80-90% drop in visits after Panda/EMD update - now what?
-
Hi everyone,
Had my first wonderful experience with an algorithm update. Business was doing great - about 90-100 visitors a day down to about 12-15 from Sept 29th to current.
Our domain is www.hamiltonscarservice.com which I don't think exactly qualifies for an exact match but may be close enough (car service is one of our keywords).
I am more likely to think its related to the Panda 20 update. I haven't changed the site at all lately so I was wondering what tips you guys may have going forward.
The site isn't perfectly optimized (which is where you guys come in) but when I first set it up it worked great so I mainly focused on backlinks from that point on. Now evidently this has caught up with me.
Any suggestions are appreciated - thanks!
-
You can actually leave the links in the footer since it's a good way to distribute your page juice, I would recommend just including the location though, you're creating a very high keyword density by repeating "car service" and "nj" so many times on the page. Chatham, Clark, Cranford, etc. No keyword repetition when you do it that way.
I would rewrite the duplicate content on your pages and try to make it a little bit longer.
You've got zipcodes, map, links to close towns, not too bad man. The duplicate content needs to be handled though.
-
So you recommended I remove all footer links to the landing pages.
What about the links to each of the landing pages from the areas served page (http://www.hamiltonscarservice.com/areas-served/index.html)? Should I just link them as a town and leave out the redundant car service portion?
I thought having the urls in this format (matching targeted keywords/content) was suggested as an on-page recommendation?
-
The EMD update should not have effected you. An EMD would be something like www.carservicemanhattan.com. You have a partial-match domain, and since it doesn't sound spammy or point to a spammy page, you aren't what Google has been targeting.
Your problem is duplicate content. You have dozens of pages with the exact same text on them, except for a find-and-replaced city name. That makes Google think your website isn't offering valuable content. Every page on your website should have unique content.
-
Nowadays you can't just spam the URLs and anchor texts with "car service" + location and create tons of pages with identical flimsy content with the exception of swapping you the location name.
Footer links are too spammy too.
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
-
Consistent drop every time after ranking good for few days: Same experience?
Hi all, We been facing this ranking fluctuation issue for over an year. Every time we made some changes for better optimisation. We improve rank but eventually drop after few days. Most of the changes we employed are On-page like page loading, fixing broken links & redirects, page titles optimisation, etc. When can see the ranking improvement for our main keywords and related keywords for a while and we drop with in a week eventually. I wonder if someone face the same issue and any thoughts on this scenario? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Studies showing that social sharing does/doesn't affect rankings?
I'm currently researching this area in order to show to a client that social shares aren't as valuable for SEO as they might think. Can anyone point me in the direction of the best studies done on this topic? Thanks in advance!
Algorithm Updates | | QubaSEO0 -
Has Bing rolled out an algorithm update?
Hi everyone, Does anyone know if Bing has rolled out an algorithm update recently? I have noticed a decent change in Bing/Yahoo results recently. Searching online only produces results for Google's updates. Thanks in advance for your help.
Algorithm Updates | | DirectiveSEO0 -
Ranking drops over weekend
Hi all, Has anyone noticed any ranking changes over the weekend? I've noticed an almost uniform drop of a few positions across almost all of my chosen phrases. Nothing major has occurred on our site, no messages in webmaster tools. An analysis of our competitors positions (which we track the top 10) doesn't reveal any clues. Cheers Aran
Algorithm Updates | | Aran_Smithson1 -
How does Google treat anchor tags on badges after penguin update?
We have a website builder that creates sites in sub-domains (i.e. yoursite.breezi.com) on every site we have included a badge that has anchor text and an image. My question is given the fact that we will include this on many if not most of the sites created inside our builder how will google treat backlinks with the same anchor tag/text from non relevant sites after the penguin update? I am concerned about the backlinks from non-theme related sites and it's SEO implications. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | breezi0 -
Should I Wait Until the "Dust Settles" on the Algorithm Update or Get Busy Now?
We were hit hard on both of our sites yesterday and can't afford to wait for the dust to settle, as some folks are advising. We have been attempting to work off a penalty on one of our sites by undergoing a massive (and expensive) link removal project over the last four months. We are on our third reconsideration request and, hopefully, this last round of link removal will have done the job. I'm hesitant to go in and "de-optmize" the site by changing title tags and changing the anchor text until the penalty is removed, but I'm not sure if that's the right plan of action. I am, however, going to dig into the non-penalized site and change some title tags and anchor text. Any thoughts on this strategy would be greatly appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | rdreich490 -
If you got hit by a google update what you do first?
I have not been known the Panda. My site statistics knows it. I manage to endure and get back where i felt everytime with change of design, ad placement, content... I am very curious: if i did nothing, my site will turn back? why i kicked in every big update? Simply if you get hit by update, without any act, could your site healed?
Algorithm Updates | | MaxCrandale0 -
Can AJAX implementation affect the rankings in Google Panda?
Hi there, I have the following situation with one of our job sites. We migrate the site to a new application, which is better from design point of view and also usability. For this we use a lot AJAX especially in searches. So every time a user is filtering down their search new results will be shown on the page, at the same url and with no page load. But, having this implementation. affected Bounce rate - which increased from 38% to nearly 60%, PI/visits - which are now half, at 3 and also Avg Time on Site is half that is used to be coming to 2,5 min from nearly 6 min. From Rand post, it is clearly that the content is very important in Google Panda, and all of these parameters we should consider, as it is telling the quality of the content. So, my question will be, can this site be hit by Panda updates (maybe later on) because Bounce Rate, PI/Visits and Avg Time on site, decreased in such way? At the moment we don't measure the Ajax impresion, but as I understood that we can do that though virtual pages in GA, does anyone of you have the experience how to handle this? Won't be this an artificial increase? Thanks, Irina
Algorithm Updates | | InformMedia0