Seeking SEO Advice

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   Joshua Crowderposted 7 months ago

   I'm conducting an SEO study of my articles with the 18th highest views to the 25th highest views based on 30-day views. I have recently edited all of my articles by adding more concise words or fixing errors when I can find them.  I'll usually use multiple tools like Grammarly, pasting into MS Word, etc. 
   
   Starting with the 18 most popular article allows me to not have to research articles that rank too low but rank high enough so I can use a low amount of keywords to see who I'm neck-and-neck with. I stopped at the 25th because I don't want to put effort into something that gets mediocre views (a less popular topic).
   
   I want to try to match keyword counts, inspect the type of images used, inspect lists and tables used, inspect the verbiage used in captions, amount of paragraphs per 100 words, along with H2 and H3 usage.
   
   Besides bringing up more subtopics that others are using so I can integrate more keywords into my writing, I'm not sure what I want to try. I would like to make changes in waves so I can see what catches on.
   
   I just wanted to see what other strategies were out there if anyone is willing to share. I think it could be beneficial for the entire platform to have regular SEO discussions.

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      eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

      Don't forget to compress images. I don't whether that affects SEO though.

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         Joshua Crowderposted 7 months agoin reply to this

         This would be a great test for me because I basically use all high-quality images from Pexels. At least for faster loading.

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            eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

            It's usually possible to reduce filesize by a factor of 5 or 6 with no noticeable loss of quality.

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               PaulGoodman67posted 7 months agoin reply to this

               I do kind of wonder about all the effort and the relative rewards. I suspect that the SEO impact is fairly small.
               
               However, I'll likely start going through my best-performing hubs at some point and convert/replace the PNG images.
               
               Is there a good free program that can compress batches of images?

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               1. 96

                  eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                  I use Paint Shop Pro to compress images individually every time I write an article, but you have to pay for that. It costs around $60, but it can also do a lot of things that Photoshop does, at a small fraction of the price the latter used to cost (Photoshop is a subscription based application like many of these producrs now, costing around $300 per year). I did a quick search for "batch image compression utilities" and "Mass Image Compressor" is one that appears a couple of times at the top of SERPs.
                  
                  https://www.google.com/search?client=fi … +utilities

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                     PaulGoodman67posted 7 months agoin reply to this

                     Yeah, I'm not going to do images one at a time with editing software.
                     
                     I'm weary of going through all my articles and changing images so I'll likely batch change for each article.
                     
                     It's difficult to justify spending much time given the way the site's been going. At least we didn't seem to *lose* traffic with the last Google algo change, which has been the recent pattern.

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                        eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                        I have lost some, but it may be seasonal. Bad news is the norm now.

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                           PaulGoodman67posted 7 months agoin reply to this

                           I think a lot of work has gone into the site in recent times, it's just not had the desired effect so far.
                           
                           I've had editors making a lot of changes to articles at times. However, it doesn't seem to have the dramatic effects that it used to.

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                        eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                        Images load really slow on my six year old phone on a 4G connection, but  the problem is that ads can take over a minute to load first, then the images are loaded. So readers back out. I would give a 1 out of 10 for user experience on the network sites. I reckon the fact that the sites are so slow, is part of the problem why lots of traffic is lost. I doubt whether I'm  the only one with a six year old phone.It's obvious that Hubpages/TAG has little control over the code/ don't want to change it/ haven't the resources to change it, or they would have fixed this by now.

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         melbelposted 7 months agoin reply to this

         Have you noticed a difference in traffic after compressing images?

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            eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

            I didn't take note of when I did this, so I can't say really.

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      Solarasposted 7 months agoin reply to this

      Yes, I would be nice for us to have regular discussions about what is working and what is not. 
      
      The staff went through PetHelpful and added new images without text at the top of the articles.  That appears to have been helpful. 
      
      The former lead images with text were pushed down one text block.  The result for my articles was a new image at the top of the article, followed by an introduction paragraph, and then the original image with text about the content with the article, which I think works.
      
      It is effectively an introduction to the topic, followed by a reminder of why you clicked on the article. If that is any help.
      
      Pageviews are up 50% since these changes were implemented.

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         PaulGoodman67posted 7 months agoin reply to this

         I hope that they can do for the other niches what they've done for Pethelpful, as that niche seems to be doing better than others.

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   3. 93

      Joshua Crowderposted 7 months agoin reply to this

      I'm now focusing on my top article and want to see if I can mimic results for other popular articles of mine. My top article has the below stats.
      
      Words: 723
      Keywords: 60
      Keyword%: 8.2%
      Published: 12/09/19
      Updated: Weekly
      
      I'm fighting for the No.1 Google spot with a YouTube video for this article.  I also have 2 articles similar to this one where I use different terminology to describe the topic.
      
      My focus is going to be on conciseness. I edit at least a dozen of my articles a day and try to pick out 1 thing to change to reduce filler words. I would like to get the keyword percentage up in all of my articles.

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2. 96

   EricDockettposted 7 months ago

   I agree about the regular SEO discussion. Unfortunately, that topic is often met with crickets around here these days.
   
   When I audit my articles, I basically start from scratch.
   
   I do all of my keyword research over again and make changes to titles and headers accordingly, not just to see if I missed anything but because things change over time.
   
   I review competition, again because new articles have probably cropped up since I published.
   
   I review images and videos and see if I can find anything better.
   
   Sometimes I rewrite whole sections of text. If that seems unnecessary, I'll add a new section or a FAQ.
   
   I review internal links because I've likely written new articles that could be useful to readers.
   
   It's probable that I've learned a few things since I published an article, so often I'll make changes that reflect my new understanding of SEO.
   
   Of course, I review any facts and data. I have some articles where the information changes yearly and they must be updated to stay relevant.
   
   I can't think of anything else, but if I do I'll add it to this thread.

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3. 94

   PaulGoodman67posted 7 months ago

   "I agree about the regular SEO discussion. Unfortunately, that topic is often met with crickets around here these days."
   
   Yes, there used to be more useful SEO talk.
   
   I think:
   
   1. Many of the more SEO-knowledgeable writers have gone off and done their own thing over the years.
   2. There's never been a real replacement for Paul E coming into the forums and sharing his knowledge. We were lucky to have that in retrospect. That said, I appreciate the approach taken by editors in the last newsletter, where SEO was featured strongly.
   
   "I just wanted to see what other strategies were out there if anyone is willing to share"
   
   Joshua - That's such a big and open question, I wouldn't know where to start. You seem to have covered the main things that I'm aware of. I feel that a big thing for the site is trying to inject more authority for Google. I feel that's a big reason why most of the niches have sunk.

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      melbelposted 7 months agoin reply to this

      I miss it too, it’s been crickets from me because there’s crickets from the HP team.

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   2. 93

      Joshua Crowderposted 7 months agoin reply to this

      Paul,
      
      I believe most that have figured out SEO have left as well. With my articles being of the how-to variety, nothing has ever really gone viral for me. I do see consistency though.
      
      When I started getting what I considered big money here (70+ US$/month) I really started going after SEO before the editors called me out on keyword stuffing for 2 articles. That was discouraging but I want to back into SEO without being so aggressive.

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