Increasing content, adding rich snippets... and losing tremendous amounts of organic traffic. Help!
-
I know dramatic losses in organic traffic is a common occurrence, but having looked through the archives I'm not sure that there's a recent case that replicates my situation. I've been working to increase the content on my company's website and to advise it on online marketing practices. To that end, in the past four months, I've created about 20% more pages — most of which are very high quality blog posts; adopted some rich snippets (though not all that I would like to see at this point); improved and increased internal links within the site; removed some "suspicious" pages as id'd by Moz that had a lot of links on it (although the content was actually genuine navigation); and I've also begun to guest blog. All of the blog content I've written has been connected to my G+ account, including most of the guest blogging.
And... our organic traffic is preciptiously declining. Across the board. I'm befuddled. I can see no warnings (redirects &c) that would explain this. We haven't changed the site structure much — I think the most invasive thing we did was optimize our title tags! So no URL changes, nothing.
Obviously, we're all questioning all the work I've done. It just seems like we've sunk SO much energy into "doing the right thing" to no effect (this site was slammed before for its shady backlink buying — though not from any direct penalty, just as a result of the Penguin update).
We noticed traffic taking a particular plunge at the beginning of June.
Can anyone offer insights? Very much appreciated.
-
I'm trying to determine right now whether it's been an issue of this particular post being the symptom of a broader discrimination against our site or whether there has been competition introduced for this page. All the peaks and valleys of the site's organic traffic are exactly the peaks and valleys of popularity for this post. Graphing other major (organic) landing pages for our site (the top three of which have much less traffic than this one stupid page) does not indicate that the other pages have been similarly affected — their popularity is far more undulating, and subject to far fewer crazy movements. So I'm pretty sure at this point that it's the one page.
And, yes, this particular blog post accounts for about 1/2 of our site's organic traffic. We've reduced the bounce rate on this blog post down to the low 80's, percentage wise, which I think is respectable for what the blog post is & it's relationship to the site and the site's purpose as a whole, which is commercial and not immensely related to the post's content.
I suppose that's a new question, isn't it? How much should we care about the fortunes of one page that has a high bounce rate? Obviously, we should reduce the bounce rate (and there are some things we haven't done yet to do that) but the nature of this particular post is just not a super strong match for the content and direction of our site. The bounce rate will always been fairly high, it's just the way it will always be. Yet it has so. much. traffic. Another site I work on has a similar page, similarly somewhat-tangential to the site's content: the "when to use spray foam insulation" page. Thus I always want to call these the "spray foam insulation pages."
-
Ahh I see, I think if I was in that position I would try and have the dodgy links removed where possible, if you think they might be doing more harm to the site. Remember just because you've not received a warning notice in Webmaster tools, it doesn't mean that these links aren't negatively affecting your sites rankings, it may just be that there's not enough to have triggered a warning message, or as mentioned before they've simply been devalued.
What was it that caused the popularity around this particular blog post?
Do you mean that the decline in overall site traffic is down to a decline in traffic to this specific post? Or that it just correlates with the decline? -
I've got very little information about these backlinks since they precede my time, but I know that there was never any Google warnings about it. I think you're probably right, though — that the effect from the lousy backlinks is ongoing.
I graphed the decline in GA & found that the decline in traffic is exactly mirrored by the fortunes of this one ridiculously popular blog post. So while I continue to root around for confirmation for this, I'm guessing that this particular post has had found some new competition on the SERP. Yeesh.
-
Hi Novos Jay,
Do the shady backlinks you mentioned still exist and point to the site?
Have you used the disavow tool at all?The reason I ask is that it might just simply be down to the fact that the links that were holding the rankings and traffic up previously, are now gradually being devalued through various algorithm updates, so in spite of your recent work to do the right thing, there's still going to be an overall negative effect.
Perhaps with a little more information about the types of links (the shady ones) and quantity/% of the total backlinks, I/others might be able to give you some more specific ideas on what's happened?
Thanks,
Greg
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
-
Can we link back from help documents to product or features pages on website?
Hi, We have all our help documents on subdirectory linked for all the features or products we provide. Like we linked website.com/help/seo-guide from website.com/services/seo-product as that is relevant guide. Do we need to link back from all help guide pages to product pages? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Does having too many wordpress portfolio pages with little content hurt a site's SEO?
I have a site that is for a service company, not image based like a photographer or artist. We utilize the Portfolio feature to create a gallery of floor coating finishes (images of all the flooring finish options available) but this solution has created /portfolio/file-name pages for each image. These pages have no other content besides the image. I've run SEMrush audits on this site which shows a high percentage of pages with low text/code ratio and duplicate content (a lot of the finishes have very similar names). This site has been extremely slow to improve any visibility online (more than 9 months) and I'm wondering if this is a factor by possibly having a negative effect on our site. We initially chose the portfolio option because it was the best-looking solution for our users but we can certainly change it to another format if that is better. Thanks!
Web Design | | WillGMG0 -
Help with error: Not Found The requested URL /java/backlinker.php was not found on this server.
Hi all, We got this error for almost a month now. Until now we were outsourcing the webdesign and optimization, and now we are doing it in house, and the previous company did not gave us all the information we should know. And we've been trying to find this error and fix it with no result. Have you encounter this issue before? Did anyone found or knows a solution? Also would this affect our website in terms of SEO and in general. Would be very grateful to hear from you. Many thanks. Here is what appears on the bottom of the site( www.manvanlondon.co.uk) Not Found The requested URL /java/backlinker.php was not found on this server. <address>Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu) Server at 01adserver.com Port 80</address> <address> </address> <address> </address>
Web Design | | monicapopa0 -
Question re. crawlable textual content
I have a client who is struggling to fit crawlable textual content on their pages. I'm wondering if we can add a "Learn More..." feature that works as a mouse over pop up. When a page visitor runs their curser over the link or button, a window bubble pops up and textual content about the page will show. Not knowing much about code, can text in this format be crawlable by search engines and count as unique and relevant content? Thanks, Dino
Web Design | | Dino640 -
I need help with international SEO for two sites?
I'll try to keep this clear... I am working with an company based in Germany, they own company.com/de and company.com/en, and that's how they are currently structuring their domains. They also own companyusa.com that they really want to show up in USA only. They want to keep company.com/en for England/english speaking Europe and company.com/de for their German audience in Germany. They are wanting us to optimize/SEO for companyusa.com, and they want that URL to show up as the top google search in the USA for their "company" keyword. What is showing up now is www.company.com/en 1st in Google because it's been around longer and it has more domain authority. What is the best practice for us optimize companyusa.com so that it is the top dog in the USA while not messing up the other domains? Should we merge? Subfolders all around? Thanks for all the input.
Web Design | | Rocket.Fuel0 -
How serious is duplicate page content?
We just launched our site on a new platform - Magento Enterprise. We have a wholesale catalog and and retail catalog. We have up to 3 domains pointing to each product. We are getting tons of duplicate content errors. What are the best practices for dealing with this? Here is an example: mysite.com/product.html mysite.com/category/product.html mysite.com/dynamic-url
Web Design | | devonkrusich0 -
WordPress blog hosted on GoDaddy domain mapping help
We set up a WP blog that's hosted through GoDaddy. For various reasons, we purchased a URL to use to get through the technical build and set up and are trying to map that to a subdomain of our company website. (We can't host it on our own server, unfortunately). My question is: for WP blogs hosted via WP you can buy a domain mapping upgrade and I'm trying to find a similar plugin that could offer the same thing that would apply to our GoDaddy hosting and point to our subdomain (GD apparently doesn't offer the domain mapping). Anyone have any thoughts, please?
Web Design | | josh-riley0 -
How do I identify what is causing my Duplicate Page Content problem?
Hello, I'm trying to put my finger on what exactly is causing my duplicate page content problem... For example, SEOMoz is picking up these four pages as having the same content: http://www.penncare.net/ambulancedivision/braunambulances/express.aspx http://www.penncare.net/ambulancedivision/recentdeliveries/millcreekparamedicservice.aspx http://www.penncare.net/ambulancedivision/recentdeliveries/monongaliaems.aspx http://www.penncare.net/softwaredivision/emschartssoftware/emschartsvideos.aspx As you can tell, they really aren't serving the same content in the body of the page. Anybody have an idea what might be causing these pages to show up as Duplicate Page Content? At first I thought it was the photo gallery module that might be causing it, but that only exists on two of the pages... Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | BGroup0