Sites went from page 1 to page 40 + in results
-
Hello all
We are looking for any insight we can get as to why all (except 1) of our sites were effected very badly in the rankings by Google since the Panda updates.
Several of our sites londonescape.com dublinescape.com and prague, paris, florence, delhi, dubai and a few others (all escape.com urls) have had major drop in their rankings.
LondonEscape.net (now.com (changed after rank drop) ), was ranked between 4th & 6th but is now down around 400th and DelhiEscape.net and MunichEscape.com were both number 1 for several years for our main key words
We also had two Stay sites number 1 , AmsterdamStay and NewYorkstay both .com ranked number 1 for years , NewYork has dropped to 10th place so far the Amsterdam site has not been effected.
We are not really sure what we did wrong. MunichEscape and DelhiEcape should never have been page 1 sites ) just 5 pages and a click thru to main site WorldEscape) but we never did anything to make them number 1.
London, NewYork and Amsterdam sites have had regular new content added, all is checked to make sure its original.
**Since the rankings drop **
LondonEscape.com site
We have redirected the.net to the .com url
Added a mountain of new articles and content
Redesigned the site / script
Got a fair few links removed from sites, any with multiple links to us. A few I have not managed yet to get taken down.
So far no result in increased rankings.
We contacted Google but they informed us we have NOT had a manual ban imposed on us, we received NO mails from Google informing us we had done anything wrong.
We were hoping it would be a 6 month ban but we are way past that now.
Anyone any ideas ?
-
Are your sites cross-linked at all (I'm not seeing anything obvious)? The cascade effect across all of them almost suggests they were either (1) seen as a link network, or (2) you're using the same link strategy across all of them.
I'd watch the keyword stuffing - your titles are pretty aggressive, and then you repeat those lists in the copy at the top and bottom of the page. It's borderline at best. I don't think it's enough to get multiple sites penalized, but it may not be helping you right now.
You've got a duplicate of the London Escape home-page floating out there in the index:
http://www.londonescape.com/index.php?option=com_wesearch&task=loginVIAFacebook
Might want to add rel=canonical to the home-page, just to sweep up things like that.
You're indexed and I'm able to get the site ranking on very targeted keywords (exact-match and fairly unique), but you fall off the map for everything else. That's definitely indicative of a link-based penalty.
-
Hello Brian
Thanks for the coments
We have been removing links since the site went down in the rankings so that accounts for the slow hemorage of links
We thought having the .com would be better than the .net as was recommended by a SEO company we hired and then fired.
We had a links company 5 + years back get us links and that is how we have 50% links with same anchor, stupid we now know of course and could well be something to do with penalty.
Several of our other sites would be in the same link boat I guess and also went down the rankings but they had little content, so it is not surprising they went down.
We were never bothered with analytics as our sites were all top and were for years. The drop came after penguin update. Over a few days the sites all went down.
-
Hello Charles.
Thanks for taking a look at londonescape.com , this is the correct site.
As far as I know, all our pages have meta descriptions.
Not sure what you mean by (a production description is in one place and the order button is on another page). Each property has it's own page and the order / book button is on the same page.
There is a fair bit of internal linking and all our content is 100% original text.
We have asked Google and got this reply
There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team.
Of course, there may be other issues with your site that affect your site's ranking. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users.
If you've experienced a change in ranking which you suspect may be more than a simple algorithm change, there are other things you may want to investigate as possible causes, such as a major change to your site's content, content management system, or server architecture. For example, a site may not rank well if your server stops serving pages to Googlebot, or if you've changed the URLs for a large portion of your site's pages. This article has a list of other potential reasons your site may not be doing well in search.
If you're still unable to resolve your issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality TeamWe are in the process of removing links we suspect may be spammy.
Many of our article pages do rank very high in Google, just rankings for our main keywords are in the 100's.
-
Charles,
I took a look at the home page and two random pages of londonescape.com. All three had meta descriptions. Were you by chance referring to a different domain? Making that clear would help.
Rather than stating something is horrible, it's more helpful to state that it is difficult to use because a production description is in one place and the order button is on another page (an example from one of my own sites).
I'm looking at content pages from the main navigation of londonescape.com, such as Guest Information and Short Term Apartments, and see plenty of internal linking.
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
-
Competitor's new site ranking with out much keywords - How?
Hi all, One of our competitors have recently redesigned their website with new content. Now I can see much less keywords in the content. And page title also changed away from keywords. Still this is ranking at good position. How? Previously they used to have much landing pages with related keywords which some of them are missing now. Still I wonder why this website is ranking high? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Referring subdirectory pages from 3rd hierarchy level pages. Will this hurts?
Hi all, We have product feature pages at 3rd tier like website.com/product/features. We have the help guides for each of these features on a different subdirectory like website.com/help/guides. We are linking these help guides from every page of features. So, will it hurts us anywhere just because we are encouraging 4th tier pages in website, moreover they are from different sub-directory. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
HELP! IE secure page display issue on new live site
For some reason IE 7, 8, & 9 do not display the following page: https://www.jwsuretybonds.com/protools.htm All they show is the Norton seal. It shows properly in all other browsers without issue (including IE 10+), but the earlier versions flash the page for a split second, then hides everything. Can someone shed some light on this? This is a new live site we just launched minutes ago and these browsers account for 12% of our overall traffic. UGH I hate you microsoft!!! Thanks all 🙂
Web Design | | TheDude0 -
Changing Links that Show Up when I Google Brand (Site) Name
Hi SEOmoz Community, A quick question for you all. I've added an attachment for reference. When I google my brand name, say for example, Applied StemCell, I see six links as well below the description. Oddly though, these links seem to be chosen at random, or at least I'm not sure how Google decides on them. When I click on one of the links that is the company's name, Applied StemCell it brings me to a PDF document! Is there any way I can choose which ones to display there? Thanks! OF2oVVN.png
Web Design | | swzhai0 -
Page Content
What is the minimum amount of content a page should have to be seo friendly? What is the maximum amount of content a page should have to be seo friendly?
Web Design | | bronxpad0 -
Visits to Site and Serps?
Do google and bing factor in how many people visit your site per month to determine your serps rankings? If so, does it matter if they visit your site by searching a keyword phrase or by typing in the name in the search bar? My instinct tells me that if the search engine sees 1000 hits per month for a site by keyword phrase and that is high for the industry then they might rank that site higher in the serps. I was wondering if the same would be true if the site is designed and coded properly for a keyword phrase but receives the same 1000 hits per month from visitors typing in the sites name in the search field rather than the search phrase, would that then translate to higher rankings for the keyword phrase? Thanks for your help.
Web Design | | bronxpad0 -
Page Title Optimization
I am reviewing the optimization on my site and it appears that my page titles follow this method: PAGE_NAME | KEYWORD in CITY ST - COMPANY_NAME I am pretty well optimized for "KEYWORD in CITY ST" but am wondering if I should drop it from all page titles except for the pages that actually deal with that keyword. What are your thoughts on optimizing?
Web Design | | nusani0