A frugal life is an easy life!

Are you chasing higher search engine rankings on google?

I wouldn't bother.
I've been doing a lot of reading and experimenting for this over the past 6 months, with a brand new website, which (for once) I thought I would sort out from the beginning as regards SEO (search engine optimisation).
It's just a hobby website (thankfully) not for a business.

I started out with a highly used, recommended SEO plug in, with features such as schema, breadcrumbs, meta settings, etc.
I have configured and reconfigured via this plug in far too many times. Each time, checking with google to see how it reads to the search engine.

One error, then I correct this (after hours reading into the problem) then run a test again to find another error and so it continues.

Finally it shows the post as being all good for search engine listing, days later I check google to see if it's at least being listed now, it's not *sigh*

Now it's being crawled, but not being listed, there's an issue with breadcrumbs for the post, so back into the read/try loop and tested until it shows no errors and it's submitted for listing.
Days later, again I look to see if it's being listed... it's not, there's yet another error preventing it from being listed. Where was this error days ago when I changed the settings and tested it? Who knows!

I submitted sitemaps, I've adjusted all the theme and plug in settings, a total waste of time and effort.
As it stands, after six months, 24 post pages are said by google to "be listed", only 7 post pages actually are.
The meta data is too long, then it's too short, then it's not there, then it's not used. You simply cannot win.
I'm beginning to think google is taking the absolute wass out of people with websites.

Too many internal links, not enough internal links, without me making any effort to have them or not.
Next, the style of the rare post pages that are listed.
Using schema makes SEO so easy... really?

It doesn't make a blind bit of difference to google.
Schema, for those that are not aware, is how the top paying websites get those lovely picture, caption, ratings, google results and push your website to the top of their rankings on a given subject.
Google "Chocolate brownie recipe" and look at the first few pages, you'll find they are using schema for the most part (search the page code), except in real life, your results look nothing like theirs!

Using schema for SEO on my website, shows the title (ok so far) then the website address (ok again) then nothing from the meta data typed in on each individual post, nothing about the breadcrumbs, again different on each post, instead preferring to list "comments, please sign in to comment again" where the actual text should be!
Absolutely useless!
Even when google does actually list a post page, it hides the text/meta text in the results. What is the point of that!

Try submitting sitemaps then?
First it shows all four site maps listed, days later it claims only one has been submitted, then it says it has four submitted but cannot use them due to their format? (xml format is an industry format, does google want me to submit them in written ink on paper?)

One final throw of the dice, I'll try submitting sitemaps/website to another search engine, Bing.

"Do you want to import your website information from google?" Yes.
I log in and let it import from google. One single sitemap is showing on google and nothing else.
It appears that after six months of submitting pages, sitemaps, posts, tags, categories, etc. Google has only got information on one single sitemap.
Google cannot even get that right.
So was it any better with bing? Nope.

Exactly the same waste of time.

How does my new website compare to this old website on google search?
It doesn't.
Without any SEO on this website, it ranks far higher for subjects and gets hundreds of hits per day.
The new website, after 6 months of being messed about with SEO gets from 1 to 5 hits per day.

If you wish for your website to be listed - never mind rank on their first page of results for whatever topic - with a normal topic of your choosing, then the only way to achieve this, is to PAY for it (despite what all those SEO experts tell you).