A Profound Lesson Learned

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Background

Launch Time: About one week online PV (Page Views): Around 25,000 Ranking: Highest ranking was 11th

As a newcomer still figuring things out, I was quite satisfied with these numbers for a website that had only been online for a week. I was eager to improve the ranking further, hoping to break into the first page for more exposure and traffic.

Initial Website Issues

When the website first went live, I built it quite roughly to quickly grab rankings - basically just a simple single page. Unexpectedly, Google gave it some surprising traffic, so I decided to polish the website to better handle this traffic wave and performed a major upgrade optimization.

Optimization Strategy

My optimization measures included:

• Individual Metadata: Set separate titles and descriptions for the main page and all sub-pages
• Multi-language Support: Added multiple languages with corresponding titles and descriptions for different languages
• Goal: Comprehensive keyword coverage to gain more exposure opportunities

I'm not sure if it was just my imagination, but after optimization, the rankings did seem to be rising and exposure was indeed increasing. However, what I didn't know at the time was that destruction was about to follow.

Operational Mistakes

Under my sweeping changes, all the keywords that originally had rankings disappeared, causing exposure to drop to zero overnight. Reality gave me a profound demonstration of what it means to lose everything with one careless move.

Lessons Learned

The cost of this experience was heavy. This was truly the first website where I had the potential to get positive feedback, but I lost this opportunity due to insufficient theoretical and practical foundation.

However, it was also valuable - it's better to step on this pitfall now than later.

Core Lessons

1. New Site Stability: Newly launched websites have unstable ranking foundations and require careful consideration of every change
2. Progressive Optimization: Should adopt a step-by-step approach, gradually testing and optimizing
3. Data Backup: Before making major changes, detailed records of existing keyword rankings and traffic data should be kept
4. Theory vs Practice: SEO requires continuous learning and strategy adjustment through practice

I hope my experience can provide some warnings and references for friends who are also on the journey of going global. Although failure is painful, every failure is a valuable asset on the road to success.