50% of my keywords just had a significant drop for no reason no changes?
-
I just looked at a report for one of my sites in moz pro and
35/75 keywords just dropped on google, I didn't make any changes recently
Ranking Changes
-
12
Improved
-
35
Declined
Many dropping 5 - 22 places!
Any ideas on whats up, thank fully it didn't effect traffic, its pretty low anyways, but it has stayed the same... But still dropped to page 5 for lots of stuff. Strange. Did google just update or something?
Thanks for any ideas.
-
-
Hello Willem,
Yes, in my opinion you should submit languages. I'm not sure but think that main site on .com should be set as basic NL site.
For each sub-site (language ver) sitemap in particular language is needed, I have no idea how your sitemaps are created. If on automatic way (plugin or other way) it seems to be a bit complicated, but it's better to have sitemap than not to have, it is worth your effort.
Use meta tags "alternative" in section on each site.
And ... ask other people, maybe there is something new. Theres a lot of stuff in the GWT blog and forum...
Marek
-
I do have 3 different sub directories on the main domain. /NL, /DE and /EN, one for each language.
So I should add a GWT 'site' for each language and set a target geographic location to the righ region and delete the hometextileshop.com GWT 'site'(that is the main domain for 3 languages)
That would mean remove the sitemap too since it has 3 languages in it too.
As for the sitemap: would it be better in my case to remove the sitemap all to gether and let the bots just crawl the site and index?
Or should I have the sitemap module reprogrammed to use the "alternative" tag.
And how would the sitemap be applied if I had 3 GWT sites (one for each language)
For each language a sitemap with the target language and the other 2 as 'alternative', or just one sitemap for all 3 GWT-sites with 1 main language and the other languages as "alternative'?
-
HI Willem,
I'm not a prestashop specialist but i know that on one licence you ca do something like that shop-en shop-cs - it is from Polish prestashop forum ... forum.prestashop.pl
My " use rel="alternative" for language versions" refers to the situation when you have language versions and you want to prevent from duplicated content.
When it comes your situation - rankings, in my opinion it is better to have 3 different subdomains or subfolders for different languages.
As I understand your site uses language switcher... and a versions are in main domain subfolders. For GWT doesn't matter which method you use - subdomain or folder.
Key thing is that you should submit to GWT 3 different language versions (subfolders) and do a verification with different GWT meta tag (if you use this method for GWT verification) or code or with three diff GA accounts.
So 3 lang ver -> 3 GWT "sites" -> 3 verifications by GWT
And last but not least ... you still should use "alternative" tag to ensure crawl-bots that it is different site version not duplicated content. remember that not only text can be duplicated content... images or other stuff too
It should work...
Cheers,
Marek
-
Hi Marek,
Your comment on the rel="alternative" got me thinking.
I run a prestashop in 3 languages and use a sitemap module, and it doesn't use the alternative tag
( www.hometextileshop.com/sitemap.xml)
I always had trouble to rank in more than one language, the standard language in the shop seems to affect the language priority and since I use a multi langual sitemap I see english sites rank on dutch keywords (although the standard language is dutch), the dutch keyword is not even on these sites.
Somehow the multi language part of the site brings trouble and search engines seen to have trouble with it althoug each site is differtent in each language. (one url per language, own title and description and (translated) content)
Any suggestions?
-
Hi Syndicate,
As you wrote - you did change nothing. It is possible that one keyword still has a good support for content, links etc... but other not.
Your competition probably did changes. Few tips:
-
you should analyze bounce rate in correlation with time spent on page
-
for pages with low bounce rate and short time spent and low traffic is better do them noidex and nofollow - they decreases site quality
-
implement microformats,
- big impact has rel="author", "author" links should provide to author's site not to publisher site
-
social media are the key to modern SEO position
-
G+1 is not a social media but it helps a lot
-
employ responsive site content (mobile) more than 20% of the internet traffic is on mobile devices (usage of CSS3 and HTML5 is a need)
-
use rel="alternative" for language versions
-
use Google Map Maker
-
and many many more, I advice you to read mentioned conference materials
You have to change your site - it is a must.
Just imagine that you start on Ford Model T in Formula 1 ...
The distance between Ford T and McLaren MP4-27 (2012) is the same like between internet five years ago and now.
Marek
-
-
Anything is possible but I have a site that I haven't touched ANYTHING for about 5 years now and it still holds #1 for its main keywords. So not sure but seems not all sites are punished for old content, that content is nearly 10 years old but it still ranks #1 and top 5 for most all of its original keywords. Makes it real hard to figure things out!
-
Hi Bron,
Maybe it was because you did nothing, remember the words "Change or die" said in 4th century by Claudian Claudianus and also in recent times by marketing guru John Porter from Harvard.
In 2011 google did 525 changes in algorithm. In 2012 they are still doing changes. Google new trend is to promote sites friendly for users not for robots. Backlinks are still have have impact but not as big as in the past. Now we're stepping in new world ... semantic search. Now for Google good article is article between 1000 - 2000 words with good quality and with minimum once a week publication on your site/blog. There are also lots of other changes and news ... you should take a look on SMX conference materials.
...so maybe you have to change something, do a site revision and next do changes...
Take care,
Marek
-
Yes something happened, not sure what. I have 3 competitors in my report.
Most of them dropped by only by a normal amount of 1 point not 25. None had more then 1 or 2 points in changes while the vast majority of mine were off the page.
I didn't do any linkbuilding, all I have done in the past month or so, it do some minor content changes to only the homepage. Really strange, maybe some of the links changed offsite or something. I cannot figure out what happened.
-
I noticed the same thing on my websites. (all of them)
What stood out was that alle the keywords that have more competition and had more linkbuilding over the past year dropped more than keywords with no linkbuilding on it.
Around met I heard more people telling me that their sales in their shop have dropped since middle of this week.
The key question is what to do about this? How to get ranking up again.
If there was a google update it did not seem to effect my competition. The people mentioned above all have websites around the same size as mine. Maybe that's got something to do with it (guess)
Please ask any question that arises, I'll be glad to answer if that leads to a solution to this.
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 to analyze a drop in featured snippets?
Our company site is, in general, performing great in organic search, but we've lost about 10 featured snippets throughout the last 5-6 months, and I'd like to know how to best approach analyzing this.
Algorithm Updates | | vibelingo0 -
Meta description & Meta keywords
Good morning, One of our HTML experts, just told me that Google is not reading meta keywords or meta description - and they (or one of them) are no longer part of my website SEO ranking Do you know where can i read about it? Are other SE do look at these parameters? Thank you SEOWiseUs
Algorithm Updates | | iivgi1 -
Not necessary to have keywords in the page? Do you agree?
I am being told by my SEO consultants that: "According to present Google algorithm it is not necessary to have keywords in the page. What is more required is the content is relevant to the page and whether visitors will stay on that page or not. If visitors stay for a longer time in your site it add bonus to the ranking of the site. So I think it is not necessary to add key phrases in the content." Do you agree?
Algorithm Updates | | PegCorwin0 -
Client's site dropped completely from Google - AGAIN! Please help...
ok guys - hoping someone out there can help... (kinda long, but wanted to be sure all the details were out there) Already had this happen once - even posted in here about it - http://www.seomoz.org/q/client-s-site-dropped-completely-for-all-keywords-but-not-brand-name-not-manual-penalty-help Guy was a brand new client, all we did was tweak title tags and add a bit of content to his site since most was generic boilerplate text... started on our KW research and competitor research... in just a week, from title tag and content tweaks alone, he went from ranking on page 4-5 to ranking on page 3-4... then as we sat down to really optimize his site... POOF - he was gone from the Googs... He only showed up in "site:" searches and for exact matches of his business name - everything else was gone. Posted in here and on WMT - had several people check it out, both local guys and people from here (thanks to John Doherty for trying!) - but no one could figure out any reason why it would have happened. We submitted a reconsideration request, explaining that we knew we hadn't violated any quality guidelines, that he had less than 10 backlinks so it couldn't be bad linking, and that we had hardly touched the site. They sent back a canned response a week later that said there was no manual penalty and that we should "check our content" - mysteriously, the site started to show back up in the SERPs that morning (we got the canned response in the afternoon) There WAS an issue with NAP mismatch on some citations, but we fixed that, and that shouldn't have contributed to complete disappearance anyway. SO - the site was back, and back at its page 3 or 4 position... we decided to leave it alone for a few days just to be sure we didn't do anything... and then just 6 days later, when we were sitting down to fully optimize the site - POOF - completely gone again. We do SEO for a lot of different car dealers all over the country, and i know our strategies work. Looking at the competition in his market, he should easily be ranked page 2 or 3 with the very minimal tweaking we did... AND, since we didn't change anything since he came back, it makes even less sense that he was visible for a week and then gone again. So, mozzers... Anybody got any ideas? I'm really at a loss here - it makes zero sense that he's completely gone, except for his biz name... if nothing else, he should be ranking for "used cars canton"... Definitely appreciate any help anyone can offer -
Algorithm Updates | | Greg_Gifford0 -
Urgent input needed on huge drop in Google
As of today we got huge drops in SERP across all our pages. We can see a drop between 10 to 80% on most of our pages on this domain: http://www.meresverige.dk Some background info: Never bought any links Yes, did optimize the site, but only in fair way, using SEO moz On-Page Optimization. Most pages get an A-grade No cloaking, all pages do look exactly same to visitors and Google Any input on what this could be? We are hugely grateful for any input that might lead us in the correct direction Have a nice day Fredrik
Algorithm Updates | | Resultify0 -
Does this mean that exact keyword phrase anchor text is not the dominating ranking factor anymore for serps?http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/11/ten-recent-algorithm-changes.html
Does this mean that exact keyword phrase anchor text is not the dominating ranking factor anymore for serps? http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/11/ten-recent-algorithm-changes.html If so what is the new most important factor?
Algorithm Updates | | AndrewSEO0 -
Is there a way to pull historical rankings for a keyword?
I have someone who's come to me and said that they have lost all of their organic keyword rankings. They did launch a site redesign a few months back so that could be a reason as to why. But after looking at the site, link profile, etc. It doesn't look like they could have been ranking for the terms they say they were. They have never implemented any SEO on their sites btw. I did not build this site and have not done any SEO, they are coming to me to solve the problem. I did notice in SEM rush that a couple months ago they were ranking organically for more terms (20 in July vs. 5 now), so they did lose some. Is there any way to see what terms they WERE ranking for?
Algorithm Updates | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Why have I lost rankings for my top 10+ keywords
Hello, As of 04/24/11 I have lost rankings for my top 10+ keywords in an extremely competitive market. I was ranking on page 1 in Google for keywords like: iphone app reviews, ipad app reviews, iphone app videos, ipad app videos, and more. Since 04/24 I have fallen off the first 10 pages + in Google for all major keyword & keyword terms. I have identified that I have 1,359 articles from prmac, which contain links to customers who published press releases through prmac. We are in the process of removing these pages, but creating a list of urls to prove to Google the possibly offending blog posts are gone. Beyond that I am not sure what else to do, please help. URL: http://www.crazymikesapps.com. thank you Mike
Algorithm Updates | | crazymikesapps0