Don't be a hero

Composure is arguably one of the strongest traits you can possess as an operator

This is especially the case in eCommerce

Your rankings fluctuate day-to-day.... So what? 

That publisher turned your dofollow backlink into a nofollow link? 

The absolute worst thing you can do is respond with a knee-jerk reaction, trying to "save" your brand with a ton of random, surface-level changes.

You didn't reach this point of growth by impulsively acting on your first idea.

You were deliberate, and you continued to stack hundreds of smart decisions on top of one another for YEARS.

But for as long as it took to build, you can tear the whole thing down in a matter of days with poor decision-making.

I saw the same thing happen to dozens of site owners during the most recent Helpful Content Update (HCU).

It went a little something like this: 

- Open Google Analytics for the 10th time that day

- Notice a small drop in traffic

- Fear sets in

- Stare at the screen, constantly refreshing to see just how far you'd fallen

- Panic sets in

- Try to diagnose the issue, oftentimes incorrectly

- Act on impulse, revamping the entire site in the midst of a major rollout

- Brand falls apart completely within a matter of days, even hours

Many such cases like this, unfortunately. 

There will be several points in your journey where you have to make a decision without all of the information. 

That's an accepted part of doing business. So to a degree, I understand the behavior. But algorithm updates are a regular part of the game, they shouldn’t come as a surprise.

The most insane part of these updates was the number of people launching "HCU Recovery Courses" before the rollout was even finished. 

Again, people impulsively bought $200-300 courses as their sites continued to crash, hoping it'd be the lifeline they desperately needed to get back on track. 

If it took you years to build a successful brand, why do you think a 3-hour course is going to magically put you back on top? 

Especially when nobody knew exactly how things were going to shake out. They were just shilling courses to make a quick buck, despicable behavior in my opinion. 

I'll level with you - I'm speaking from a pretty advantageous position right now, only 2 of our brands saw small traffic losses from these updates. 

But we waited for the rollouts to finish, then formulated a plan to put them back on track. We weathered the storm, not acting on impulse. 

I sent messages to each of the brand founders when the drop started and let them know that we were monitoring the changes, and what they might expect to happen in the next few weeks. 

Once the update finished, I assessed the damage, and recorded Looms for each of the founders. I sent over a full breakdown of which pages were affected. 

Funny enough, it was mostly the blogs that were affected. Their money page rankings didn't fluctuate at all. Some of them even increased!

And in the case of both brands, their organic revenue was largely unaffected. 

Why does this matter? 

Because even though organic traffic dropped, their bottom line wasn't impacted much. 

Had I acted on impulse, and tried to make changes during the update without knowing the full story, I may not be writing this with a smile on my face right now. 

It's likely that I’d have harmed the sites even further and lost 2 brands. 

But I remained composed throughout the entire several-week rollout. 

If you've been doing SEO for awhile, you know that it takes time to be successful. 

Let it take time. 

Until next time,

Kai Cromwell