Huge and sudden fall in SEO traffic
-
Hi,
I’m writing you because we have noticed in Google Analytics account, a huge fall in the SEO traffic of mywebsite, starting suddenly in one precise day.
The difference between this day and the previous one is: -46,36% . Traffic has fallen in all parts of the site in the same way. Some details:
- we did not make any relevant change to the website
- we haven’t been banned by Google (or we don’t have any message about it in GWT)
- the number of the landing pages remains approximately the same
- the number of indexed keywords falls from 9.000 to 4.000.
- around 2 weeks ago we found out around 120 pages with 404 error, but the error now is solved and the pages are currently working
- we open the content to Google about 4 months but still we have not published our Site Map.
I know that the 404 error could could affect the indexation, but do you have any other idea, apart of this, of what could have happened? Thanks!
-
Agree.
Didn't saw any changes in our german website...
-
The 404 errors aside, which are certainly prime suspects for the drop - did the drop occur at the same time as a drop in your competitors rankings too? I recently noticed a 10 position drop for a major keyword and checked the Ranking History for that particular keyword and noticed that at all three of the competitors I initially submitted when I setup my campaign had all dropped an equal (or greater) number of positions for that particular keyword in the same week. Which would suggest to me that a change to Google algorithm has taken place and affected us all equally, rather than as a direct result of changes made to my website content or any temporary issues with the site which would prevent Search engines from crawing the site.
Whilst I am still suffering as a result of this drop it is good to see that it wasn't isolated to my site and therefore likely to be as a result of content changes or technical problems.
-
Candida,
We will need more details from Google analytics in order to determine a more likely cause for the problem. As Daniel suggested, it could be the Farmer Update if these changes occurred over the past month, but it could be something else.
What I suggest you do is view the entrance sources for the actual pages that received the drop in traffic. What keywords specifically received this hit? What keywords didn't? What sort of optimization did you do for the keywords that received the hit?
-
It would be helpful to see the domain so we could analyze the existing link profile. Depending on link types, anchor text percentages, and linking sites there could be a plenty of reasons the recent algo updates earmarked your domain.
Are you using an exact match domain?
Are the majority of your links one type? (Article dirs, blog comments, blog networks, etc.)
What have your search query reports showing recently? (Impressions, Click-thru rates, rankings)
-
Hi Candida, I'm wondering how your rankings are doing now that it's been a few weeks since the (possibly coincidental) update. Have you recovered any traffic? Did you figure out any reasons for the drop?
-
Search results can differ when logged into search engines, so make sure you compare results when you're logged out. After Google indexes your site again and finds the 404s gone, I'm sure you'll work your way back up.
-
Check your recent back link structure. A change in Google's algorithims could have render certain key words as not ranking because they are now considered to have an artificial linking structure.
-
Though it appears her website is targeted at Spain, and the Farmer/Panda update was aimed at US sites at that time, so that may not be the issue.
Can't reply to myself so will edit and correct. I should have said that the update was targeted to users in the US, not sites in the US, so she would need to see if it was just visitors from the US that dropped off to see if it was this update.
-
Yes, the fall has been the same in all sections of the web
-
Thanks I had no clue about this. Better check my feed more eh? That guy definitely thumbed down you lol
-
Do you track any of your rankings? Have they fallen by a uniform amount?
-
There was this pretty major algorithm update over the weekend called the Farmer Update. You can read more about it from Search Engine Land here:
http://searchengineland.com/google-forecloses-on-content-farms-with-farmer-algorithm-update-66071
If this applies to you, then it would definitely explain the drop in traffic.
-
My first thought is to check two things:
-
make sure the Google Analytics code is still present (and correct) on all your pages.
-
Check to make sure there aren't any new filters being applied to your Analytics account.
-
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
-
How does changing sitemaps affect SEO
Hi all, I have a question regarding changing the size of my sitemaps. Currently I generate sitemaps in batches of 50k. A situation has come up where I need to change that size to 15k in order to be crawled by one of our licensed services. I haven't been able to find any documentation on whether or not changing the size of my sitemaps(but not the pages included in them) will affect my rankings negatively or my SEO efforts in general. If anyone has any insights or has experienced this with their site please let me know!
Technical SEO | | Jason-Reid0 -
Optimized filename management for SEO
Hi, I'm currently undertaking a project to manage better my images and to rank for image searches. My site uses mod_pagespeed to optimises images, therefore image urls are changed to a pretty seo unfriendly url or even sometimes inlined within my page. On top of that I generally resize all my images by passing the desired file dimension within the image url in order to optimise the loading time of my site. Is there a way to provide a hint to google that I have a much better quality image with higher dimensions and better name? Can i specify within my image sitemap an image that actually does have different dimensions and a different within the page it serves? Are there better tricks to achieve that? Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | mattam0 -
Sitemap Size effect SEO
So I've noticed that the sitemap I use has a capacity of 4500 URLs, but my website is much larger. Is it worth paying for a commercial sitemap that encompasses my entire site? I also notice that of the 4500 URLs which have been submitted, only 104 are indexed. Is this normal, if not, why is the index rate so low?
Technical SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Target: blank. Does it make an SEO difference?
I've notice many sites MOZ included no longer use the target: blank attribute. I think that's what it's called. Basically when a link on your site opens a new tab in the browser as opposed to replacing the browser window you are in. Given that MOZ think of everything, I would love to hear opinions on this.
Technical SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
SEO Redirect
If we have several hundred domain names currently using a park page, would we be better served having them redirect to our corporate homepage for SEO purposes?
Technical SEO | | mkessler0 -
Using RewriteRule - SEO Implications
Hi There, My client has a website (www.activeadventures.com) which they relaunched in April 2013. The company sells inbound tourism trips to New Zealand, South America and the Himalayas. Previously, the websites for these destinations were on their own domains (activenewzealand.com, activehimalayas.com, activesouthamerica.com). With the launch of the new website those domains were all retired (but had 301 redirects put into place to the new site), and moved into sub directories of the activeadventures.com domain (eg: activeadventures.com/new-zealand). There has been no indication that this strategy has improved organic search results (based on analytics) and in my opinion I believe that having this structure has been detrimental to their results. My opinion is based off the following: Visitors to the websites are coming into the site with a specific destination in mind that they want to travel to. Thus... having the destination in the URL I believe provides more immediate relevancy and should result in a higher CTR. I also feel that having the sites on their own URL's will provide a more concentrated theme for the destination based search phrases. The new site is a custom Joomla build and I want to find the easiest way to keep the current Joomla set up AND move the country specific sections of the site back onto their original URL's. It seems on the face of it that the easiest way to get this done is to use the htaccess file and use "RewriteRule" to push all the relevant pages back onto their original domains. Obviously we will ensure we also cover off pointing the existing 301's from the new site and the old sites to this new structure. My question is, are their any potential negative SEO implications of using the RewriteRule in the htaccess file to achieve this? Many thanks in advance. Kind Regards
Technical SEO | | activenz
Conrad Cranfield0 -
SEO Terms for Internal Vs External
Hey there! I am writing up an SEO plan for our company and wanted to get the groups input on the use of some SEO terms. I need to organize and explain these efforts to nonSEO people. I usually talk about, SEO in terms of "Internal" vs "External" efforts. Internal SEO efforts being things like Title Tags, Description Tags, Page Speed, Minimizing errors, proper 301 redirect, content development for the site, internal linking and anchor, etc. External SEO efforts being things like Link building, social media profile setups and posts (FB Twitter Pinterest, YouTube), PR work. How do you split these out? What terms do you use? Do you subdivide these tasks? What terms do you use? For example, with Internal, I sometimes talk about "Technical SEO" that has do to with making sure that site speed is working well, 301s are setup correctly, noindex tag etc are all used properly. These are things that different versus "On Page" efforts to use keywords properly etc. I will also use the term "Site Visibility" for non SEOs to explain the technical impact. For example, if your site has the wrong robots.txt, if you have 500 errors everywhere and a slow site, if you are sending spiders down a daisy chain of 301s, it is difficult for the key parts of your site to be found and so your "Visibility" to the engines are poor. You have to get your visibility up, before you begin to then worry about if you have the right keywords on a page etc. Any input or references would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CleverPhD0 -
Wordpress plugins for SEO
Hello I am new to wordpress I just have started using it. Can anyone suggest me some useful tools / plugins / setting for SEO? I am further intrested in sepeeding up Wp. Any good advive on wp an seo would be appriciated.
Technical SEO | | sesertin0