- Consumer product and tech reviews, vs heavyweights like "Wirecutter, Consumer Reports, Cook's Illustrated and Crutchfield" as you mention, and also TechRadar, TomsGuide, Lifewire, etc
- That's not as difficult as credit card or insurance industries, but there are sophisticated players. Do you truly believe your page on "best video doorbells" is a better result than ConsumerReports.org's?
Your site:
- Has 121 backlinks from different domains (great). But Wirecutter has 20,000+
- Has links from big press, which is cool, but topically relevant linking sites is important as well
- Doesn't have many links to individual pages, so you're not seeing page level link signals, mainly just to the home page (very important)
- Is young, and while that's only one small part of it, is still part of it
Google broadly ranks on:
- Matching intent of query to the best page that serves the goal of the user, and is constantly testing - this does not mean they always reward long blog posts, as it depends on the intent of the query
- Topical authority and relevance - combination of keyword usage, topic coverage, etc
- Seems to reward topically relevant sites more than generalist sites, see the About.com split into different entities case study (though not always)
- Quality of backlinks at the page level, and also the domain level
- Relevancy of backlinks at page and domain level
- Quantity of backlinks at page and domain level
- Other link factors like referring link anchor text, placement on referring page, etc
- Tons more, but the above cover ~40-90% of the factors, depending on query, industry, competition, intent, etc
Congrats on the press and growth!
If you truly want to optimize for organic, look at what competitors are doing, page by page, and model off them, with your own unique angle. Content & links, content & links, and repeat.
All true (and thanks for the detailed response!). I wasn't expecting the world, but, I did think the site would see some traction by this point based on other experiences that I've had.
Funny aside: My pre-sabbatical day job was working for the publisher of Tom's Guide and TechRadar.
Tom's Guide is a point of pride for me. It was a fledgling site when our company acquired it in 2013 and I had the pleasure of watching its organic traffic grow 9,900% and hit 40MM visitors in a month. Man, did that feel good!
- Consumer product and tech reviews, vs heavyweights like "Wirecutter, Consumer Reports, Cook's Illustrated and Crutchfield" as you mention, and also TechRadar, TomsGuide, Lifewire, etc
- That's not as difficult as credit card or insurance industries, but there are sophisticated players. Do you truly believe your page on "best video doorbells" is a better result than ConsumerReports.org's?
Your site:
- Has 121 backlinks from different domains (great). But Wirecutter has 20,000+
- Has links from big press, which is cool, but topically relevant linking sites is important as well
- Is thin on review pages. See your wireless earbuds page: https://www.goodcheapandfast.com/articles/best-wireless-earb... vs the #1 organic ranking site for "best cheap wireless earbuds" (4,000 searches/mo): https://www.techradar.com/deals/the-best-cheap-wireless-head... (very important)
- Doesn't have many links to individual pages, so you're not seeing page level link signals, mainly just to the home page (very important)
- Is young, and while that's only one small part of it, is still part of it
Google broadly ranks on:
- Matching intent of query to the best page that serves the goal of the user, and is constantly testing - this does not mean they always reward long blog posts, as it depends on the intent of the query
- Topical authority and relevance - combination of keyword usage, topic coverage, etc
- Seems to reward topically relevant sites more than generalist sites, see the About.com split into different entities case study (though not always)
- Quality of backlinks at the page level, and also the domain level
- Relevancy of backlinks at page and domain level
- Quantity of backlinks at page and domain level
- Other link factors like referring link anchor text, placement on referring page, etc
- On-page optimizations (title tag, keyword usage in content, internal links, headers)
- Tons more, but the above cover ~40-90% of the factors, depending on query, industry, competition, intent, etc
Congrats on the press and growth!
If you truly want to optimize for organic, look at what competitors are doing, page by page, and model off them, with your own unique angle. Content & links, content & links, and repeat.