Why did HA's Google Rankings (SERP) drop and how to bring it back?

[Winston]

PAG,
Which of these themes do you think look better and why? Does the theme make a difference in attracting users?

Prosilver
index.php?style=1

Elegance
index.php?style=21

I don't know, the first one!

Why? Doesn't the second one look more modern, like Rooshv's forum?

Btw, Rooshv forum must have taken the same Google penalties for hate speech/offensive content. So why hasn't his traffic and stats and popularity dropped? He still seems to be doing well. He runs three sites right? His books have taken a big hit I heard though. But his traffic is still good. I don't know about his SERP though.

He's not doing well lol. Most of his web material is gone from Google, and all of his books have been deleted, but he had a small army of followers (no more than 1000). So he's trying to rebuilt with them and new followers and material. His website was never penalized for hate speech/offensive content like yours. You have ads from loveme (an atrocious scam site) and unfiltered hate speech. Just take a look at this website from Google Quality Control and you are marked as undesirable.

The blue goes better with this "design".

1000 followers posting on his forum is a lot. Better than most sites. That's a lot more traffic than your site PAG. Come on. It's not bad. Most people who start a site can't even get any traffic to it.

Why wasn't Roosh's forum penalized for hate speech or offensive content like we were? His forum contains the same content right? And it's public too. So how did it not get penalized? Does he filter hate speech? If so, how? He has hate speech against American women right?

How does Roosh make money? Why doesn't he have any ads on his site?

Google has ranked my home page bad because it's using an outdated CMS, so it needs to be revamped. But it's ranked this forum as good because it's using the latest software that is mobile friendly. See below.

https://search.google.com/test/mobile-f ... Findex.php

What's wrong with the blue in the Elegance theme? Why is blue background better? Doesn't the Elegance theme look more like a Xenforo theme?

[Winston]

Apparently sitemaps are still important. See below. I have a sitemap for the main pages on this site, but not one for every thread in the forum. I may install a mod that will create a sitemap for every thread here if I can.

https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/22867/seo-sitemaps/

https://slickplan.com/blog/xml-sitemaps ... -heres-why

https://www.vdigitalservices.com/do-sit ... r-for-seo/

https://www.bluecorona.com/faq/why-xml- ... t-for-seo/

From Matt Cutts of Google regarding sitemaps.



Permalinks are still important too. See below.

https://www.malcare.com/blog/permalinks-in-wordpress/

https://qodeinteractive.com/magazine/wh ... ermalinks/

https://neilpatel.com/blog/permalink-seo/

https://wplift.com/wordpress-permalinks

[Winston]

I got a reply from one of the volunteers in Google support forum.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/t ... 2353?hl=en

Rase One

You're going to have hard time getting a response from an actual Google employee. The volunteer product experts here will probably call out a million issues with the design of your website & there are some fairly serious issues in that department.

See you have email contact, profiles, social links but I was unable to find an address of phone number on the site. I realize this can be difficult if you are a home based business but the lack of this info is one thing the product experts will probably call out.

You have a TON of content. I looked through a handful of articles & posts. It's all very subjective & everyone is entitled to their opinion and to free speech so I agree with you there. What you've said about Google deranking sites is true & you're probably being hit for more than just offensive content but also for perceived "trust" issues & perhaps even political issues.

Moving some obviously offensive or controversial content into private areas would probably be a good idea. More citations for sources would be a good idea.

In my humble opinion you should really consider rebuilding the site from the ground up. Preserve the content but restructure into a more modern, responsive page layout with cleaner graphics. It can be easier than it sounds. Eliminating all of the technical reasons for deranking couldn't hurt.

Good luck.

My reply.

Original Poster
Winston Wu

Thanks Rase One. Why do you need to put a phone number though? Most people don't like strangers calling them right? Isn't an email or contact form enough? I know that I gotta revamp the home page since it was built with an outdated CMS. But my forum has the latest software from phpbb so that should be good right? Should I use Wordpress or Blogger to revamp the home page? I know Wordpress is more customizable, but I'd imagine Blogger has better SEO and search rank in Google because it's owned by Google right?

Google is very sensitive these days. How do I know what's offensive content? Anything can offend anyone these days, because there's too much political correctness in the modern world and it's subjective too. Should I just move the controversial stuff into a private board and leave out the least controversial stuff public? Thanks for your help.

Btw Rase One, I discussed my SERP problems more in detail in my forum thread here:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=42494

Btw, do you know if bad ratings from MyWebofTrust damage your Google ranking or SERP? Does Google consider that? Is it a factor?

[StanfordGuy]

PAG,
Which of these themes do you think look better and why? Does the theme make a difference in attracting users?

Prosilver
index.php?style=1

Elegance
index.php?style=21

I don't know, the first one!

Why? Doesn't the second one look more modern, like Rooshv's forum?

Btw, Rooshv forum must have taken the same Google penalties for hate speech/offensive content. So why hasn't his traffic and stats and popularity dropped? He still seems to be doing well. He runs three sites right? His books have taken a big hit I heard though. But his traffic is still good. I don't know about his SERP though.

He's not doing well lol. Most of his web material is gone from Google, and all of his books have been deleted, but he had a small army of followers (no more than 1000). So he's trying to rebuilt with them and new followers and material. His website was never penalized for hate speech/offensive content like yours. You have ads from loveme (an atrocious scam site) and unfiltered hate speech. Just take a look at this website from Google Quality Control and you are marked as undesirable.

The blue goes better with this "design".

1000 followers posting on his forum is a lot. Better than most sites. That's a lot more traffic than your site PAG. Come on. It's not bad. Most people who start a site can't even get any traffic to it.

Why wasn't Roosh's forum penalized for hate speech or offensive content like we were? His forum contains the same content right? And it's public too. So how did it not get penalized? Does he filter hate speech? If so, how? He has hate speech against American women right?

How does Roosh make money? Why doesn't he have any ads on his site?

Google has ranked my home page bad because it's using an outdated CMS, so it needs to be revamped. But it's ranked this forum as good because it's using the latest software that is mobile friendly. See below.

https://search.google.com/test/mobile-f ... Findex.php

What's wrong with the blue in the Elegance theme? Why is blue background better? Doesn't the Elegance theme look more like a Xenforo theme?

No.

Most people are dumb.

People aren't using the n words freely, no porn ads and it's not full of crazy conspiracy theories yet.

He site is banned from all advertising networks and he's not making money other than from donations. Which is why he shut down ROK.

They are all ugly. Hire a designer.

[Shemp]

But Shemp, me doing tours like that would mean I would have to be there and settle down or have a base of operations there. That's not passive income. That's work and commitment. Like a real business. lol. Unless I just subcontract people out to do it of course, like PAG seems to be trying to do.

The current forum is not passive because you have to moderate. It's location independent, but that is overrated. Just limit your tours to places you want to visit, then being forced to visit those locations is not a problem. And no, you can't contract out like PAG. That might work for him, but you should use your personality to build brand, more like Mark Davis.

Forums and blogs can still make money if you get a lot of traffic.

One type forums that does well are those with huge readership connected with finance (like Bogleheads.org), since advertisers will pay a lot for that audience. Maybe some other examples. But not something like HA.

[Mr Natural]

It's location independent, but that is overrated

You are telling a guy running a site about "happiness abroad" that location independence doesn't matter? Haha ok.
Anyway I have thought for a long time that Winston hasn't monetized this site the way he could. There has been a huge number of guys in the west over the years looking abroad to retire or find a woman, and there are a large number of products and services that could be sold revolving around this concept. And you gotta admit Winston is definitely an expert in this area. But where is his line of products and services catering to these guys? Other than an old ebook that he hardly even promotes and some affiliate stuff for matchmaking sites, I don't see much.
As for Google, these days I doubt that anyone who is going to be politically incorrect can really depend on them.

[Winston]

Check this out. Google must really hate us badly. It's even ranking sites that scrape our content and plagiarize us as being higher than us! Google never did that before and usually penalizes sites that do that, but now they even put such trash sites way above us! They must really have it out for us!

viewtopic.php?p=338390#p338390

viewtopic.php?p=338398#p338398

In fact, even if you copy whole paragraphs from this forum verbatim and paste it into Google, it still never shows this forum! WTF? How can Google hate us that much? The only way to find this forum is to put "happierabroad" next to the search time. Otherwise, it's nowhere to be seen, even if you copy and paste whole paragraphs verbatim from this site!

[Shemp]

It's location independent, but that is overrated

You are telling a guy running a site about "happiness abroad" that location independence doesn't matter? Haha ok.

I meant that location independent in sense that you can pick up on a whim and go anywhere and work from a laptop (assuming you have internet connection) is overrated. How often per year do most people actually move, once they've gotten past the initial rushing around phase? What most people want is the ability to make money in the location that they prefer. That is a different type of location independent, and is compatible with being a tour guide. Mark Davis. for example, is based in Las Vegas ("Vegas is Good") but travels to Ukraine, Thailand, Colombia, etc for his tours. Similarly, Winston could migrate between Taiwan, Philippines, Cambodia, etc.

Anyway I have thought for a long time that Winston hasn't monetized this site the way he could. There has been a huge number of guys in the west over the years looking abroad to retire or find a woman, and there are a large number of products and services that could be sold revolving around this concept. And you gotta admit Winston is definitely an expert in this area. But where is his line of products and services catering to these guys? Other than an old ebook that he hardly even promotes and some affiliate stuff for matchmaking sites, I don't see much.

Exactly. Look at how far Stryker got in the past few years. And now even PAG, of all people, is cashing in. And there's that Nomad Capitalist guy raking in huge money pushing second passports. Several YouTube bloggers I sometimes watch giving advice about Ukraine visas, apartment prices, etc, but they actually make money by selling consulting services.

Winston was ahead of his time with the concept that American men, especially, can often improve their happiness by moving to another country, but he never followed up into real business. Instead, he just promotes other people's business, like loveme.com.

Winston shouldn't copy anyone else or do things he isn't comfortable with, because you have to be yourself to be sustainable. But Winston is an.outgoing guy. so I see mo reason he couldn't organize and lead tours, sort of like Mark Davis does but without the overpriced scamming.

As for Google, these days I doubt that anyone who is going to be politically incorrect can really depend on them.

That's why I recommended making the forum private, not indexed by Google, and then focus SEO on articles that are non controversial. At this point, domain name Happier Abroad may itself be tainted, not just this dumpster fire forum.

[Winston]

Artodia (aka Arty), one of the major designers of phpbb and Xenforo forum themes, agrees with PAG about Xenforo vs. phpbb. Here's what he had to say about it.

https://www.artodia.com/threads/phpbb3-vs-xenforo.1492/

phpBB is the best from free forum software world, XenForo is the best forum software overall. phpBB 3.1 is a major step forward, but it is still years behind XenForo.

First and most important is plugin system: in phpBB (and almost all other forum software) add-on author can add code only in specific places and its rather awkward system. XenForo uses classes for everything and those classes can be extended. Add-on author can extend almost any class and change/add functionality. Same class can be extended by multiple add-ons without causing conflicts (major thing that no other software has done so far).

Similar situation in templates: in phpBB 3.1 mod author has access only to few predefined places, in XenForo anything can be modified using several methods: template replacements (search/replace in any template, including regexps and callback replacements), XF has events for changing template content before and after its compiled.

So its way easier to make pluging for XenForo than any other software and almost anything can be done with it.

But users don't care about any of that. They want forum that is easy to use. From my experience XenForo is years ahead of anything in that department as well. That is very subjective. Best people to test it is those who have no clue about computers, so I've tested that on sewing forum that has about 250k posts and almost 20k users who have are computer illiterates. That forum used to run phpBB, more than a year ago switched to XenForo. Number of support requests have changed from 3-4 a week to 1 a month. Ladies love it. Easy to use WYSIWYG editor, their favorite Facebook login, option to "like" post that they abuse, posting images is much easier. Of course all of those features can be added to phpBB, but its not an easy task, especially WYSIWYG editor that doesn't suck.

[Winston]

It seems nowadays impossible to find any threads here in google without typing in "happier abroad". Even if you copy and paste whole paragraphs from here in google this site still wont come up in google. Thats very sad. It used to come up right away. You can try it by copying and pasting the text in the OP above into Google. Boy google must really have a personal vendetta against us.

We are still indexed though. If you type "site:www.happierabroad.com + keywords" into google, most threads and pages will still come up. But without the words "happierabroad" nothing from here comes up in google. Thats strange and sad. Sounds like a conspiracy against us.

[Winston]

Explanation from Mr S:

"There's all kinds of video and news saying Google is censoring anti social justice type wrong think. Other search engines don't get used much so they're not doing that, yet....

It's soft censorship they are censoring without telling users cause they don't want their core base to freak out. Most people are dumb and don't question things so they just go along clueless until its too late. They'll tell you only when they totally block you like London Real or David icke. Facebook, twitter, Google they've all made agreements with each other to censor wrong speak."

[Winston]

Fortunately though we still rank good in Yahoo and Bing. If you search the forum thread titles or webpage titles in Yahoo or Bing they still come up pretty high like before. And they even show multiple pages from here together. That's great. But how many still use Yahoo and Bing? What percentage?

Could it be that Google is deplatforming forums as PAG said? When i search my blog posts on Google they still come up. Like if you google "dream connections exposed" or "dream connections horror stories" then my blogger articles on dream connections still come up high. Is that because blogger posts have permalinks in them but forum threads do not? Permalinks are topic words in the URL in case you don't know, which search engines like and are a major ranking factor. Plus of course google owns blogger so they would rank it higher than other blog platforms right?

[WorldTraveler]

Your crazy White Supremacist topics are not helping anything, except to get negative attention. Google doesn't like white supremacist topics. Also the traffic has to be really low since there appears to only be about 10 real posters. Who was the last new poster?

[Winston]

Your crazy White Supremacist topics are not helping anything, except to get negative attention. Google doesn't like white supremacist topics. Also the traffic has to be really low since there appears to only be about 10 real posters. Who was the last new poster?

What counts as a white supremacy topic? Which one? I'm not aware of any.

Someone who posted in the Hare Krishna thread was the last new poster. We have many lurkers too, not just posters. The SERP is the main issue here.

[WorldTraveler]

Your crazy White Supremacist topics are not helping anything, except to get negative attention. Google doesn't like white supremacist topics. Also the traffic has to be really low since there appears to only be about 10 real posters. Who was the last new poster?

What counts as a white supremacy topic? Which one? I'm not aware of any.

These are White Supremacist - Anti-Semitic topics, which are better for a website like Storm Front. You also allow racist anti-Semitic people to bash other people for no other reason than their race.

Why are the Nazis considered the bad guys?
viewtopic.php?f=30&t=15662&p=338274#p338274

Evidence & Quotes That The Allies & Jews Started WWI & II, Not Germany
viewtopic.php?f=30&t=22086&p=338251#p338251