Organic Traffic dropped 50%. Anyone want to have a stab at why? (URL listed)
-
Just curious what the pro's on here think is the reason why our site got hammered recently.
The URL is www.jobshadow.com. We've got gobs of quality content that had been ranking for quite a few keywords. Even one from Rand himself http://www.jobshadow.com/interview-with-seo-and-seomoz-founder-rand-fishkin/
Rankings for even the exact match domain keyword 'Job Shadow' have been pummeled. Anyway, we've got a pretty solid link profile I would think.
We also have a very high user time on the site, thus suggesting the organic traffic was engaged when Google ranked us for those keywords.
We have lots of unsolicited inbound links and even recent ones from PBS. I'm not really sure what it takes to please the "machine" at this point. Curious as to what everyone here thinks.
-
Hey Thomas, thanks for the input. The dictation is a little rough so I'm not 100% sure how to respond. We do have a wide variety of careers on the site, and thus links coming in from a wide variety of sources.
As far as .edu links. We do have a lot of those as well. Colleges see value in the site for their students and link over.
I guess Google sees differently:). If there's no way to help the algo see that then so be it. But if it's something we could do differently I'm all ears. Thanks again.
-
Thanks Jesse. The only message in GWMT is a notice that my traffic took a big drop. Not a why, just a heads up ha.
-
I have a guess as to why you can't buy this recent update by Google. You encourage students to always link back to your website regardless more so-called cited. Because web designers or anybody that puts their URL on the footer or in a lot of websites gets penalized and cools gotten Penalized because it is seen as some sort of manipulation especially if he's a real students of any sort and you're putting your URL on their domain that's in edu that's a
that they weren't earned link then
Google has always been very protective of the dot EDU domains and any company having any interest in having links on them. So they will always penalize The company that is requiring a lot of links on the dot EDU site and you clearly state please remember to psych us. All that is fair I do agree to say you have to many people do it it turns into the exact same effect as a web designer it also turns into the exact same fact that is a edu Link scheme. I'm not saying that's what you're doing I'm just saying that's the way that Google's looking at most likely. Probably why you're losing so much traffic. I would definitely think about the relevancy of the student or other persons workplace to your company I know it's jobs and everything like that but This is simply a guess at this point. I'm gonna look over your site and make sure there aren't any errors or anything blocking the Google bought from indexing your site. And if you would let me get back to you in about an hour so I will do this analysis for anything that could be Laurenrae by not allowing the fuck to crawl and let you know about that.
This is a quote from your site below.
PS please forgive any glaring grammar or word issues I have been doing this by dictation on a mobile phone so I sincerely apologize for the mistakes.
Thomas
Hi, thanks for the kind words. Most of the interviews going forward will have people’s names associated with them, as well as their Twitter feed(if applicable) along with a link to their site with some info about them(have a look at the most recent 6 or so interviews). Given the information is found on http://www.jobshadow.com students should continue to cite this as their source(along with any other sources required by the teacher obviously).
That being said, many interviews will continue to be anonymous. We ask financial questions that some people aren’t comfortable sharing publicly(and sometimes people are very candid about other aspects of their jobs). And since we all work for a living getting solid financial data is a must for young people considering careers. Plus we want to keep the interviews uniform in nature so people can know what to expect with each career profile they read.
-
Yikes. So this happened recently? Say, right around 5/22 ish?
If so, my conclusion has to be a Penguin hit. Have you received any messages in GWMT?
I'm not sure why you'd be Penguined. I just took a peek at your backlink profile and it looks pretty solid. You have a high PR and a decent DA. Although I'm surprised your DA isn't higher with a PR of 5. I see sites with a DA of 49 and PR of 2 all the time... This is confusing to me.
I'm sorry I don't know what to say but I'm curious. Please keep us posted on your findings if it is Penguin related. It would mean there is some other factor that I have yet to consider going into this algorithm..
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
-
50% Visibility drop following June 2021 Google Update
Hello everyone,
Algorithm Updates | | yacpro13
We've observed a 50% drop in our Visibility score in the last week. This is our biggest drop ever, which coincides with June Google updates. We're an established ecommerce website located in Canada. This has obviously severely impacted sales. I'm frantically searching for information regarding fixes / implementations to recover asap, but if anybody could point us in the right direction, that would be hugely appreciated. Thanks!0 -
Is anyone else's ranking jumping?
Rankings have been jumping across 3 of our websites since about 24 October. Is anyone seeing similar? For example ... jumps from position 5 to 20 on one day, then back to 5 for 3 days and then back to 20 for a day I'm trying to figure out if it's algorithm based or if my rank checker has gone mad. I can't replicate the same results if I search incognito or in a new browser, everything always looks stable in the SERPs if I do the search myself
Algorithm Updates | | Marketing_Today0 -
Drop in Page Indexing, Small rise in Search Queries
Hello, I have a news based website so i am creating multiple new posts daily. I changed a lot of the site and got rid of old potentially duplicate content back in feb and had a sharp drop in pages indexed. I know this was because I removed a lot of pages though. However I still have a good 20,000 + pages on my site and my indexing has dropped a further three times since then. From 9,000 to 2,000 a coupe of months ago and then slowly down since April to just 133. It doesn't seem to have affected my search queries yet but surely will if it continues. I am really confused as to how this might happen & how to turn it around. We dont use any dodgy SEO tricks either.
Algorithm Updates | | luwhosjack0 -
After penguin 2.0, 20-25% drop sitewide, no google unatural links message, What could be causing it?
Hi,Since Penguin 2.0 we've taken a 20-25% knock but not recieved an unatural link message from Google. After sending a bunch of removal requests, I decided to submit a disavow file anyway two weeks ago and tried to make sure I rooted out some links that were built way back when our site started and link building best practice was a bit shadier. Analysis of our backlink profile points to about 40-50% links coming from general directories, wondering if perhaps their weight has been adjusted and this is why the drop occured? Having said that we have some high quality links from government sources and highly trusted sites so not too spammy. Can anyone shed some light or offer suggestions? Thanx
Algorithm Updates | | Mulith0 -
Ranking drop Feb 2013?
I'm trying to get to the bottom of why Directholidays.co.uk suffered a drop in rankings for the term "cheap holidays" in February 2013. Im looking at this recently and as an outsider so I haven't got access to Webmaster tools and I haven't been tracking rankings/link profiling. They moved from 2nd to 10th temporarily and then recovered at 7th the new 10th! I've looked at keywords improved/declined on, keywords lost/gained, traffic, traffic price but im failing to see exactly what I can use to show whether Panda #24 (officially 22nd of January) had a significant effect. Can anyone shed any light on this? It would be massively appreciated!
Algorithm Updates | | eolithicproductions0 -
Organic Rank Volitility
Does anyone else see their organic rankings fluctuating wildly. I have been tracking a few key keywords by literaly typing them in each morning and looking at results. The pages I have been doing this for where without any doubt affected by Penguin as you can see the huge drop in traffic directly correlated to the Pegnuin deployment. What is strange is one day these phrases will be on page one position 3 and two days later but on page3 to 5 or not ranked. Four days later back on page 1. These are wild fluctuations so it appears to me that I am observing Penguin tweaking ? Just wish the tweaking would stop on one of the days were our phases for this particular site are on page one. Most people would check rankings weekly, monthly or quarter and would not perhaps be observing these crazy swings? Thought?
Algorithm Updates | | freestone0 -
Is DMOZ listing important
I have heard a variety of thoughts on the importance of directories such as DMOZ. Any thoughts on this subject from the perspective of google search rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | casper4340 -
Site Usage Statistics and organic ranking
I'm not sure if anyone has tested this properly but i'm begining to suspect that google is using site usage statistics as a site quality guide and ultimately as a ranking variable. The this what i've seen so far on one of my sites (site A) Week 1= bounce rate (83.88%), Avg time on site (0:0:57), Pages/visit (1.28) no changes made to the site apart from the usual link building. Week 2: Traffic drops by 30%, Keywords generating traffic drops by 39%. Bounce rate (87.25%), Avg time on site (0:0:43), pages/visit (1.21). I replaced all affiliate links on my homepage to internal pages where the chunk of the content is and did a reconsideration request. Week 3: Traffic goes up by 30%, keywords generating traffic goes up by 65%, Bounce rate (30.41%), Avg time on site (0:3:02), Pages/visit (3.74). This is not the most scientific test but surely google must be using these variables and a ranking factor? Anyone seen something along these lines or have thoughts on it?
Algorithm Updates | | clickangel0