Best Performing Hub Dropped From 1st to 26th Place

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  1. eugbug profile image95
    eugbugposted 3 years ago

    This one's on Owlcation. Traffic has fallen by 40% in the last fortnight and it's dropped from first place to 26th place for several important keywords from the title. It used to have the featured snippet. Has anyone else lost page one ranking for articles on this niche site? All the algorithm updates this year had no effect. The last two were detrimental.

    Edit: Several other tutorials are down about 30%.

    1. chef-de-jour profile image99
      chef-de-jourposted 3 years agoin reply to this

      Most of my articles are on Owlcation, with good ranking, stable so far. Traffic fluctuates as per the half-term breaks in college/uni/schools etc, this being normal.
      Why your article dropped so drastically is solely down to the recent algorithm? New rivals to challenge for top ranking? Have you altered any keywords?

      1. eugbug profile image95
        eugbugposted 3 years agoin reply to this

        No, I didn't change anything. An editor fiddled with it but made no drastic changes. There seem to be some new rivals, so maybe Google's policy is to get rid of top ranking content every so often to give other websites a spot in the limelight.

        1. chef-de-jour profile image99
          chef-de-jourposted 3 years agoin reply to this

          New rivals you say? Perhaps they have a different angle on the same subject from a keyword perspective? More useful content? Together with the H1 issue Brandon has mentioned, plus the unfriendly algorithm, (and HP edit?) somehow your article got knocked off. Hopefully it'll bounce back.

        2. Solaras profile image84
          Solarasposted 3 years agoin reply to this

          I would double check the fiddling, and see if people are using new search terms for your subjects. I find they change up every couple of years.

          1. eugbug profile image95
            eugbugposted 3 years agoin reply to this

            I've proportionately lost more views from the UK than the US. I  think it's the combined effects of school holidays and the Google algorithm change that caused the larger decrease in views than last year at the same time.

  2. Gregory DeVictor profile image98
    Gregory DeVictorposted 3 years ago

    Eugene, I lost about 25% of my traffic over the past 10 calendar days. However, I have not lost my rankings in the organic search listings. It appears that right now less people are looking for American nostalgia-related information.

    A lot of Americans received stimulus checks this past Wednesday, and perhaps they are out shopping, or shopping online. After abominable weather throughout February, the weather is now getting better, and maybe people are spending more time outside. I live in Pennsylvania, and a lot of the COVID restrictions have been lifted over the past several weeks. A lot more people are outdoors now.

    1. OldRoses profile image67
      OldRosesposted 3 years agoin reply to this

      I agree with Gregory.  Traffic on my gardening hubs is skyrocketing now that spring has arrived and more people are gardening.

      1. eugbug profile image95
        eugbugposted 3 years agoin reply to this

        Traffic is increasing to my gardening hubs too. Possibly the drop in traffic to the math hubs is because there's a spring break for kids in the US? Or are they still in lockdown?

        1. OldRoses profile image67
          OldRosesposted 3 years agoin reply to this

          Definitely!  If it is math hubs, then the problem is spring break.  Unfortunately, more and more states are opening up so students are able to gather pretty normally for spring break.

        2. lobobrandon profile image91
          lobobrandonposted 3 years agoin reply to this

          You say you dropped in rankings. That has nothing to do with seasons.

          1. eugbug profile image95
            eugbugposted 3 years agoin reply to this

            I know, but traffic has dropped which could be due to spring break (there was a dip for a few weeks mid to late March 2020). It has also dropped in rankings for two keywords, from first place to 26th place. Traffic is still higher than this time last year though.

            1. lobobrandon profile image91
              lobobrandonposted 3 years agoin reply to this

              I see similar trends on Dengarden. Much higher traffic, but a loss in main keyword positions. That is why I looked into what could have changed and pointed out the H1 issue. Unfortunately, that is not fixed yet.

              1. eugbug profile image95
                eugbugposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                Is that double H1 thing recent, or did it exist from when the new look sites were implemented?

                1. lobobrandon profile image91
                  lobobrandonposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                  I guess from when the new sites were implemented. Can't say for sure. But my tracking shows my rankings lost 2-3 spots since september/october.

                  How recent is your ranking drop? Did you only notice it because of the drop in traffic?

                  1. PaulGoodman67 profile image97
                    PaulGoodman67posted 3 years agoin reply to this

                    Looking at Alexa, the views trend for Owlcation is generally downwards over the past few months, but not that dramatically so. The explanation(s) for such a big drop in rankings of an individual hub are potentially manifold but seem likely to be specific to that hub.

                    That said, as rank to views generally follows an exponential pattern, a relatively small drop can easily halve the number of views or worse. Losing a snippet spot is always crappy.

                  2. Glenn Stok profile image94
                    Glenn Stokposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                    Eugene, To best answer your question, I just checked the HTML of a hub on hubpages.com and it has only one H1. But all the hubs on the Maven niche sites have two.

                    It's really an easy fix. All the staff programmers need to do is change the H1 for "Related Articles" to a DIV.

                    1. eugbug profile image95
                      eugbugposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                      Possibly, but there's probably lots of red tape behind the scenes that impedes fixing simple things and maybe a little politics too.

    2. Gregory DeVictor profile image98
      Gregory DeVictorposted 3 years ago

      Like I said above, “I lost about 25% of my traffic over the past 10 calendar days. However, I have not lost my rankings in the organic search listings.”

      I checked everything again this morning, and I still have not lost my rankings. I guess that people are looking for other topics now, such as travel.  According to NPR.org:

      “As COVID-19 vaccines roll out across the U.S., more travelers are taking to the skies.

      Friday marked the busiest day for the nation's airports since the middle of March 2020, when COVID-19 caused air travel to plummet.

      About 1.36 million passengers passed through security checkpoints Friday, according to figures from the Transportation Security Administration. That is the highest volume since March 15, 2020, when checkpoints reported more than 1.5 million passengers.”

    3. Gregory DeVictor profile image98
      Gregory DeVictorposted 3 years ago

      Eugene, there was a Google search ranking algorithm update on or about March 3, 2021. Maybe this affected your rankings.

      Here is the link at Seroundtable.com:

      https://www.seroundtable.com/google-sea … 31028.html

      1. eugbug profile image95
        eugbugposted 3 years agoin reply to this

        That one didn't seem to affect me. Mostly all the ones from mid Feb. to mid March improved things. It's the ones in the last couple of weeks or so that cut traffic and returned it to mid February levels.

    4. Shesabutterfly profile image97
      Shesabutterflyposted 3 years ago

      Not on Owlcation, but my top Delishably article is dropping in ranking for certain keywords. It is now on page two from the top of page one last year. It was hovering at the bottom of page one a few months back so I guess I shouldn't be surprised it has fallen again.

      There appears to be one new competion on the first page that I noticed, but it doesn't even answer the keywords I put into Google, so honestly not sure why that is on the first page. My traffic has slowed quite a bit for that article the last year. At first I thought it was the design of the new pages and Covid (although I saw an inital uptick from Covid in the beginning), but now I'm not sure what to think. This article is also having some swings in traffic the past 6 months or so verses holding steady like it has the past two years.

    5. eugbug profile image95
      eugbugposted 3 years ago

      Seems to be getting worse.

      https://hubstatic.com/15485224_f1024.jpg

      1. lobobrandon profile image91
        lobobrandonposted 3 years agoin reply to this

        Got a comparison to last year?

        1. eugbug profile image95
          eugbugposted 3 years agoin reply to this

          This is from April 1st last year to yesterday.
          The last few Google updates seem to have reversed the effects of all the others this year.
          https://hubstatic.com/15485346_f1024.jpg

          1. lobobrandon profile image91
            lobobrandonposted 3 years agoin reply to this

            Give it a week or two. I notice that you had an increase mid-April, maybe this year is a slower uptick?

            1. eugbug profile image95
              eugbugposted 3 years agoin reply to this

              Could be Easter break for schools affecting traffic too, compounding the Google update. I notice last year there was a dip around April 12th

    6. eugbug profile image95
      eugbugposted 3 years ago

      I mightn't be earning much from this anyway. Chances are that if views are from schools, many of them have ad blockers turned on.

    7. eugbug profile image95
      eugbugposted 3 years ago

      Has anyone explored whether there are other forums in parallel, Maven site universes where authors complain about these issues on websites that use the same theme?

    8. eugbug profile image95
      eugbugposted 3 years ago

      Has anyone explored whether there are other forums in parallel, Maven site universes where authors complain about these issues on websites that use the same theme? Or is Hubpages the only one of their acquisitions that uses sign-up authors?

      1. Shesabutterfly profile image97
        Shesabutterflyposted 3 years agoin reply to this

        I believe HP is the only one and as far as I can tell we are the only one that has this exact theme.

        I still find it interesting we HAD to have this design, but all the other Maven Channels were able to keep their original design or they have a variation of this, but none of them have this exact set up. Honestly, I don't think any of their acquired sites have the exact same theme/design. Although most are very similar despite topic/who writes for the site.

        None that I have found have the large video. With the exception of SI (doesn't start like HP's) & History (Only on their this day in history section, this video is actually more obnoxious than ours as it jumps several times before it gets to the margin). There are quite a few sites who have a related section (with the H1 I believe). Honestly, not entirely sure how to tell the difference but it appears all the subheadings are the same as the main heading whether it be related, news, ect.

        I found one site that looks very similar in design to what we have here, that appears to have some one time writers in addition to the staff, but I don't think they accept just any internet sign up members. At least I didn't find a way to simply sign up. They write travel articles and appear to have found a way around the bombardment of ads, but the few ads I saw do appear in the same haphazard way as the placement here. They write short articles with a gallery of photos. I didn't find many lengthy type articles on that site though.

    9. eugbug profile image95
      eugbugposted 3 years ago

      Traffic still dropping. Down to 1/3 of what it was in March. This happened to a couple of guides before and I never recovered traffic. Organic and direct traffic have dropped by the same proportion. I wonder does google impose a penalty for editing webpages too often?
      https://hubstatic.com/15497198.png

      1. PaulGoodman67 profile image97
        PaulGoodman67posted 3 years agoin reply to this

        Traffic generally has been very bad over the past week (down by around 15%?). I am blaming Easter for the general fall and hoping I'm correct.

        1. eugbug profile image95
          eugbugposted 3 years agoin reply to this

          There was also a Google update or some form of heightened activity according to Semrush on the 5th (and today, the 9th too).
          https://www.semrush.com/sensor

          1. PaulGoodman67 profile image97
            PaulGoodman67posted 3 years agoin reply to this

            Damn!

    10. eugbug profile image95
      eugbugposted 3 years ago

      Traffic has improved somewhat, but didn't return to February levels.
      Would it be worth adding on extra keywords to this title to reflect what's in the tutorial? Or would it make it too long?

      "How to Calculate the Sides and Angles of Triangles"
      https://hubstatic.com/15545870_f1024.jpg

     
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