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
-
Google Country Redirection Change
Analytics is showing a substantial decrease in referring traffic from Google specific regional domains like .ca, .co.uk, .de, etc vs an uptick from .com starting as of March 2018. Did anyone note when this change happened when Google stopped directing traffic to their regional domains? Was there any press about it (couldn't find any). Using a VPN for different countries, I compared regional specific domain SERPs vs .com and they're pretty much identical. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | Bragg1 -
Dramatic drop in SEO rankings after recovering from hacking
A few months ago my client's website was hacked which created over 20,000+ spammy links on the site. I dealt with removing the malware and got google to remove the malware warning shortly within a week of the hacking. Then started the long process to do 301 redirects and disavowing links under Webmaster tools over these few months. The hacking only caused a slight drop in rankings at the time. Now just as of last week the site had a dramatic drop in rankings. When doing a keyword search I noticed the homepage doesn't even get listed on Google Maps and for Google Search instead the inner pages like the Contact Us page show up instead of the homepage. Does anyone have any insight to the sudden drop happening now and why the inner pages are ranking higher than the homepage now?
Algorithm Updates | | FPK0 -
Keywords ranks 1 position up for 24 hours or less and gets back to its normal position.
Hi, I don't know if this is strange or just normal thing for some keywords to rank one position up for around 24 hours and get back to its original position. Making it clear to understand, i have these 3 keywords kw1, kw2, kw3 on first page of google on position #3,#3 and #4 respectively. The content of the site is almost static so adding new contents to the site is out of question for now. I noticed that at least 2 times a week those keywords rises to one position above and then gets back to their own normal position. I noticed the serp position change takes place for around 24 hours only.
Algorithm Updates | | MindlessWizard0 -
Rankings Drop Week Beginning 19 May
Hi All I have experienced quite a significant rankings drop since week commencing 19 May. I have heard there has been a Panda roll out recently was it around that time? Thanks Gavin
Algorithm Updates | | gavinr0 -
All keywords increasing rank except URL Keyword, whats going on?
Hello, Our website is a private equity firm database, privateequityfirms.com. We rank well for a number of private equity definitions and terms and have been increasing rank in those terms but unfortunately we have been losing ranking in our main keyword and url "private equity firms" .We have ranked as high as 3rd under wikipedia. The only real changes we have made are too the sitemap that is auto generated every time some thing is changed in the database. Does anyone have any ideas what is going on? I have included a Image to help show the problem. Thank you! MozAnalyticsPDF115_zpsddec64fa.png
Algorithm Updates | | Nicktaylor10 -
Ranking drops POST Penguin?!
Hey guys, I've noticed that one of our sites have seen some considerable ranking drops for competitive keywords at least a week or so after Penguin was introduced. I've attached an image to give you a better idea of what I'm talking about. We were ranked around 2nd page for each of the phrases but plummeted to 80+ (although, there has been some movement back towards 50). I mention Penguin but that really shouldn't have been a factor with this site as it's a relatively new one and all the links have been built naturally. Any help appreciated! GGsL8xk.png
Algorithm Updates | | Webrevolve0 -
Webmaster Guidelines Change History
Does any one have the dates of changes to Googles Webmaster Guidelines?
Algorithm Updates | | MiroAsh0 -
Will we no longer need Location + Keyword? Do we even need it at all?
Prepare yourselves. This is a long question. With the rise of schema and Google Local+, do you think Google will now have enough data about where a business is located, so that when someone searches for, a keyword such as "Atlanta Hyundai dealers" a business in Atlanta that's website: has been properly marked up with schema (or microdata for business location) has claimed its Google Local+ has done enough downstream work in Local Search listings for its NAP (name, address, phone number) will no longer have to incorporate variations of "Atlanta Hyundai dealers" in the text on the website? Could they just write enough great content about how they're a Hyundai dealership without the abuse of the Atlanta portion? Or if they're in Boston and they're a dentist or lawyer, could the content be just about the services they provided without so much emphasis tied to location? I'm talking about removing the location of the business from the text in all places other than the schema markup or the contact page on the website. Maybe still keep a main location in the title tags or meta description if it would benefit the customer. I work in an industry where location + keywords has reached such a point of saturation, that it makes the text on the website read very poorly, and I'd like to learn more about alternate methods to keep the text more pure, read better and still achieve the same success when it comes to local search. Also, I haven't seen other sites penalized for all the location stuffing on their websites, which is bizarre because it reads so spammy you can't recognize where the geotargeted keywords end and where the regular text begins. I've been working gradually in this general direction (more emphasis on NAP, researching schema, and vastly improving the content on clients' websites so it's not so heavy with geo-targeted keywords). I also ask because though the niche I work in is still pretty hell-bent on using geo-targeted keywords, whenever I check Analytics, the majority of traffic is branded and geo-targeted keywords make up only a small fraction of traffic. Any thoughts? What are other people doing in this regard?
Algorithm Updates | | EEE30