Thank you for the understanding, and my heart goes out to you as well for your penalties. In a more just world real users would decide what succeeds and what does not.
My defense of the current site from a content perspective is simple: just go to it (www.rackforms.com).
I feel very strongly the look (clean professional), layout (easy to navigate), and technical details (fast, fully responsive, etc) are not causing it to be penalized from a content perspective.
My reasoning for why it should rank is also simple: it used to rank high, and none of that was an accident. I've always followed common sense methodology when creating it, such as creating content for humans, not search bots.
Never the less, since the penalty I've happily made dozens of changes, most of which were suggestions from kind and well meaning SEO folks -- none of them made a difference. Not a single one.
Conclusion -- my issue isn't nor has it ever been content, it's links.
Of course the irony is the vast majority of changes I made were to please search engine bots, not humans. Google has always said this is the opposite of what we should be doing.
For example, one guy suggested I used to word 'form' too much on my home page, and Google may consider this keyword stuffing. And so I pruned it from 23 to 12. Trouble is I sell web form software, and let's just say changes I made were, in many cases, a stretch -- many sounded decisively nonhuman. Who and what am I helping at that point? Google bot is clearly smarter than that. The kicker: the current page 1 site used the word 'form' 43 times. It's just silly voo-doo at this point, and no one except Google knows what the hell they're talking about.
Here's why this is all a bit scary: as link-penalized webmasters poke around the edges and make such changes, we're getting further away from a site that used to be looked upon favorably by Google from a content perspective.
The reason I cite "it used to be good enough" is common sense. Yes we can always improve our site and we should be: but a link penalty, mine especially, is so thorough and so unrecoverable so far, that making loads of other changes will very likely hurt more than help.
But again, just visit my site, visit the page 1 and 2's, and then consider I'm page 15 or lower. I have no doubt my site, should it's ranking be restored, would be a delight for Google users to visit.
My defense of the current site from a content perspective is simple: just go to it (www.rackforms.com).
I feel very strongly the look (clean professional), layout (easy to navigate), and technical details (fast, fully responsive, etc) are not causing it to be penalized from a content perspective.
My reasoning for why it should rank is also simple: it used to rank high, and none of that was an accident. I've always followed common sense methodology when creating it, such as creating content for humans, not search bots.
Never the less, since the penalty I've happily made dozens of changes, most of which were suggestions from kind and well meaning SEO folks -- none of them made a difference. Not a single one.
Conclusion -- my issue isn't nor has it ever been content, it's links.
Of course the irony is the vast majority of changes I made were to please search engine bots, not humans. Google has always said this is the opposite of what we should be doing.
For example, one guy suggested I used to word 'form' too much on my home page, and Google may consider this keyword stuffing. And so I pruned it from 23 to 12. Trouble is I sell web form software, and let's just say changes I made were, in many cases, a stretch -- many sounded decisively nonhuman. Who and what am I helping at that point? Google bot is clearly smarter than that. The kicker: the current page 1 site used the word 'form' 43 times. It's just silly voo-doo at this point, and no one except Google knows what the hell they're talking about.
Here's why this is all a bit scary: as link-penalized webmasters poke around the edges and make such changes, we're getting further away from a site that used to be looked upon favorably by Google from a content perspective.
The reason I cite "it used to be good enough" is common sense. Yes we can always improve our site and we should be: but a link penalty, mine especially, is so thorough and so unrecoverable so far, that making loads of other changes will very likely hurt more than help.
But again, just visit my site, visit the page 1 and 2's, and then consider I'm page 15 or lower. I have no doubt my site, should it's ranking be restored, would be a delight for Google users to visit.