Traffic dropping after blog was added...
-
We have a major client that gets over a thousand organic visits per day. They also self manage an adwords campaign that generates a few thousand clicks a day. Lat summer they got a new website with a blog. The blog has a couple of teaser paragraphs on the home page with the new blog posts, in addition to lots of static text about the items sold on the site. What has happened is, our organic traffic has changed form the main keywords of what the site sells, to things talked about in the blog. Traffic hasn’t dropped dramatically, but we have lost all our big keywords, for example, a keyword that was generating 40 organic clicks per day a year ago we receive no traffic for now, and much more obscure keyword combinations from the blog are being picked up. Is it the addition of the blog that is causing this problem, or the blog teasers that are on the home page of the site? We like the traffic from the blog terms, but we would like our former main keyword traffic back as well, how can we accomplish this, and what do you think has occurred here? Thanks for your help.
-
Thanks for your replies. I do not know what they were ranking for their main keywords a year ago because I wasnt working on the account back then and dont have any webposition reports from that time. I do have analytics for back then and can see they were getting like 40 click thrus a day for each exact keyword and now there are basically none for those keywords. Interestingly, according to webposition, they are on the second page of google now for these really huge high traffic keywords, but the same keywords on webmasters tools show low impressions and a position of 380. The top keywords shown on webmasters tools are all much more obscure terms from the blog. Webmaster tools also shows 400 not founds and 70,000 pages restricted by robots text. I addressed these issues with our programmer in early January and he said the robots was as it should be and the not founds were taken care of but doesnt look like anythings changed. Basically the only keywords the site is getting click thrus thru search on are much more obscure things that are mentioned in different blog posts. For example, it would be like my site used to get traffic for "custom motorcycles" (just an example)but now if I have a blog post for brown leather motorcycle seat, we'll get a handful of click thrus for something like that but we have lost all the heavy hitting keywords.
No site map on WT but if you google site: it shows 32,000 pages. Thanks again. -
I vote up for keyword cannibalization. They should also check their Webmaster panel to see which pages get more link love than the others.
-
It's a little tough without looking at all the details, but here are my thoughts/suggestions.
Missing Old Pages - This may be happening because of a new design/CMS. I see this a lot when clients go for a new, WordPress site. It's a great idea, but they neglect to implement 301 redirects for all those old pages that had rankings, etc.
Check your 404 errors/Google Webmaster Crawl errors. You might find a bunch of pages that are being linked to, were updated with a new URL structure and now result in an error. You might find that setting up the 301s does the trick (give it a couple weeks once you're done).
Check for keyword cannibalization - See if the keywords you were targeting on those "main" pages are also being targeted on those blog posts. Might need to clean that up a little; ensure that each page has unique info/focus/titles, etc.
It is possible that the links to those posts is spreading your link juice a little too thinly, but I wouldn't jump to that conclusion just yet. I only say it because a year is a long time, and you could have tons of posts that are drawing from that link juice.
-
I can't tell you what is wrong. But if you answer these questions you might figure it out.
we have lost all our big keywords, for example, a keyword that was generating 40 organic clicks per day a year ago we receive no traffic for now,
Did your rankings drop for these keywords?
Last summer they got a new website with a blog.
Did they change the page URLS of mess up the page optimization?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Ranking drop after sub domain to sub directory migration. Usual?
Hi all, We had our help articles on sub-domain help.website.com. Then we moved it to sub directory website.com/help/. We expected ranking improvement of website.com as there is a wide saying of benefiting from sub domain to sub directory migration. We have noticed that ranking improvement of new sub directory pages (website.com/help/) but not for any main website pages (website.com). I presume that link juice from main website has benefited new sub directory pages but main website lost ranking due to the page rank dilution. Do you agree? Any ideas? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Anyone else notice a traffic drop around June 28th 2016?
Hey guys, i know there is a lot of chatter about a potential google update on / around June 28th... well, one of the sites I manage was hit pretty bad. I have attached an image showing what our ranking looked like before and after the unconfirmed update. As you will see, we plummeted that day and have not yet recovered. Has anyone else experienced drops? I'm trying to identify potential causes. I've started an SEO audit and so far I have identified 1 big fish and a few niggly bits. Big Fish: non-www version of site had redirect rule overwritten by CloudFlare page rules and is using a 302 redirect instead of a 301. Now could this be the cause? Niggly bits: technical SEO issues and optimisations like having unique meta titles etc. If you have noticed drops or think you can shed some light on my situation that will help me then I would love to hear from you 🙂 Thanks upload.png upload.png
Algorithm Updates | | OptiBacUK0 -
Drastic Drop in Link Juice
Hi Back in December we shifted my web domain from a gourmetdirect.com to gourmetdirect.co.nz as part of a site-wide revamp. Everything was going along fine until recently when my Linking domains plummeted and external links fell from 6000 approx to 600. We still have the .com live for loads of disfunctional reasons. Can anyone help? I have gone from a top ranker to a no show and my contractors are all shaking their heads.
Algorithm Updates | | GourmetDirect0 -
Anyone seeing big drops in Bing this month?
Seems like our Google rankings are improving on most sites, but BING took a big hit this month for many of the sites we working on. I have never seen them drop like this before. Anyone else seeing the same thing? I am wondering if it is because we are building a lot of brand links vs. keyword links and Bing still wants to see the keyword links. What have you seen?
Algorithm Updates | | netviper0 -
Staff Dumbfounded by Rankings Drop - Please Help Us Understand!
We are completely dumbfounded by the amount of organic traffic we lost virtually instantly back on Aug 22 2012. We are spending much more money advertising as of late but took another massive plunge since rolling out our newer site redesign this past sat 04/13/13. The newer and more updated version of our site seems to all of a sudden have us dropping like a rock again! Our developers and in house SEO guy that is in house here seems to think our content is ok and that our PR and page authority is ok as well. However they have told me it isn't good per-say, but not the reason in their opinion for our sites drop in rankings instantly. We've seen tons of keywords drop 22-40+ positions in google. We've been online since 2001 and I've never seen anything even remotely close to this. Didn't seem to see such an impact with bing or yahoo though. Due to our rankings being slaughtered we decided to hired WebIMAX to come in and figure out what happened. They informed us that we must have been hit with the panda filter they collectively guessed. Said our content was fair lol. They done allot of tests without anything really indicated the real root cause of the problem and most every major change they requested we made. However we've changed the site design and layout now and changed much of the content and overall structure to be better we believe and we for the life of us cannot understand the massive unexplained penalty. I attached an image which illustrates our dramatic drop in traffic. Bare in mind that as traffic drops we spend more $$$ advertising so mere traffic numbers don't even really say it all. Our organic results are really down maybe 60-70%. We really thought WebIMAX would be a big help and give great assistance and insight. I didn't see any of that and I think our IT staff agrees. We paid big bucks for nothing in return it seems. However we are desperate and are actually considering staying with them even though they've produced zero results or maybe negative results. In fact with all that was done over weeks and weeks with WebIMAX we continued to DROP in organic results. We don't know if we should go back to them, choose another SEO company or just go on trying to fix this issue ourselves. Website is http://www.cruizinconceptswholesale.com/ We just want someone that knows what they are looking at to say hey I see something Major Right Here. If we could get that then we would simply fix it. Thanks in advance for anyone willing to help us out with their expert knowledge and I think I would trust the community here more than WebIMAX easily! David. cruizin-traffic-image.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | David_C0 -
Organic Traffic Stagnant
Our automobile portal is the leading in Pakistan and we are there for almost 10 years now, we already rank in top 3 keywords ( top 1 on most of them ) but our search traffic has become stagnant, we have tried to optimize for keywords that google search tool show has more traffic and we have gained ranking in most of them but still our search traffic isnt showing any much increase. Is it possible that we have already got all the juice and there arent much people who are searching auto related keywords or what can we do to increase organic traffic? Work on long tail keywords? Whats next?
Algorithm Updates | | razasaeed0 -
Google Authorship and Hobby Blog
I hope that someone can help me come up with the best option. Please forgive my ignorance on this issue. I have a hobby blog and up until now I have not wanted to associate it with my real name. It is a menswear blog about classic American style. I was afraid that it may be a hindrance if I was ever looking for a more conservative career than SEO. I am now reconsidering this and thinking that claiming it may be of more help than harm. Which brings me to Google Authorship. My dilemma and misunderstanding stems from the fact that I have mutliple Gmail accounts. I am guessing that some of the newer accounts have a G+ associated with them. So my question is do I use the email that is associated with my blog or my main gmail that I use personally? If I do use the gmail associated with the blog will it then become my default Google plus profile? Any insight would be helpful. Thanks in advance. If any of you are interested the hobby blog is Oxford Cloth Button Down.
Algorithm Updates | | JerrodDavid0 -
Dramatic drop after rapid rise for new site
just launched a new site edenprairieexperts.com. The site jumped to the first page on yahoo and bing within a couple of days then fell off a cliff and isnt in the top 10 pages. Any reason for this? seems really strange for me. The only think I can think of is I got some really poor quality back links from someone screwing with me. If someone could take a glance at the site or give me some general direction I would appreciate it.
Algorithm Updates | | jjwelu0