Hit by a penalty? But which one?
-
Hi guys,
First off, thanks for reading my post! My site, www.doctorloanusa.com suffered a massive drop in Google rankings and traffic on September 27. For the past 4 years, I've ranked in spots 1-3.
My main keywords are physician loans and doctor loans.
-
I had a competitor copy almost ALL my text. In early October, I filed a DMCA takedown and had the infringing site removed from the SERPS. I also made text changes to my site. I thought this duplicate content was the problem, but I have yet to see any improvements 2 months later.
-
My site isn't particularly deep content-wise, but it's competitive with others in my niche. I have relatively few links but others in the SERPS have very similar link profiles.
-
I tried to clean up a few questionable links and used the disavow tool.
-
I have used the SEOmoz on-page tools to grade my site. Typically, I receive grade A reports.
-
I still rank for my website URL, and still rank 1 in both Yahoo and Bing.
-
My bounce rate is 43%.
If anyone could provide insight, I would be very grateful. I need to get this site ranking again, as this property is my main source of income.
Is the site over-optimized? Is it my anchor text profile?
Thank you very much in advance!
-
-
Hi Moosa,
The only thing is, I don't rank at ALL on Google for my keywords. Not even in the top 1000. That leads me to believe it is some type of penalty.
What were the small problems you saw?
Thanks so much.
-
Thanks!
-
Thanks for your response, Hampig! See below for answers:
1. where do you rank currently for Physician Loans and Doctor Loans on google? Not in the top 1000!
2. when did you use the Disavow tool. The day after it came out.
3. Did you get a questionable link email from google webmaster tools? No
I'll look into the citations, and I know I need a blog. I have one but it's on a different domain and honestly it's only 4-5 pages. I plan to write more content for it. I also plan on doing some social media, I just haven't had time yet.
-
Google rolled out Panda and Exact-Match Domain (EMD) updates on September 27th. As one of your keywords almost exactly matches your domain the EMD penalty could be a possibility. I don't know enough about the EMD update to be certain, but your link profile still doesn't look perfect either - it'd look more natural if more of your links had your URL as the anchor text, but be careful about where you get links from.
I Googled some of your text and it was duplicated on other sites (e.g. experts123), so Panda could be a possibility too.
The homepage doesn't look too bad; perhaps the title tag looks a bit spammy and you use "doctor loan" an awful lot in alt text; including the alt text there are 17 occurences of "doctor loan" on your homepage, so I would definitely reduce that. I'm not sure if that sort of keyword usage ties in with EMD, so have a look if some trusted resources have advice on it. I haven't read through it but this looks useful: http://searchengineland.com/google-emd-update-research-and-thoughts-137340
-
I checked your site and see some really small problems here and there and i don’t really think this is any penalty or something... I think all you need is an in-depth on-page analysis and with time you might receive everything back at least in terms of rankings...
-
I would do the quiz at http://www.mytrafficdropped.com/
-
A few questions.
1. where do you rank currently for Physician Loans and Doctor Loans on google?
2. when did you use the Disavow tool
3. Did you get a questionable link email from google webmaster tools?
I would try to put more content on the page. you dont have much . ie: Blog.
A few things missing:
* Citation on every page. You need to make sure you have your address and phone number on every page. ( Site wide footer can do the job )
* Citations across the web. Check out Getlisted.org and make sure all the local search directories have all your information. You can also use yext.com ( The best tool out there right now but it will cost you )
* No Blog? why?
* No Social Media . why?
is this your facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Doctor-loan-usa-reviews/103958646433000
After you get that in order and rankings don't improve my best guess is there is a link that is pointing to your site thats bad link and you havent removed it. I would contact Webmaster tools and try to get more help from them ?
But let me know the answers to my questions
Best wishes,
Hampig M.
BizDetox
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
-
Which one is better?
I am working on creating new blog. I already had one. I want to add this new topics as subdomain. Now i am confused. Which one will be better for SEO? subdomain.maysite.com or mysite.com/subdomain Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | Beachflower0 -
Do people recover from an unnatural outbound links penalty?
Dear Friends I received an unnatural outbound links penalty on 4th of June 2016. I immediately acted on it, and analysed a lot of outbound links and removed most of them. I had to file reconsideration 2 times, but on 26th of June my penalty was revoked.However, traffic drop was even worse 27th June onwards and it is still dropping. Now, i dont know why the traffic is dropping. Any idea how much time it takes to come back from an unnatural outbound link penalty? PHd8BzX.png
Technical SEO | | marketing910 -
Is it good practice to still pay for Best of the Web Directory (BOTW) and other similar one's you have to pay for?
I know that paid for links are hit by Google, but in the past these directories were okay. What about now? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | RoxBrock0 -
How different does content need to be to avoid a duplicate content penalty?
I'm implementing landing pages that are optimized for specific keywords. Some of them are substantially the same as another page (perhaps 10-15 words different). Are the landing pages likely to be identified by search engines as duplicate content? How different do two pages need to be to avoid the duplicate penalty?
Technical SEO | | WayneBlankenbeckler0 -
Which one should I use Schema.org or Microformats.org
Hi, I would like to know which one is better to use Schema.org or Microformats.org My CMS doesn't support Schema.org attributes, I can only use Microformats.org documentation, but I wanted to knwo if Schema.org is better one, so I will change my CMS and use another one.
Technical SEO | | FisnikSylka0 -
More than one web domain
Hi What is best when considering using more than one domain on a website, what the best policy ? it's a question I get asked a lot, usually because prior to any seo efforts the main domain name purchased is not keyword rich or an abbreviated company name etc. what impact do new domains have on SEO compared to older existing domains- is it worth changing a generic company named domain for a keyword rich domain? if having multiple domains pointing to the site is beneficial how best is it to configure? How do i inform Google? How do both domains get index when there is only one physical site? How should i monitor it, Analytic s, SEO moz? Will the domain compete against each other and effect SEO rank? Are they best used for marketing purposes on external sites, adverts driving traffic to the main site. I'm aware there are lots of questions above, any answers/ opinions , links to further info would be greatly appreciated. cheers
Technical SEO | | Bristolweb0 -
One Page - Targeting Multiple Low Searched Keywords.
Hi, First "Question" on SEOmoz, A client has requested me to have all the traffic going to the main/home page. In total its 25 Keywords and competition is pretty low, lets say "Builder In City", all the keywords are the sames except for the citys. "Builder In London" "Builder in Birmingham" Builder in Cardiff" .. and so on. Will it be ok and do-able to target 1 homepage with 25 keywords and expect decent results.
Technical SEO | | Prestige-SEO0 -
Google WMT shows sitemap.xml highest ranked for one main keyword
Hello, I am seeing my sitemap.xml show up in Google webmaster tools at the top for one of the main keywords for my site. This is in the Your Site on the Web - Keywords section. The URLs of my site contain this keyword, which is why I figure it showed up. I'm curious if this should be a concern to me? I find it odd that the sitemap would show up in this way. Thanks
Technical SEO | | nux0