Recent Algo Change
-
I was wondering if anybody can shed some light on any recent changes to the Google algorithm in Australia. A competitor, www.manwithavan.com.au has always been number 1 for the most competitive search term in our industry "removalists melbourne". However, in the last week, they have fallen out of the the SERPS and are now (according to MOZ) ranking outside the top 50.
As far as l can tell, they have a really well optimized site with good structure, great text and updated content. They are very active within social media circles and have some really good external links.
Can anybody tell me why they would have been hit so badly. The reason l ask is that i want to make sure we don't make the same mistake.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
-
Elementary, my dear Mosley.
-
Good work Holmes
-
Checking Ahrefs it is clear they have been hit by a penalty. They have over 700 exact match anchors for "man with a van" for example from just 30 domains, which makes up 67% of their backlinks!
-
Hi Robert
According to Algaroo, a tool that tracks the level of volatility in Google AU, there doesn't look to be anything out of the ordinary in the last few days.
I jumped into MajesticSEO to have a look at their backlinks, and what struck me was that out of their top 50 links (according to Majestic), around 20 of them have been deleted on the 21st and 22nd of September.
I'm also looking at their links on a whole - there are a lot of blogroll links, which looks quite unnatural, plus a number of directory links (which aren't necessarily bad but may have been devalued). A number of these blogrolls were site wide, so the deleted ones will have resulted in a very sharp fall in the number of links.
I can only speculate as to why those links were removed - whether prompted by Google or not - but it's clear that either removing them has caused the drop, or they have been prompted to remove them by Google after finding out about their link scheme (if it was one). Similarly the massive amount of directory links could be the cause - not because they're penalised, but because they have been devalued.
Hope that helps.
-
Are they in the SERPs what so ever? They may have been hit by panda or penguin, how about any of the other rankings have they changed ? Have you checked outside of Moz to confirm ?
If you go by the webmaster guidelines you can't go far wrong.
It could be they were up to some shady practices and got penalized for as such.
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
-
Too many SEO changes needed on a page. Create a new page?
I've been doing some research on a keyword with Page Optimization. I'm finding there's a lot of changes suggested. I'm wondering that because of the amount of changes required is it better to create a new page entirely from scratch that has all the suggestions implemented OR change the current page? Thanks, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris29181 -
Search Console Change of Address Tool Issue
We're currently migrating few "event" mini sites to a main site that will have a subfolder for each event.. Example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichardUK
newsite.com/event1 The issue is that Search console is not able to verify this kind of redirect:
example.com --> 301 --> newsite.com/event Do you know any work around for this? I was thinking of using a subdomain instead which will in turn redirect to the /event subfolder.. but with each hop it will diminish the link's strength. I prefer not to leave it as subdomain as data gets mashed up in Google Analytics with subdomains and we have seen worse ranking results with subdomains. Any help is greatly appreciated.0 -
Why isn't the Google change of address tool working for me?
Last night I switched my site from http to https. Both sites are verified in Webmaster Tools but when I try to use the change of address it says- Your account doesn't contain any sites we can use for a change of address. Add and verify the new site, then try again. How do I fix this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Change Media Wiki urls to - instead of _
Is there a way to do this? I have a new wiki set up at http://hiddentriforce.com/zelda-wiki/index.php/Main_Page I want to change the default underscores to hyphens. This is what I have been trying Options +FollowSymLinks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase / RewriteRule !.(html|php)$ - [S=4]
RewriteRule ^([^]*)([^]*)([^]*)([^]*)(.)$ $1-$2-$3-$4-$5 [E=uscor:Yes]
RewriteRule ^([^_])([^])([^])(.*)$ $1-$2-$3-$4 [E=uscor:Yes]
RewriteRule ^([^])([^])(.*)$ $1-$2-$3 [E=uscor:Yes]
RewriteRule ^([^])_(.)$ $1-$2 [E=uscor:Yes] RewriteCond %{ENV:uscor} ^Yes$
RewriteRule (.*) http://hiddentriforce.com/zelda-wiki/index.php/$1 [R=301,L]0 -
Changing the XML Sitemap address
For technical reason we are having to change our XML sitemap URL's from domain.com/sitemap.xml to domain.com/sitemaps/sitemap.xml - What checklist do I need to do to make sure this transition goes smoothly and is there any problems that I might come across?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Will changing website subject affect the value of excisting links?
What will happen with the value of links when a website subject is changing? Will all value be lost or will it keep certain value? There will be a new subject, new pages, new structure...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xicero0 -
Hosting / Redesign & Text Change
In the process of redesigning a clients site. The text and the design need to change to focus the site on conversions more than it is at present. The client is not happy with the current host, they want to change, my feeling is to either change a while before the site redesign is launched or a while after. Anyone got any opinions, experiences to share. Justin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GrouchyKids0