I give up google long time ago. Spending hours and hours with different approach for 14 years now.
In my opinion, It is more about luck then SEO. If anyone knows the key of success probably he don't have to work. Any guy telling me He, I am SEO specialist, fist question I ask is what car do you have. Most of them have small cars.
We run about 100 sites+ and every site have different look,feel and approach
- From sites without any banners and only content/title to well written text.
- Sites with highest speed for mr. google to the ones that have average speed.
- Responsive sites and mobile/desktop sites.
- Sites focuses on niche
- Different countries
- WP sites
- With links without links
- Different extensions from .Com to .tv from 14 years old to brand new.
- Text landing pages
- Different IP system and country systems
and yes they generate traffic but if you would ask is there a pattern i don't know.
Just check google now, here in Europe if you search most of time it gives results of google Books (yes with porn search) and guess what happens if you follow the link. It is redirected direct to dating sponsors.
Or did you already see results from your own sites in appspot.com ? Appspot is a product from Google. Looks like "spammers" are checking this how the can use it. We have a lot of sites results showing through Appspot in google. Click on results and see what happens.
I wonder sometimes if google knows themselves what happens after a update. The top keywords here in Europe are still aways from BlackHat SEO links in hacked WP sites.
But yes google thanks you give me "still" traffic and it is a privilege to work work for you. We all share
There are some point where we always focus on a new site. The category is really related to the content. In our opinion this is what google check first, how the category page is setup. New websites are always hidden for few weeks to have enough content there. And the discription above the fault is with good related text about the category. In the category page the user have the best experience to find what they want to see.