEO experts, but most of them are either managing their sites or working for big companies. Simple put, they are not publicly available.

SE philosophy hasn’t changed from day 1. If you follow this philosophy and understand how SE think, breathe & work, you will succeed no matter on algo updates.

Many so-called experts still believe that buying tons of links will bring solid results. Obsessed with DA, and PA, keyword difficulty and so on. Those days are long gone.

As an example, this is my hobby project launched in Dec 2021. Not a single link buy.

https://i.postimg.cc/vTf84c1y/organics-month.jpg

MakeMeGrrrrowl PM me URL, I will take a quick look.

That is mainstream niche or porn?

BTW OP, if you think that guy is deranking your site... simply hire him to "improve" a competitor instead of your site

This sample is a mainstream one. Highly focused on Topical Map concept and just a bit of a technical SEO for Core Web Vitals factors. But no matter the niche, concept is the same.

I've heard of topical map, basically just having a range of content that is related to your main theme of your website. So if you are doing a site for Bed & Bath, you'd create as many content pages related to that subject to show Google you are an authority on that niche.

How do you get traffic, like in your graph, with no links though to separate you from your competitors?

Thanks. But how did you get out of the sandbox so fast without backlinks? as far as I know topical map nor core web vitals help avoiding the traditional 6-12 months sandbox

Probably had a very good CTR in the SERPs, outstanding bookmark and returning visitor rate + holding time.
Just my guess... :upsidedow

I don't think that may be the reason... at least not according to what I see with my sites... I have a site that is 1 month old and has 27 minutes 58 seconds holding time and it's nowhere near out of the sandbox yet.
On the contrary, I have also another site which has 18% CTR and after 7 months it's still not out of the sandbox and not all content is indexed yet... I consider 18% good, since on Youtube (so, a platform always from Google) your videos go viral with 15% CTR usually.

Bookmarked

this 100%, it doesn't matter how much $$ a noob throws at an SEO "expert", they're not gonna rank. the business owner (or someone close to the top) needs to know what they're doing.

I do hire guys for grunt work -- jobs that I know exactly how to do myself, but that aren't worth my own (valuable) time. Link brokers in particular -- you need one or two quality link brokers.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

trade your worst player to your biggest rival :1orglaugh

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By delivering better topical coverage than competitors. Filling the contextual gap, delivering "added value". Classifying concepts, not KWs. And of course, interlinking is a very important part of the whole project. Local interconnectivity by connecting mutual points between topics/entities. Focusing heavily on understanding Search Engine's own memory, and knowledge graph.

The answer is the similar as above post. (With more factors & details. Will make one detailed post about that one).

It doesn't have to be traditional 6-12 months "sandbox". After all, Google never confirmed the actual existence of the Sandbox. But, I know where are you coming from.

To be fair, soft website launch was in the mid of Nov 2021, but with "noindex" in robots.txt, for testing purposes. So, the document was available for indexing a week later (end of Nov/start Dec 2021). It took few weeks/ a month to start ranking. Here is the GSC initial ranking graph:

https://i.postimg.cc/Xv02jRmR/initial-ranking-vs.jpg

You could apply this to every business out there and its just non-sense. There are many people good at something and bad at something else. Just because someone can rank a site, doesn't mean he can market it right or even knows what to promote there. If your theory was true, service industry wouldn't exist.

Thats like saying why is google selling ad space to companies instead of promoting their own stuff there? I mean, if google's traffic was worth something, they would use it for themselfs, right? lol

good response to something we've heard many times over the years about every service.

:thumbsup

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Impressive PBN, but I would limit it to under 30K blogs. Otherwise, you may eventually be hit by a Google quality update, SEO services or not.

If this were mainstream, I would've agreed with both of you - I actually hate the premise of what Konrad said. I know guys in mainstream who are killers and used to be huge affiliates, but decided to start an agency as their 20's ended and 30's began.

But the two I'm thinking of specifically, their smallest "package" for a client is $5,000-$7500 (mostly because one is in LA and one is in the Midwest) per month. This doesn't include any link budget, etc., either. The clients here are mostly smaller e-commerce sites who maybe went online from a local brick and mortar setup. Then they both have clients with 6 figure billables every month also who have essentially an entire staff dedicated to them.

That doesn't happen in adult. So if you're good at SEO and stay in adult but mostly work for others / clients, you eventually come to a crossroads of sorts. Do you want to make money, or not?

This was me personally, and I know a LOT of others who've done this exact thing, or they left the adult company they worked for and went to a mainstream SEO agency for 3x the money and 1/3 the bullshit. :thumbsup

yea mainstream corporate whoring aint no fucking joke!

i hate corporate cocksuckers tho :pimp

that being said, my SEO skills and knowledge are minimal at best.

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Hey, I appreciate all of your responses.

This guy was good at "shadowing" the competition. Every fucking website I pulled up I think I saw his face on it once I found him. I also think he was betting on google ad words and quickly realized adult marketing is a little different than mainstream and google adwords wasn't having it.

His strategy was as many backlinks as he can, no matter the quality. I think that's archaic but what do I know?

The second company I interviewed is vastly different in price as I think they were in the 7500-8500 range per month. It was a huge difference in the 1300 per month - but I had to try.

Now if I could get someone in the 5k range who knows what they are doing...that would be great.

I simply don't feel like doing it and I'm at my ceiling of what I'm willing to learn about it.

that's some crazy pricing for this industry.

my :2 cents: if you have a $5k budget just hire 2-3 people who want to learn as they go. SEO is too slow to pay monthly in my opinion. it takes Google 3-5 days just to validate a fix/change, and months of burning your cash to see any effects in rankings. if you have a marketer on staff they can do all your other marketing tasks too. there's tons of younger web guys who would work full-time for you at $1500-2000 a month. they'll put in 40-60 hours a week if you find someone obsessed with it. i was like that many years ago lol

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Of course, it's archaic. Every factor that can be easily manipulated or paid for $$$ is not a valuable long-term SEO ROI. It’s only about time when SE will realize it. And change the algorithm to detect it. That is exactly why link buying is not among the No.1 factors to rank nowadays. It can be easily manipulated, either with $$$ or other methods. Especially with the bulk link buys, no matter the quality. (Btw, not saying that quality authority links will not bring any value.)


$1300 per month for SEO is indeed a low figure. But at least, you should get some results/reports of what you have paid for. 5k is more realistic not including 3rd party costs such as content writing as per instructions, and others.

And just for motivation. SEO certainly pays off if done correctly. And it takes same time to see results in most of the cases. This is the GSC graph of one of my, well let's say friend, not a client.

We started with SEO consultations in Dec 2021. The document changes took place starting from March 2022 . You can clearly see the effects, after some period. (around 2-3 months)


https://i.ibb.co/nn9Bchx/client-shop.jpg

It's a mainstream ecommerce website in a competitive niche.
Highly commercial/transactional intent KWs/topics.

Needless to say, organics sales increase is over 300% now, compared to the previous period.

Ah seems to many specialists these days

I am sorry and a bit of an old school, but over the years I have heard that you must have good:

Alexa ranking, links buying and selling, DA, PA, Keywords, Core Vitals, Good CTRs, good SERPs, Interlinking, Optimization, KWs, GSC ranks, ROI... and dozens of other SEO tricks ( most I do NOT even know what they mean)...

.... BUT NOBODY has ever mentioned a " good original content" as a part of SEO. Clicks this, clicks that. If you have a shit content, NO SEO guru will save your ass, but if you do have a good content folks will find you with a minimal effort and you make a good living.

Living off affiliates or clicks ( unless you are Pornhub at al) will keep you in poverty.:2 cents:

Unfortunately, finding those tons of young guys proves to be difficult. That's why I reached out to the mainstream SEO guys.

There are plenty of people around here willing to take your money and not deliver what they say. Then there are people who can deliver it but are just too busy doing their own thing.

I don't want to have to babysit who I hire to make sure they are doing what they say, and that's part of the issue.

People will do what you inspect, not what you expect.

It all starts with good content =)

In my limited experience I think that when it comes to seo with adult it's a totally different ruleset to mainstream

For instance. " Best porn sites" how is the site ranked number 1 out ranking number 2? You will know what I mean when you see it

I agree here. All of the above mentioned in this thread applies to mainstream quite well, but adult has the degenerate-factor and so SEs can simply downgrade us in their algos for that reason alone. And they do.

That's very nice growth at a good pace. If I had seen ANY growth, I'd keep going with him, but to see the site go down when I stop, and he takes over...eh. I can't keep going for another 3 months with that.

It's simply tedious and needs to be done consistently....but it's not rocket science, I don't think.

Good content with a solid SEO strategy is pretty great money. :winkwink:

But you're right, especially in adult where the content is (mostly) visual, good content makes any traffic acquisition strategy "stick".

I've never seen much evidence of that in 20 years. I've seen people say that who are really bad at SEO, have really bad content or a combination of the two, though.

I remember in March 2018 or so my Google traffic spiked and I thought it was just me. But then every webmaster here reported the same. Then this past June or so, every webmaster here (well, most of us) have experienced the same drop. I know some sites are doing well, but it seems that Google blankets adult rankings to some degree just because it's adult. Giving mainstream results for adult terms.

Are those the same people who might be lucky to make $150 per month on Chaturbate and are whining about being "down" at this very moment in the Chaturbate thread? :winkwink:

What "adult terms"? Stuff like this might happen for a day or two during a core algo update, but usually corrects itself. In any case, I've never seen this at scale or on any level that matters. Some popular pornstar's Wikipedia or Instagram being in the top 3 makes more sense than Billy's shitty porn blog running on an outdated WP install.

No not billy's blog but sites like Instagram, nordstrom, TripAdvisor, Pinterest, Washingtonpost etc
Actually there's a lot more data available about the effects of google updates on high authority sites than on Billie's shitty pornblog. And analyzing that data can help Billie's blog a lot

If you haven't seen high authority sites get dropped or boosted by a google update on a scale that matters then you haven't been looking

For those of us who promote our content on BIG adult sites we have seen the trickle-down effect from the last two Google updates.

Meaning: do a search on Google, a Pornhub video pops up as #1 (my submitted video from one of my paysites). User clicks it, goes to PH, then cllicks the banner under the video (or types in the domain) and BOOM traffic. So if those videos are not ranking because the main adult site got affected then the loss in traffic trickles down to little ol' me.

What can be done? Wait it out. It all comes back again, like a giant fucking wheel. :1orglaugh

OP: With so many weekly blogs with new content how about you STOP all SEO services for the remaining three months of the year and compare revenue? I bet'cha it goes up.
:thumbsup

SEO is just content and links.

have good content
get high quality links, also use good internal linking and link to internal pages too

don't rush things too fast.

if someone says they are an expert check the work they have done to back up their claim

I guess great minds think alike, since some of our content sure looks almost identical.

We've even made the same typo's a couple of times... Damn, what are the odds, right?

well that's one way to get good content :1orglaugh

(very popular and profitable way in this industry)

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