HCU Destroyed This Site. We're Growing it BACK!

[@IncomeSchool]

What else would you do to this website to make it successful again?

[@adi5badi]

The menu structure, and naming of the menu items

[@Andrew-C-Witham]

The engineer in me points to performance. Not because content isn't the most important thing, but because having made such an investment in content it deserves to be presented well and performance is probably the lowest cost in terms of effort and $$ to get right. I've never seen a site perform well on Ezoic. I've not used Ezoic so I don't know if there may be configuration issues or whether this is as good as it gets. Also, the layout with the ads is certainly distracting. One or two placements were not filling for me... is that oversupply? So, I'd take Ezoic off just to make everything easier to look at and asses. I know that means lost revenue. But if you can stand the short term cashflow I'm sure that for the long term concentrating on building value, or properly realising and presenting the value that is already there will pay dividends. The next thing I'd look at is the layout itself. Specifically I'd look at font choice and size. It might just look better with a slightly larger one. I know these points don't go the the heart of the content. But they are quick and easy steps that may bring early benefit. Looking at the site its clear that there is real content here. I'm sure that with a little love and maintenance together with promoting the brand on other platforms things have every prospect of looking really good.

[@krod16]

The site can try doing all sort of things. The problem with the HCU classifer is that it has not gotten removed once a site is hit. 0% recoveries. So doubt if doing all of this is going to bring traffic back for a site that too 80% or higher pounding by the HCU 2023 update. It's not the site that is the issue here, it's Google's way of ranking big sites and forums and shadow banning niche sites.

[@IncomeSchool]

I’m not as focused on the SEO and short term recovery as I am about making the content user-first and building a strong brand reputation.

[@krod16]

​ @IncomeSchool Based on Google's vision, the HCU seems a long term plan. I would think the site owner does need traffic back and/or get their income levels up again and that's their main concern? Building a strong brand reputation is good overall. But will that bring back the traffic and income as expected by the site owner? For this site affected by the HCU?

[@remotelo937]

​@@krod16 I have to agree with this. Of course a long term strategy is important, but for many of us this is a vital income source, and we're already spread thin (especially when working full time in another job). Building a sustainable brand is sooo important, but if the website doesn't have enough income to justify itself over let's say the next 4-8 months, how can it be viable?

[@nextlevel1229]

@@IncomeSchoolWhat if you did all the hard work and publish high quality useful article but no one come to your site 😂

[@CBitt1]

Agreed. My disc golf site was #1 on the internet in the disc golf niche. 100k pageviews a month and making $3-5k a month. HCU decimated my traffic by 80% and now I’m barely making $300-500 bucks a month and dropping. Google is ruining lives all at the expense of increasing company profit.

[@flaviumircea4012]

Thanks for this! Really enjoy to see that you help people.

[@mrpugo]

Thanks a bunch! There's always something fresh and exciting to learn from you. 👍

[@diy_automotive]

It's always interesting to see how others view strategies, etc. Thanks for the insight!

[@j_yh]

This was excellent. 🔥 I've had a couple of these problems with my site. Super informative. Thanks! 🙏

[@versaty65]

i see a lot of negativity in comments and its not illogical. Hard to see websites recovering from HCU. Videos like this and all changes you doing , seem like shots in dark. Do a follow up on traffic stats for this website a month later.

[@IncomeSchool]

We'll be following this project for a while. I'm making changes now and we'll be showing the changes and later reporting on the stats.

[@LENiREN]

I’ve been following you guys for 7 years now, and I’ve learned lots of things from you, but I also think you need to start and grow successful websites of your own

[@IncomeSchool]

Yep, I am. I also talk about them. I’ll be showing more in some upcoming videos.

[@aniketnishad8413]

Yes, I 100% agree with you... I'd been following rick when the subs where inbetween, 20-30k... I don't remember the exact date, but income school is my go-to-school for blogging updates and related career... Income school helped me a lot, overcome my financial condition through blogging after my dad last farewell... Income school and their team is the most valuable, genuine and honest guys in blogging tutorial and guidance... They never hide their secret sauces, and always up for our success... Love you from India

[@PittsTake]

Great video. Thanks!

[@valiik]

Nice! Good video Ricky! Thank you!

[@Peak195]

Very practical video, thanks a lot. I struggle with headers all the time. While I agree they ideally should make sense standalone, it can come across as repetitive or over optimized when a user is reading the entire page. Hard to find a balance and I tend to prefer the best user experience.

[@IncomeSchool]

Great point. I’ll share some examples in one of the upcoming videos that might help. Definitely think user first.

[@squishingpaint1439]

This is amazing, thanks for sharing this with us. Looking forward to following along with this and see if I can recoup from Google's meltdown, lol.

[@frumixasmr]

Maybe a good solution would be to remove all the affiliate links and leave just ads monetization or just adsense monetization. In my experience allmost all my afffiliate sites were penalized but never the sites with only adsense on them. Maybe google loves more sites with adsense only...who knows..

[@CraigSmith-fp9nc]

This is such generic advice. Build a brand. Who decides what a brand is and when a website is deemed a 'brand'? It's irrelevant anyway, as many brands by any definition have seen their websites decimated by the HCU. Until there is proven statistical evidence of what moves the needle with Google now, all so-called advice is just guesswork.

[@VICVideopIC]

I agree, no guarantee building a brand will increase organic traffic with google. But what about trying to get all the traffic from sources other than google, like social media, email lists and so on?

[@BusinessEnglishSuccess]

Just out of interest, how long does it take to use social media 'correctly'? It seems to me that you would need more time creating social media content than your actual website content.

[@IncomeSchool]

Other than video content, it takes us a lot less time to make social media content than it does to make the original blog content. It just takes a deliberate effort. I’ll share examples of this in one of the videos.

[@BusinessEnglishSuccess]

@@IncomeSchool Thanks, looking forward to that video.

[@MalcolmMonteith]

That’s a solid nickname 👍🏻 kinda catchy 🤩

[@IncomeSchool]

I might have to run with it

[@teramigon]

The one who needs a help after HCU is Jim ;) His Backfire (guns and rifles website which he planned to grow into 1 mln views per month and left Income School for that) took a massive slap in a face in September and keeps falling down. Jim having a blast going into wilderness with big guns, filming it for KZbin (which has a lot of views), while his Google traffic falling down a cliff. So whatever blogging methodology was used by you in the past, it doesn’t work now. And sadly enough, I don’t think you figured out what to do about it.

[@trashgarbageoffroad]

No one knows what to do about Google right now. No one's recovered from any hcu heavy hits.

[@teramigon]

@@trashgarbageoffroad Yeah. It also means that no one should claim that they can rescue a website after HCU even if this can generate some views at KZbin. You see, the website from the video was build following methodology from IS. And it didn’t work. After a hundred posts researched, designed, written following that methodology it seems to me that it is a bit late to do something about that without changing methodology, even if work will be done by someone who is more experienced and actually created this methodology.

[@heymrcody]

@@teramigon the methodolgy may have been the inspiration, but obviously they didn't stick to it or he wouldn't have had anything to critique for 20min.

[@teramigon]

@@heymrcody bro… in a nutshell he hasn’t critiqued anything but lack of one category, weak socials, supposedly weak internal linking, the content of two random posts, and Ezoic ads. Either there were not major flaws he could see (i.e. “oh man, seems she did everything like we taught") or he didn’t perform proper audit and recorded this video too early. And if adding category, interlinking couple of content clusters, adding numbered list into text, turning of Ezoic ads is a game plan to help her to recover from HCU, then… well… as gamers say "gg, gl, hf" (good game, good luck, have fun)

[@heymrcody]

@@teramigon it sounds like this is a series, so this was just the first pass. also this is free content, the best tips are for the people who have already paid for the info.

[@nikkihstokes]

If it doesn't already exist, I'd add an author bio to each post that also links back to the About page. And the fact that she's not ranking for her own brand smells like a technical SEO issue.

[@IncomeSchool]

Yep! There’s no author bio on the posts. I noticed that shortly after recording this. I’ll be adding author schema to the about page and linking to it from the author bio which I’ll add to her posts. Good catch!

[@bryanshobbies]

I like the little sizzle sound!

[@SurvivalKompass]

🤣

[@IncomeSchool]

I thought it was a nice touch!

[@joeultrums5446]

Ricky why did you not help Jim with Backfire to give him some SEO tips?

[@FarmhouseStories]

Jim is a GOAT in his own right - doubt he needs tips!

[@IncomeSchool]

He built a brand. He’s doing just fine!

[@kidslife4145]

Could you please make video on dmca is it manadatory Or not

[@FailWithMe]

Thank you for this! And seriously, I'm looking forward to all the videos coming that you mentioned...you're sharing gold!!! Keep it coming, please!

[@IncomeSchool]

Thank you! Will do!

[@andym415]

google has made the lives of so many real bloggers so down ...it's not expected from Google.

[@salztoaster2316]

hmm, i loved your videos back in the past where you really showed successfull own sites. Now its like just advice, good yeah, but no real success case studys. It is hard for me to believe that you actually as good as in the past. Would it be possible to show a real successfull site from you? :)

[@IncomeSchool]

I've got some videos coming showing work I'm doing on my own site. Coming soon!

[@heymrcody]

when people share high earning sites all the trolls swoop in and copy the content and try and steal traffic/revenue. So most people share vaguely to preserve their sites and prevent people from stealing them. If you saw he had a website about golfing and learned it made $10,000/month, how many people do you think would try and do the exact same thing? What about seeing the golfing website would help you more than the content he is sharing now?

[@MJ98774]

@@IncomeSchool He didnt see the show where you're ranking for best ATV with a DA of 4. That in and of itself is impressive considering those things are high ticket and you did it with no backlinks (I used a free tool and it looks like its just the scraper sites that one normally picks up) To the OP that should satisfy your inquiry. Cheers!

[@salztoaster2316]

@@IncomeSchool very nice!

[@salztoaster2316]

@@heymrcody i mean prove, everybody can say you have to do this and that

[@DennisRegling]

Houston Christian University: HCU? I don't understand what HCU has to do with this. Does HCU mean something else? Thanks

[@fruitbatcat]

"Helpful Content Update" was a google update which affected a lot of websites.

[@cammiejackson4810]

lol, you're watching an SEO video and haven't heard of HCU?

[@DennisRegling]

@@fruitbatcat thank you. I googled HCU and it came up Houston Christian University.

[@DennisRegling]

@@cammiejackson4810 I am an income school member, but the letters just didn't click with me. I know you millennials like initials, but I don't know what all of them mean.

[@cammiejackson4810]

@@DennisRegling ah, gotcha 🙂