It is easy to critique on other sites.
While there is so much wrong with my site. Lack of importance, attention and a clear vison being the main causes.
In this ongoing process of continous improvement. It is time to have a serious look at houdyk.com
There is hardly any traffic, even thought there is a large history of blogposts. Sure, I did not actively do any linkbuilding for this site, but base ont he content you would expect crertain traction.
I guess the main problem is that it is not clear what this site is about. So true. It’s purpose is liquid and had been changing over the years.
Whil I am redefining it’s purpose, inr order to set out a clear strategy. I am doing some maintenance on things that with my current knowledge are no longer good practise. Here we go:
Quick fixes on my website
- Get rid of top menu links
- Redirect old service pages
- Trashed all old draft and private and already redirected pages
- Removed discount from downloads
Top menu links
I no longer raegard it it is good Idea to link directly fromt he top menu to other websites. These websites links are not placed in a context, and it makes no sense to repeat these on every page. In stead, I try to link from relevant pages in the context of value adding content.
Redirect of service pages
There were several pages, generating little or no traffic at all. I did get a handfull of leads out of those, but the generic topics alseo gave me generic leads. Not much value there for me, so something to re-think.
Firts, some page really no longer relevant, such as these:
Than, a few pages linked directly from the root domain:
All topics tha make sense. Still way to generic, with tens of thousends of other websites with similar content. In stead of creating more content with AI. I am reducing the number of pages, and only keeping what matters. Every trend logicaly has counter movements. For a reason. Havign lots of content no longer is special. Having the right content for the right people matter more than ever. It need to be hyper focussed.
All above was simple redirected to the home page, awaiting the development of a new strategy.
Lat but not least. A cluster of links that was more organised:
Again, those pages made sense in certain time and place. Today I must redefine what I want to be known for. Do I want to have people reach out looking for a Duch Google Ads specialist? No, I am way more specific now looking for searches on Dutch Google Ads specialist for realtor websites. Still. I do not want to convince random searchers that I am the best Dutch Google Ads specialist.
The profession itself has become part of generic marketing skill set, and everyone thinks they are a specialist now with help of chatgtp of claude or whatever tool is fancy in six months from now. In short, I am redefining my services. Considering a new client stop to focuss on in house projects for a while. In house projects that by themselves are client magnets. So why do any SEO to get leads? Perhaps it is just for the sake of the game of make this site a great website. Not best website, but the best found website in its category. That brings me to the next important observation.
Too many tags and categories
165 tags and 11 categories may be a good number if you have hundreds of posts in each category and a supporting page structure.
That is not the case. It seems that I have one tag for every post.
That is serious dillution of any link juice I may receive. A big mistake I made myself with several websites and I am currently fixing.
This mistakes is easy to make with WordPress. It feels logic to add a bunch of tags with keywords to each post. Im am sure references exist were it is stated that you shoudl add up maximum ten tags to each post. Myself I managed 3 tags per port for a long time.
How may tags should I add to my WordPress post?
Let’s ask ChatGTP:
“How many tags should I add to my post?”
Gepeto: (instagram, Linkedin… etc)
“How many tags should I add to my WordPress post?”
…For a post on WordPress, a good rule is:
✅ Ideal number of tags
5–10 tags per post
This is usually enough to help with organization and SEO without creating clutter…
Bla Bla Bla
So it goes on.
ChatGPT is wrong here.
Chat GTP is wrong here. I would recomment 5-10 tags per site. Each post may have 5 or event ten tags, but these will display ten posts each in their overview if these are not used on other posts. As a result of the standard ChatGTP advice you may create 5-10 tag pages all displaying the same one post! That’s ugly.
The things with Tags and Categories is that you should not just add a bunch of these hoping that it helps your post get found more easily. If one post had a tag or category with no other posts linkes to it, you have just created two duplicate pages! Namely worthless tag or category archives in your website structure.
I know, with Yoast you can exclude these from indexing.
It is more smart to thing of a Category structure and a Tagging convention for your site and make use of this built in structure in a smart way. Now I do this for new projecs, an this site is next on the list for making the right adaptations. When using proper category and tag bases, you cán create really helpfull hub pages this way.
Last but not least, is to make sure every page in your url structure is an exising and usefull page. Category and tag bases needs to be real fucntional pages with usefull content. Each category needs to have a description, each tag overview must be functional and adding value. If not, it has no right to exist.
There is a lot wrong wiht my site… it is.