Google Dropping Pages After SEO Clean Up
-
I have been using SEOmoz to clear errors from a site. There
were over 10,000 errors to start with. Most of these were duplicate content, duplicate titles and too many links on a page. Most of the duplicate errors have now been
cleared. This has been done in two weeks (down to around 3000 errors now).But instead of improving my rankings, pages that were on the second page of Google have started to drop out of the listings altogether. The pages that are dropping out
are not related to the duplicate problems and get A grades when I run SEOmoz
page reports.Can you clean up too much too quickly or is there likely to be another reason for it?
-
I totally agree with XNUMERIK. I had I site I took over after a "black hat" SEO was working on it and we dropped from #8 in Google to #212 after all my corrects. We're number #1 now for that same keyword within 3 months.
There is no "Data" to back up what I'm about to say, but it has worked nearly 100% of the time for me.
Here is what I think happens:
I corrected the technical stuff first (on-page) (site structure, internal linking and things like that)
The drop occurred when Google Crawled my site before I had a chance clean up all the backlinks, 301s coming into the site.
So, naturally I dropped because I basically blew my page authority.
Once I had a good fix on all the off-page corrections to match the on-page stuff, I fetched as Google (in Google's Webmaster Tools) and submitted all linked pages. (I only recommend doing this when you've had major changes like you've done)
It usually takes 4 to 5 crawls and I'm right back up where I was and usually higher then before. It doesn't take much longer with new links to the pages to rank it faster, especially if there is quality on-page SEO done.
-
When google is recalculating/reassessing your credentials (trust, popularity...) typically after a major update/change to your website/page, it is not uncommon that a page drops heavily before recovering to a much better position.
Best thing you can do is wait a few days and see what happens.
When you are doing "well" or "not so bad", you should always keep a backup before making any changes, this way you can go back to the older version much more quickly.
-
I usually am terrified to make any changes to "errors" on pages that are already performing well. As i think anyone will agree, no one, even G themselves fully 100% understand search results, ect.... Sometimes what an application may percieve as an "error" could actually be an unintended asset. Just my two cents after getting burned by correcting "errors"
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
-
Why is my inner pages ranking higher than main page?
Hi everyone, for some reason lately i have discovered that Google is ranking my inner pages higher than the main subfolder page. www.domain.com/subfolder --> Target page to be ranked
Technical SEO | | davidboh
www.domain.com/subfolder/aboutus ---> page that is currently ranking Also in the SERP most of the time, it is showing both links in this manner. www.domain.com/subfolder/aboutus
-----------www.domain.com/subfolder Thanks in advance.1 -
Google Appending Blog URL inbetween my homepage and product page is it issue with base url?
Hi All, Google Appending Blog URL inbetween my homepage and product page. Is it issue or base url or relative url? Can you pls guide me? Looking to both tiny url you will get my point what i am saying. Please help Thanks!
Technical SEO | | amu1230 -
Google still listing pages from old domain after 2 change requests
Good Morning I put forward the following question in December 2014 https://moz.com/community/q/google-still-listing-old-domain as pages from our old domain www.fhr-net.co.uk were still indexed in Google. We have submitted two change request in WMT, the most recent was over 6 months ago yet the old pages are still being indexed and we can't see why that would be Any advice would be appreciated
Technical SEO | | Ham19790 -
Is Google suppressing a page from results - if so why?
UPDATE: It seems the issue was that pages were accessible via multiple URLs (i.e. with and without trailing slash, with and without .aspx extension). Once this issue was resolved, pages started ranking again. Our website used to rank well for a keyword (top 5), though this was over a year ago now. Since then the page no longer ranks at all, but sub pages of that page rank around 40th-60th. I searched for our site and the term on Google (i.e. 'Keyword site:MySite.com') and increased the number of results to 100, again the page isn't in the results. However when I just search for our site (site:MySite.com) then the page is there, appearing higher up the results than the sub pages. I thought this may be down to keyword stuffing; there were around 20-30 instances of the keyword on the page, however roughly the same quantity of keywords were on each sub pages as well. I've now removed some of the excess keywords from all sections as it was getting in the way of usability as well, but I just wanted some thoughts on whether this is a likely cause or if there is something else I should be worried about.
Technical SEO | | Datel1 -
See Different Landing page for my main keyword in google search result
I have a website like http://www.bannerbuzz.com, i am promoting home page with vinyl banners keyword, but currently i can see my website's review page for vinyl banners result in google, i want to display my home page instead of review page for my keyword result in google, its frequently change, some time i can see home page for it and some time it shows review page as i attached image. i want to show my home page, so can you please help me to solve it, how can i stable my home page with main keywords. OtOXxiE.png
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
With regard to tabbed content or accordions for text... would it be better to break these out into individual pages for SEO?
We often get asked by clients if they have a lot of content about a particular subject: would it be better to break that information out into smaller chunks as separate pages, OR would it be good to build a tabbed content container or accordion feature on one single page? Does anyone have any opinion on this in regards to SEO?
Technical SEO | | chansen0 -
Descriptions missing from rankings associated with Google Place pages.
Can anyone help me figure out why my rankings that are associated with Google Place pages are missing descriptions? I have a number one result for the top searched keyword in my category but it just doesn't look the same without a description and I'm sure it's affecting CTR too.
Technical SEO | | glideagency0 -
Local SEO for service industry - one landing page for every town...in every county...in every state?
Starting a second local based service site. Initially going to target a couple counties and move on from there as the business grows. The first site of mine I set up a page for each town [service] + [town] + [state] + [zip]. I am afraid this could get out of control though if I don't have unique content on each page. For the last site I simply copied the page and replace the town name in each as well as the picture, picture title, and image name to make it look more unique for users but not necessarily Google. I had pretty good results but I want this next site to be done properly. Should I only target a few of the major markets to begin with? What about long tail searches for smaller towns that currently bring in a good amount of business? I am concerned about having "too many" long tail pages for each town which would essentially become a listing of every town and county in the state if I was to maintain the pace I want to. Also I would need a good amount of backlinks to each specific town page url if I wanted to do well in each of those specific markets right? Is this where the fine line between niche term and broad search is? Is there any happy medium?
Technical SEO | | kabledesigns0