Hit by Google
-
My site - www.northernlightsiceland.com - has been hit by google and Im not sure why. The traffic dropped 75% last 24 hours and all the most important keywords have dropped significantly in the SERP. The only issue I can think of are the subpages for the northern lights forecasting I did every day e.g. http://www.northernlightsiceland.com/northern-lights-forecast-iceland-3-oct-2012/ I have been simply doing a copy/paste for 1 month the same subpage, but only changing the top part (Summary) for each day. Could this be the reason why Im penalized? I have now simply taken them all down minus the last 3 days (that are relevant). What can I do to get up on my feet again? This is mission critical for me as you can imagine.
Im wondering if it got hit by this EMD update on 28 sept that was focusing on exact match domains http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4501349-1-30.htm
-
Hmm how did e.g. normal local newspaper then survive - most news articles are some 200-300 words of orginal text + 1-2 images. The rest are ads and excerpt of other relevant news etc. As far as I understand the article you send then it is about “above-the-fold” i.e. the only think you see when you land on a page are ads as the main source. On my site I only use the sidebar - in similar manner as newspapers - and the rest is simply information on various travelling arrangement possible. That is what a niche site this is all about - collecing all of this into one place and solving the travelers problems of finding it in various places. This creates value for the end-user.
-
Placing the nofollow will not necessarily solve the problem, that Google for example does not classify the remaining content on your website good enough to rank well.
If you take any page on your site and strip out external links, there is hardly any original content left.
I would read this article which covers the user experience and algorithm change from January, and I think Google has demoted your site based on that.
-
Irving - thanks a lot for pointing me into the direction of the "follow" on the paid ads. Very helpful - I thought I had it covered with no-follow but found out it wasnt. So probably that is the main reason for the penalty. Did you see any other violations on the guidelines? - i was trying to fix all the "not found" errors etc yesterday:) Again thanks a lot for the help:)
-
I though the newest versions of Wordpress automatically takes care of this canonical tag issue?
-
Correct - the no-follow link needs to be on the outbound link
-
I have discovered something interesting. I read article on paid ads: http://www.feedthebot.com/bad-ads-affect-rankings.html
It says it is ok to have ads as I thought but it needs to have a no-follow. Then I looked at my code and it seems like the no-follow tag is at the wrong place so it is not no-follow - isnt this correct? Here is a typical code in a widget on the side:
| id="text-12" class="widgetblock widget_text">class="textwidget"><a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>http://www.hotelranga.is" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-ad','http://www.hotelranga.is-special-offer-new']); "> |
| | src="http://www.northernlightsiceland.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/HotelRanga30off.jpg" width="280" height="280" border="0" style="border:0px solid black; margin-left: 2px;margin-top: 1px; margin-bottom: 1px;" rel="nofollow" alt="northern lights forecast" align=middle /> |
| | | -
it aggregates into one place all the offers the local industry has into one place. That is the main value. Not necessarily creating a lot of text on each provider e.g. a hotel. People see this teaser - and if they like the teaser they click through to the local provider to learn more.
-
Im not really having much of a link building strategy - it has normally just happened naturally e.g. other sites point to this site as the most informative northern light site in Iceland and also because Im the only one giving nortern lights forecast in the country etc.
-
I think you should build out your content - for example if you look at this URL there is hardly any content on it and a large count of external links. One could almost argue, that your site being an intermediary has no real value to a user.
-
Thanks a lot for your feedback. Im a bit of a new in this all so all feedbacks are very valuable for me:) thx thx
It does not look like the crawl rate has dropped. Looking at the webmaster - pages crawled per day - the graph is quite similar as before.
Yes I have some errors - i did not consider them material - primarily "not found" errors but yes some others. Did not know how to fix it
Im a typical aggregation site for some local travel businesses - so no affiliate - but yes just like any other company these local travel companies want to advertise their business and I set up content so people can find all the tours etc at the same place. All the content is orginal and in fact it simply gives a view of how much of these services are available.
Not sure what Irving means by "having follow links to paid advertising" - is it against the guidelines to have ads companies pay for? It is just the same as having google ads that companies are paying for?
-
I don't think it is the canonical. I would first look at GWMT (crawl rate dropped? errors increased?) and then look at Google Analytics as well.
For what it's worth, your current site has duplicate keywords and descriptions and plenty of errors (JavaScript).
You could have very well been dropped due to a manual review - your site looks very much like an affiliate with plenty of advertising and not much original content (that was at least my initial opinion)
-
Just to clarify the canonical tag issue - you have a slash in the canonical tag www.northernlightsiceland.com/, but the htaccess redirects all slashes to no slashes.
-
You are violating Google guidelines in several ways including having follow links to paid advertising.
You need a good SEO review - take this for example:
Canonical tag on homepage is rel="canonical" href="http://www.northernlightsiceland.com/" />
but then http://www.northernlightsiceland.com/ redirects to http://www.northernlightsiceland.com
-
There was recently EMD and Penguin update. What was your link building strategy? If you builded your links everytime with same anchor text or was building links to low quality directories or social bookmarks?
There are many factors that may affect your website. I advise you to do a advanced review on Google webmaster guidelines here:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
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
-
No google traffic for this site? Help?
Hi We have not done this web site http://climateacs.co.uk but have now picked it up and its getting no traffic what so ever from google do you think its been blacklisted? I have added it to my webmaster tools and there are no manual actions on it and most of the backlinks on google webmaster tools are from yell.com. However when I run it on opensiteexplorer I am seeing some chinese type links?? It is not really showing many search queries at all when you view them in webmaster tools under United Kingdom. I was going to start citation building for the address to help support the google places entry but just wanted to see what other peoples opinion was really on this site? Thanks Tracy
Technical SEO | | dashesndots0 -
Google Webmasters Quality Issue Message
I am a consultant who works for a website www.skift.com. Today we received an automated message from Google Webmasters saying our site has quality issues. Since the message is very vague and obviously automated I was hoping to get some insight into whether this message is something to be very concerned about and what can be done to correct the issue.From reviewing the Webmasters Quality Guidelines, the site is not in violation of any of the guidelines. I am wondering if this message is generated as a results of licensing content from Newscred, as I have other clients who are licensing content from Newscred and getting the same message from Google Webmasters.Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Technical SEO | | electricpulp0 -
Google Schema Code for Organisation
I've created the Google Schema code for an organisation. Should this go in the template HTML so it would be shown on all pages or just on the home page?
Technical SEO | | CharlBritton0 -
Why is Google not displaying the right URL on SERP?
Google is not displaying the URL correctly for this page. (See image) Here is the search that I performed: http://goo.gl/xk7L8 If you click on the URL, it doesn't take you to the page that it the URL references. Any ideas? It should show this URL: http://www.theskincentermd.com/breast-enhancement tsc-serp.png
Technical SEO | | theBREWROOM0 -
Google Plus 1
How google plus 1 votes can affect your position in google search engine? On my website i have a google plus button, i have just 3 votes, if i buy lets say 100 votes, but slowly, in a month, will this affect my ranking positively?
Technical SEO | | prunarevic0 -
My site cannot be found by google at all
I don't know why but our company site can not be found by google at all. I have submitted to google webmaster, have social media point to, etc, Is there any reason for this? url for our website is www.bistosamerica.com Thank you
Technical SEO | | BistosAmerica0 -
UK website ranking higher in Google.com than Google.co.uk
Hi, I have a UK website which was formerly ranked 1<sup>st</sup> in Google.co.uk and .com for my keyword phrase and has recently slipped to 6<sup>th</sup> in .co.uk but is higher in position 4 in Google.com. I have conducted a little research and can’t say for certain but I wonder if it is possible that too many of my backlinks are US based and therefore Google thinks my website is also US based. Checked Google WmT and we the geo-targeted to the UK. Our server is also UK based. Does anyone have an opinion on this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | tdsnet0 -
Google +1 Button on Flash sites
One of my customers is willing to add Google +1 button on their Flash websites. Is it possible? How can we add Google +1 button on a Flash site? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | merkal20050