Google Can Lose Faith In Your Website (Here's How To Get It Back) — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Can Google eventually lose faith in a
2. 0:03website? That's what we are exploring
3. 0:05today. It's if you put out enough of bad
4. 0:08stuff, will Google eventually stop
5. 0:10showing your content in search even when
6. 0:13you start to put out good stuff? So, I'm
7. 0:15going to share Google's stance on this.
8. 0:17Then, I'm going to share what recoveries
9. 0:20could look like. That's what we got on
10. 0:23this episode of the show. This is from
11. 0:25Google's John Mueller. John Mueller is
12. 0:28Google's search advocate. basically the
13. 0:30face of Google search. He was asked
14. 0:32about programmatic SEO and gave this
15. 0:35response and it's very illustrative. He
16. 0:39said, "Regarding the site you describe,
17. 0:41it's hard to say, but I worry a bit
18. 0:43because it sounds like a programmatic
19. 0:45SEO play where you iterate through a
20. 0:48large list of domain names,
21. 0:49technologies, and attributes, finding
22. 0:52all possible combinations. It's easy for
23. 0:54a programmer to do, even easier with
24. 0:56code generators now. You end up with
25. 0:59tons of pages that have some value, but
26. 1:01the overall picture is not that
27. 1:03exciting. Expanding it with even more
28. 1:05generated data, like what does PHP mean,
29. 1:08etc. doesn't make it more useful for the
30. 1:10users. And by generated data, he means
31. 1:13AI generated text. His post continues,
32. 1:16programmatic SEO like this often leads
33. 1:18to a site that's either spam, borderline
34. 1:21spam, or lowquality. It's easy to spin
35. 1:23something up with many pages. It's hard
36. 1:26to provide real value to users. Our
37. 1:28systems have possibly lost faith in your
38. 1:31site providing good value to users based
39. 1:34on the old pages. Resolving this tends
40. 1:37to take time and significant effort to
41. 1:39show the value. For sake of a comparison
42. 1:42and timing, you could look at how others
43. 1:44in SEO work on resolving issues around
44. 1:46spam and core updates. Not to say that
45. 1:48your site is spam, but to get a sense of
46. 1:50the work and time involved. And I'll be
47. 1:52sharing that in a moment. He said, "The
48. 1:54key line is our systems have possibly
49. 1:57lost faith in your site providing good
50. 1:59value to users based on the old pages."
51. 2:02And if you're confused by what spam or
52. 2:05lowquality means, the two easiest things
53. 2:08to think about are click-through rate
54. 2:10and pogo sticking. Pogo sticking are
55. 2:12people going to these pages from search,
56. 2:15then they're dissatisfied. They're going
57. 2:17back to the search results to try to
58. 2:19find something better. That's pogo
59. 2:20sticking. You want to avoid that
60. 2:22click-through rate. Do people eventually
61. 2:24stop clicking on your results because
62. 2:26they know that your site is
63. 2:28disappointing? They've come across your
64. 2:29site too many times. They want to avoid
65. 2:31it. Or maybe your page titles are just
66. 2:33bad. It's click the rate in the search
67. 2:35engine results pages. But the result is
68. 2:37putting out content that throws off all
69. 2:40of these terrible behavioral signals.
70. 2:42This really reminds me of the classic
71. 2:44fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf. A bored
72. 2:47shepherd boy looking after sheep shouts
73. 2:49wolf just to watch the villagers drop
74. 2:52their work and rush to help him. He's
75. 2:54laughing. Everyone fell for his prank.
76. 2:56He repeats the trick a second time. The
77. 2:59frustrated villagers fall for it. They
78. 3:01realize they've been tricked again. And
79. 3:03you know what happens on the third time.
80. 3:05The third time is actually a real wolf
81. 3:08appears and attacks the flock. And the
82. 3:10boy screams for help, but nobody
83. 3:13believes him. and the wolf destroys the
84. 3:15flock, leaving the boy weeping over the
85. 3:17consequences of his lies. And it's the
86. 3:20same thing with SEO. Searchers get
87. 3:22disappointed clicking into your results
88. 3:24enough times, they stop going to your
89. 3:27results. We saw this happen with WP
90. 3:29Beginner. WP Beginner's organic traffic
91. 3:31graph has gone down and down and down
92. 3:33and down and down because they put out
93. 3:35all this content that just disappointed
94. 3:38searchers in mass. Searchers stopped
95. 3:40clicking. Google's systems stop trusting
96. 3:43the site. It's like, "Okay, this site
97. 3:46keeps on putting out content that's
98. 3:48disappointing our searchers. Let's
99. 3:50really not show them as much. We're
100. 3:52going to move really slowly with them in
101. 3:54the future." It's the same thing
102. 3:55actually for any algorithm. Same thing
103. 3:57for social as well. If you just put out
104. 4:00enough bad stuff on social media, you
105. 4:03have more work to do trying to get your
106. 4:06account to a satisfactory place. The
107. 4:09problem with programmatic SEO and scaled
108. 4:12AI content is these sites put out the
109. 4:15content way faster than a human could.
110. 4:17And so really throws off these
111. 4:19behavioral signals super fast to the
112. 4:22point where it gets really hard to to
113. 4:24fix it, but people do fix it. And so
114. 4:26that's what I'm sharing next. And
115. 4:27there's this post that was doing really
116. 4:29well on X from Charlotte Smith about
117. 4:32pruning and then fixing the site.
118. 4:34Pruning lots of AI written SEO pages.
119. 4:37Charlotte Schmidt said, "We deleted 200
120. 4:40blog posts at the end of last year, and
121. 4:42since then, our Google traffic more than
122. 4:45tripled. Last year, we published
123. 4:47hundreds of AI written SEO pages.
124. 4:49Exactly zero hit Google's top 10. This
125. 4:53year, we focused on quality, and search
126. 4:55just became our number one acquisition
127. 4:58channel. 15% of new signups in spring,
128. 5:0120% in July, 25% in August, 36% so far
129. 5:06in September. Let's go. Google traffic
130. 5:09went from around 1,000 to nearly 4,000
131. 5:12monthly visitors. Here's the playbook we
132. 5:14follow now. One, delete first. We killed
133. 5:18around 200 thin AI pages with lowquality
134. 5:21backlinks and kept a few dozen worth
135. 5:23maintaining. Two, same tools, better
136. 5:26inputs. The failed pages were written
137. 5:28from models imagination and little
138. 5:30input. The new ones are written from
139. 5:32data live search volumes, SERs from an
140. 5:36SEO API, hrefs or data for SEO and
141. 5:39verbatim quotes from real users on
142. 5:42Reddit, hacker news, and X every quote
143. 5:45linked to its source using the Octalins
144. 5:47MCP. That's really smart because it's
145. 5:50actually a common SEO recommendation
146. 5:53when writing content to do research into
147. 5:55your niche using Reddit or using X to
148. 5:59see what the streets are saying and then
149. 6:01to mirror that language back to the
150. 6:03searchers that shows searchers you
151. 6:05understand them. If you're writing
152. 6:07bottom offunnel content and that's the
153. 6:09next part of this post, you should do a
154. 6:11lot of research into what your searchers
155. 6:14actually care about, seeing the language
156. 6:16they really use. And it's cool that this
157. 6:19content links back to the Reddit posts
158. 6:22and the X posts and the hacker news
159. 6:24posts. That's cool. Number three, write
160. 6:27the pages buyers search for best of
161. 6:29lists that rank competitors honestly
162. 6:32with upto-date pricing breakdowns,
163. 6:34alternative pages for tools people are
164. 6:36leaving. Number four, customer stories
165. 6:39for recognition and original content.
166. 6:41Prisma, Versell, Tally, Postto, Render,
167. 6:44Metabase. Original stories like these
168. 6:47feed many other blogs and pages, which
169. 6:49helps those rank, too. Not to mention
170. 6:52great content for socials. Customer
171. 6:54stories are amazing. There's a reason
172. 6:56that I share so many testimonials for my
173. 6:58SEO course, Compact Keywords, at the end
174. 7:01of many of these episodes. Not only do
175. 7:03they social proof the course, as in,
176. 7:06well, other people are having a good
177. 7:07experience, so I might have a good
178. 7:09experience, but it's cool to see what
179. 7:11other people are doing with it. It's
180. 7:13useful. It's useful for potential
181. 7:14buyers. And number five, review
182. 7:16everything. People try to sell you
183. 7:18automated SEO that just posts blogs on
184. 7:21autopilot and makes your domain rating
185. 7:24grow, but from my experience, it's
186. 7:26rather damaging than helpful to your SEO
187. 7:28and brand image. Taking the time to read
188. 7:31over content and edit is, at least for
189. 7:34now, still necessary. I recently open
190. 7:36sourced our blog writing process as a
191. 7:38skill, and you can get that on GitHub.
192. 7:40This post will be in the description for
193. 7:42this episode. And so if you go to the
194. 7:44post, you can get the skill. Then
195. 7:45there's this post from Lily Ray. I
196. 7:47shared it a couple episodes ago about
197. 7:49recovering from the December 2025 spam
198. 7:52update. Lily Ray said, "Excited to see
199. 7:55this site that was hit by the December
200. 7:572025 spam update is starting to recover.
201. 8:00Interesting that their recovery happened
202. 8:02just outside of a core update. It took
203. 8:04about 5 months after beginning to make
204. 8:06fixes to finally see the impact as
205. 8:09expected. And if you listen to the
206. 8:12helpful content update episode of this
207. 8:14podcast, episode 989 of this show,
208. 8:17Google's helpful content update
209. 8:18destroyed the internet, what actually
210. 8:20happened. Lars Lofran on the podcast
211. 8:23breaks down in depth how he prunes
212. 8:26websites hit by the update and the hard
213. 8:28decisions he has to make and then what
214. 8:30the recovery timeline looks like. And he
215. 8:33goes deep on this. That's a really good
216. 8:36episode. So, don't be the boy who cried
217. 8:39wolf with your websites. Remember,
218. 8:41according to John Mueller, Google
219. 8:43systems can lose faith in a website
220. 8:46providing good value to users based on
221. 8:49bad old pages. Now, if you want to learn
222. 8:51how to do search engine optimization the
223. 8:54right way from the beginning so you
224. 8:56don't face these issues. So, right from
225. 8:58the start, you make a site that is
226. 9:00satisfying search intent, throwing off
227. 9:02good behavioral signals and going after
228. 9:05the types of searches that make you
229. 9:06money. If you want to learn how to do
230. 9:08that, that's exactly what my SEO course,
231. 9:10Compact Keywords, the thing on my
232. 9:12t-shirt, is about compact keywords.com.
233. 9:14If you have a site that's struggling, it
234. 9:16shows you how to do an SEO technical
235. 9:18audit and an SEO content audit to fix
236. 9:20that site. Prune those unnecessary
237. 9:22pages. It shows you how to make content
238. 9:24that satisfies search intent so you're
239. 9:27not getting pogo sticking. You're
240. 9:28getting much higher click-through rates.
241. 9:30How to build highquality links. Most
242. 9:32importantly, how to find the types of
243. 9:34searches people are using when they're
244. 9:36looking to purchase something, use
245. 9:38something, or make a discovery call.
246. 9:40Page templates, Google Docs, Google
247. 9:42Sheets, written portions. I had a
248. 9:44customer, Luke, say this recently. I
249. 9:47built a personal skill for Claude by
250. 9:49transcribing your course into a very
251. 9:51detailed skill that worked really well
252. 9:53for me. Last week, I got my first call
253. 9:56from a lead that came from a compact
254. 9:57keywords page. Then Luke followed up and
255. 10:00said, "Just got another lead, two leads
256. 10:03in 7 days from my target customer trades
257. 10:06from SEO." And here's another satisfied
258. 10:08customer of compact keywords. Edward and
259. 10:10his compact keywords is the best SEO
260. 10:13growth hack method that you can use
261. 10:16today. Simply go to compact keywords and
262. 10:19use his uh use his courses cuz it's
263. 10:23insane. We got this traction over here
264. 10:28and I get meetings pretty much every
265. 10:31day.
266. 10:33That is Matas. Matas is crushing with
267. 10:36the course. So, I hope you'll get it for
268. 10:38your business at compactkeywords.com.
269. 10:40That's everything that I got for you on
270. 10:42this episode of the show. This is
271. 10:43episode 1,166
272. 10:46of the podcast. 1,166
273. 10:49days in a row doing this show. If you
274. 10:52watched this on YouTube, thank you so
275. 10:53much for watching. If you listened on
276. 10:55Spotify or Apple Podcasts, thank you so
277. 10:57much for listening and I will talk to
278. 10:59you again tomorrow. Bye now.