[Omniscient]

Previous threads:
https://hackforums.net/showthread.php?tid=5894999
https://hackforums.net/showthread.php?tid=5888884
https://hackforums.net/showthread.php?tid=5881787

This was 8 months ago...


This is today...


This is our new crawl stats..


And this is our new Coverage...


We now have 3.7m pages in the Google Index again.  This is where we had a big issue as we had drops in pages (down to 500k) which was leading to less search results.

My best guess is 3-6 months to double our current clicks and impressions.

We did double the impressions but clicks only increased by about 30%. Unfortunately Google gave us a few keyword results which wasn't very good for our CTR and then dumped that keyword ranking on us.

Our mobile friendliness is great and that's increasing but as these pages are part of index and then added to Google for Mobile Usability we should see more clicks come to HF from mobile search results.

The number are looking pretty good going forward and I'm finally breathing a slight sigh of relief that all this hard work I'm putting into HF has begun to recover our SEO.

Google changes and HF has to go along with it otherwise we suffer. Every website online besides maybe Twitter, Amazon and Facebook rely heavily on getting visitors from Google search results.  But the way Google ranks pages for results changes all the time.  So it's a never ending struggle to stay on top.  The past year I've worked very hard to bring HF into a new era mainly with getting us a responsive theme and ensuring our pages make Google happy.

Also thanks to Xerotic of course because he's a part of making all this happen.  

I'll continue to periodically update HF as things happen but there is a daily review of our SEO by me personally as I work to build up our rankings.

Thank you.

[Thornzzz]

I'm a noob at this stuff, but what is Average position? And what was the huge light blue spike in March?

[Bacardi Cola Lime]

Thank you both for putting the time to make this website better for everyone. As you said, the struggle never ends but glad it goes well at the moment.

[Cryptod]

Appreciate all your hard work you and your dev and all the staff of HF <3

[Angel]

Wow, awesome news! thanks for this update boss

[Omniscient]

I'm a noob at this stuff, but what is Average position?

That's where our keywords rank for search on the average. We have a ton of #1 keywords but we also have stuff on page 5 too. The average overall position is 15 right now which is okay. I'd prefer an average under 10 but that's hard now with 3.7 million pages ranked.

And what was the huge light blue spike in March?

We got ranked #1 for a keyword we shouldn't have ranked for. It was both good and bad because we got a lot of impressions but not a lot of clicks because of it. I actually think it hurt us just a bit because of the low CTR (Click through rate).

[ShinyThings]

Thanks for keeping us all informed but what does this stuff mean in laymen’s?

[Omniscient]

Thanks for keeping us all informed but what does this stuff mean in laymen’s?

HF is not dead or dying.

[ShinyThings]

HF is not dead or dying.

Good to know 👍 would hate to see the best place on the internet go down. I’ve grown to love this place.

[duplex]

HF is not dead or dying.

That's very good news indeed, in omni we trust.

[BTC]

This is really great 😉 I love to see this, and very interesting to see from 2/15/2019 to 3/31/19

What happened there, is that when their system was updating in terms of SEO? Sorry for my lack of knowledge, just curiosity.

Even though everybody here loves to boast about using duckduckgo and hating on Google, it still make huge strides in terms of acquiring new members and keeping post activity up.

[Bossk]

That's a very nice progression, I can agree that mobile compatibility was improved greatly with the style update a few months ago.

[Nas]

Congrats on this big progress in the SEO development of HF. This is a huge step forward in the new generation of HF and I’ve actually seen much more people as guest and newly registered members via the online list compared to a couple of months back.

[Omniscient]

I’ve actually seen much more people as guest and newly registered members via the online list compared to a couple of months back.

One of the next things I need to work on is our Bounce Rate where someone clicks to HF from Google but then doesn't click on HF again or they just close the browser window. That's your Bounce Rate and you want it as low as possible at about 20-25% max. We used to be 18% I think but we're higher now for a few reasons which I'll be working on going forward. It's basically one step at a time for SEO. It can take a year or two to really get things correct.

[Kosmos]

I'm extremely happy to see this kind of update. Positivity is good. These rankings especially are great. Do you think we'll hit 5M clicks and 100M impressions before third quarter? Of course it's no rush but with the progress I've seen I wouldn't be surprised to see the numbers rise again and again.