Rankings drop after Panda
-
Hi All, My site dropped completely out of the SERPS on September 27th.
I've tried everything I know to do (re-wrote all content, disavow links tool, filed DCMA complaints, de-optimized on-page content, made anchor text less aggressive, etc).
Can you all please take a look at www.doctorloanusa.com and let me know what you think the problem is and how much you'd charge to help?
Keywords used to be: doctor loans, physician loans. I ranked 2 or 3 for those keywords consistently for over 4 years. I know I need more content, but I feel like it's a waste of time creating it. If a thin site was the issue, wouldn't I at least rank SOMEWHERE in the 1000 results?
Thanks for your consideration. At my wits end.
-
Thanks so much, Donford. Hate it when you write something and it is erased! Nevertheless, your post is very helpful and I really appreciate it.
I'll look into these items and report back.
Thank you!
-
Sorry for my late response, Cyrus. Just had a baby boy!
I really appreciate the time and detail you put into this post. I will look into these and hopefully regain some of my rankings.
Thank you, again!
Best Regards
-
Hi David,
First of all, sorry to hear about your rankings drop. That's totally frustrating when that happens. Unfortunately, recovery can be a somewhat arduous and painful process as well.
September 27th was the day Google introduced it's exact-match domain algorythm update. They intended this to change the way they handles exact match domain, and many websites got hit. it appear you got caught up in it.
The main problem seems to be both the backlink profile and the overall quality of the site (sorry to say it has a bit of an outdated look - and a little thin on content). If we look at the anchor text of the links pointing to your site, using Open Site Explorer, we find many of the types of links that Google has started to devalue and/or penalize in the past year. I won't link to them here, but some examples include:
- http://www.careermedicine.com/2008/08/how-to-negotiate-with-medical-vendors/ (comment link)
- http://aisforatlanta.com/2012/03/emory-match-day/ (comment)
- http://www.goguides.org/topic/10941/161.html (directory)
Have you received any messages via Google Webmaster Tools? If not, the first thing I would do is send a preemptive reconsideration request. Let them know you noticed traffic was down, admit to anything outside Google's guidelines, and explain the steps you've taken to fix it. Often times, Google with respond with actual verification whether or not your site has been penalized.
The process may involve you having to perform a link cleanup and/or disavow. I've been through it myself with several client sites and it can be a lengthy process the first time you do it. Some tips to consider:
1. What links to look at? First of all, John Mueller of Google recommends starting with the links listed in Google Webmaster Tools, as these are the links most likely to effect your rankings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX...
2. Third Party Tools: A couple of companies have developed tools to help identify bad links.
- SEOGadget Link Analyser - http://tools.seogadget.co.uk/ (has a great API - highly recommend this site)
- Link Detox - http://www.linkdetox.com/ (haven't used it, but I've heard decent things)
3. Manual Review - In the end, you're own eye is the best tool you have. You want to look for:
- links with keyword-rich, optimized anchor text
- Comment Signature and Forum Signature links (these are different from the more legitimate forum links)
- Sitewide links, such as in the sidebar or footer
- Obviously paid, or suspicious looking links on low-quality sites
Our friend Paddy Moogan wrote a great guide on how to do this step by step. You should check it out.
It usually takes Google 2-4 weeks to reply to reconsideration requests. In my experience they like to see both a manual effort to clean links, and I've also had success supplementing this with the disavow tool.
Lot's of information here. Hope it helps. Best of luck getting back on track!
-
Hi David,
Just typed a very nice thought out response and got SEOmozed (got logged out before hitting post).
So I'll do my best to type this again.
I know this sort of thing can be frustrating. I am not a superior SEO but I do have to wear that hat. So I'll just give you some quick things I noticed and hope this gets your going in the right direction.
Google only shows you have 2 domains linking to you. You can test this by searching Google with link:www.doctorloansusa.com Seomoz.org shows 20 domains linking to you, but I suspect you have since disavowed some of them. This link profile is very poor, you should spend some time every day working on links even if you only have 20 minutes a day, that time you'll find pays off better then almost anything else you can do. Work with your lenders and universities to get some quality links.
The next stuff I want to mention is just some SEO basics I noticed were missing on your site.
Improper page names (index-1 vs get-a-loan)
No Meta Description tag
Blank H1 Tags
No H2, h3 tags
No Alt Text
No keyword specific images names
No link title tags ie.. href="somepage.html" title="This is Some Page"
Template does not correctly adjust for short content pages throws the footer way out of wackIf you have time the first thing I would do is a basic seo pass taking into account the things I outlined above. From there spend at least 20 minutes every day building links, this could be writing emails, buying appropriate links (yahoo directory is one that is worth the $300 per year), or researching competition and who is linking to them, find the best of them and seeing what it takes to get them to link to you as well.
After the a basic seo pass and once you get in the habit of spending some time daily on link building then start working on content, keeping your site fresh will help you stay on top.
The good news is your competition isn't that strong, a good seo person or company or yourself should have no problem working up the ranks for those 2 keywords.
Hope that helps
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
-
Dropped out of Bing index!! (and Yahoo too)
When I search for my site via site:domain.com or url:domain.com the are ZERO results except for this Some results have been removed which goes to http://help.bing.microsoft.com/#apex/18/en-US/10016/0 We are a total white hat website. What should I do? Is there someone at Bing I can contact? I dont see anyway via Bing Webmaster tools.
Technical SEO | | corlin0 -
Ranking dropped after domain change
Dear Moz Community, first of all excuse my bad english, i am from europe and my english is not the best 😉
Technical SEO | | domiji
I use Moz Analytics for several days and try to figure out why our "main keyword" totally dropped after our domain change. We started this year with a new company name and a new domain. Our old domain was dp-hochzeitsfotograf.de and the main keyword we try to rank for was "hochzeitsfotograf" which means "wedding photographer" here in Germany. Last summer we reached position 1 and short before our domain change we still ranked on position 6. We register the domain change in google webmaster tools and redirect all urls via 301 redirect to the new domain. Our new domain name is yourheyday.de and all rankings adopted pretty good except our main keyword (now position 62) which could break our neck the next few month. I would be so so happy and really appreciate if anyone of you have an advise for us. Thanks and many greetings from europe
Dominik0 -
Is page rank lost through a 301 redirect?
Hi everyone. I'd really appreciate your help with this one 🙂 I've just watched Matt Cutt's video 'what percentage of PageRank is lost through a 301 redirect?' and I am confused. I had taken this to mean that a re-direct would always lose you page rank, but watching it again I am not so sure. He says that the amount of page rank lost through a 301 redirect is the same as any other link. Does this mean that no page rank at all is lost during site migrations? Or is it the case that first page rank would be lost from the original link and then more page rank would be lost from any subsequent redirects? watch?v=Filv4pP-1nw
Technical SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Traffic drop with no explaination
Hello Everyone, I made a post a few months ago about one of my sites, Poker On A Mac dropping off the face of google. I found out that it was hacked, and redirecting traffic from google to other, pharmacy websites. Doing some research, I found out it was the WordPress PharmaHack, and we ended up recovering from it. Now, since October 23rd traffic has went down again mainly organic traffic, I tried to see if it was hacked again, with the same thing and their was nothing I noticed. I was wondering if anyone could give me any insights as to why this happened? Thanks Zach CwFda.png
Technical SEO | | Zachary_Russell0 -
Domains redirect influence search rankings
Hi seomoz, I'm currently optimizing a website which is www.photobookworldwide.com and the ranking is on 2nd page, but looking at the result this morning, instead of showing photobookworldwide.com, it show other result which is www.photobooklaos.com on 2nd page for the keyword photobooks. Our web developer using virtual domain, and redirected photobooklaos.com to photobookworldwide.com. Any solution for this? need you guys to help me on this. Cheers Gerald
Technical SEO | | greathokage0 -
Bing rank drop off for multiple sites
Hi Mozzers, Seeing some wacky stuff going on on some sites I manage. In more than a few, the ranking on bing has dropped basically overnight from page one spots to not being found on the first 100 positions. Anyone else seeing similar results? Some of the sites are fairly new, some have been around for ages, some are wordpress, some are not. I've been searching for some news of a big change on bing, but keep reading about bing dropping the thin sites during black friday. In one example, I had the site set up in BWT for a while, and had a look at the data. The reports show that the pages are crawled, the index summary shows pages indexed, and there seems to be no crawl errors, but rankings are absolutely gone. Also, I can't see the sites in bing if I search "site:example.com" in bing. Here's 2 examples, the first would make sense since it's pretty thin as I havent added much content yet: http://homewindowtint.org but this one doesn't make sense to me. Sure there's a few errors, but to be dropped like a rock seems weird http://www.ahmedandsukaram.com
Technical SEO | | rosstaylor0 -
Website Ranking Issue
Hi, We have been performing our own onsite of offsite SEO along with external assistance and have ranked well over the years with minimal impact from Google updates. Howevr the last so called Panda update has affected us heavily pushing our main phrase 'web design melbourne' from 2nd to 7th where we have been for almost 2 months now on Google.com.au irrespective of onsite or offsite work. We have been trying to find signs of any onsite, IP, duplicate content, titles or other issues that may be holding us back to no avail. The only flag that Google webmaster tools is showing is a number of bad internal site links, which I think is a glitch with the CMS we are using. Even the SEO MOZ tool gives us a higher ranking compared to most competitors on page 1 of Google.com.au for our main phrase. The biggest difference between us and competitors is we chose to target an internal page specific to the topic rather than our homepage. With this sadi we have also reduced our keyword density and content quantity inline with the other sites homepages. Can anyone help shed some light on this? and perhaps something obvious that we have missed, or where we should be looking? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | paulsid0