Why is my client's site not ranking anymore? Like big time!
-
Ok, I'm reaching out to all of you Moz'rs for some help with this one.
My client's site has dropped off the face of google in a real short period of time. It went from page 1 (avg rank 3 to page 6 (avg rank 50) and below in the matter of 2 weeks.
Here's some facts:
1. DA is a 22 and homepage PA is a 31. It outranks all other sites in its competitive set.
2. The homepage used to be the page that displays for keyword searches, now its the FAQ page, which has a lower PA of 23.
Why has the home page seemingly vaporized? And, why is the FAQ showing as the first result?
What should I start checking. I feel paralyzed, not sure where to start.
More info:
a. There are no alerts present in Webmaster Tools.
b. For some reason the homepage (domain.com) was 301'd to domain.com/home.html. Domain.com is indexed by Google, however, domain.com/home.html is not. If this is the issue, what is the best way to handle it?
Thanks in advance for your help!
-
A lot of sites saw a drop in mid November but there was no announced update. You can read a good discussion of what some site owners saw in the comments on this post:
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-nov15-17689.html
My gut instinct is that this was a refresh of the Panda algorithm, but Google no longer announces these refreshes so no one can know for sure.
But, there really isn't an easy answer to your question as there isn't an obvious solution.
-
Unfortunately, my analytics doesn't go back to October 3rd. However, the sharp drop in rankings occurred between November 19th and November 26th, then again in the beginning of December.
Checkout the attached image.
I'm at a complete loss on what happened during those time periods.
Nothing in WMT for manual spam actions. And, I have been cautiously building links to the site.
-
Does your analytics data go back as October 3? If the drop happened October 4, then I would indeed be worried about Penguin.
Have you been building links to this page? More specifically, have you built keyword rich anchors to this page?
Do you see any manual spam actions in webmaster tools? (WMT --> Search Traffic --> Manual Actions)
-
Many thanks for the timely responses. I didn't want to overload the detail in the first post.
*To be more specific with my issue, there's 1 particular keyword (a very important one), that the homepage has dropped out of the rankings for. There are many sites with much lower DA and PA above this site. It went from 1st page to almost non-existent in the matter of 2 weeks.
Other keyword queries are still showing the homepage on 1st page results. So I guess this probably answers a few questions. I should have specified that in my original post. Can you tell I'm freaking out?
1. The site is not new. It's been up for a few years now. I've only just begun to take over SEO/Web Marketing duties.
2. It is not blocked by robots.txt, nor does it have a canonical tag
3. The title tag hasn't been touched since I got involved with the site.
4. I'm still unsure why domain.com was 301'd to domain.com/home.html. I didn't do it and the clients were clueless when I asked the question.
5. I'm using Google Analytics, but the data only goes back to the beginning of October, because I setup Analytics when I got started. I came onboard after they saw a swift drop in rankings for that important keyword.
6. The site does have some questionable linkage from an "SEO" service they paid for that lasted about 2 years. But I'm hesitant to start disavowing links.
-
I totally agree with Marie. First and foremost, be calm. Don't freak out and start changing a whole bunch of things. Make sure your client knows what's going on. Far better for them to hear it from you than discover it on their own. Make a plan. First, document everything that has recently changed. Hopefully you've done that already. Start with that 301 redirect. You already know it's a problem, whether it's caused this or not.
Has anything else changed? Meta tags, specifically title tags? I have seen a site drop from a #1 branded search position and disappear for up to a day because the title tags were updated. Then it reappeared back in it's original spot. It's possible that your clients site is in a Google dance, but my gut says that's not it. Start with the 301...and while you're at it, check and make sure that the non.www version of the homepage is properly redirecting via 301 as well as any other potential URL versions that also produce the homepage and that may have inbound links.
Good luck and please let us know what happens. Hang in there!
-
I definitely agree that Penguin is a huge possibility. But, I think it could be dangerous advice to send a site owner on a link removal/disavow mission when we don't know for sure. There are many other possibilities. It could be a Panda issue. It could be that it was a new site and the previous high rankings were a honeymoon effect. It could be that the /home.html page is blocked by robots.txt or has a canonical tag that is confusing Google. It could be that they changed the title tag on the page so that it is no longer appropriate. It could be that the site was hit with malware and users are clicking away because of virus warnings.
(btw...the thumb down was not from me. I respect that you are trying to help but just wanted to comment to make sure that the site owner (or someone else reading this post) doesn't go off disavowing links without getting to the cause of the problem first.)
-
While it could be Penguin, I don't think we can make that call on the data given to us in the question.
-
Take a look at your organic traffic only. If you use Google analytics, go to Aquisition --> All Traffic, then choose google/organic. Can you tell what date the drop happened on or started on?
Now go to Behavior --> Site Content --> Landing pages and click on each of the top pages. Is there an obvious drop for each page or just the home page?
How old is the site?
Can I ask why you did the 301 from domain.com to domain.com/home.html? Is there any chance that the /home.html page has either a noindex tag or is blocked by robots.txt? Is there a canonical tag on the /home.html page? If so, what does it say?
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
-
Google Indexed Site A's Content On Site B, Site C etc
Hi All, I have an issue where the content (pages and images) of Site A (www.ericreynolds.photography) are showing up in Google under different domains Site B (www.fastphonerepair.com), Site C (www.quarryhillvet.com), Site D (www.spacasey.com). I believe this happened because I installed an SSL cert on Site A but didn't have the default SSL domain set on the server. You were able to access Site B and any page from Site A and it would pull up properly. I have since fixed that SSL issue and am now doing a 301 redirect from Sites B, C and D to Site A for anything https since Sites B, C, D are not using an SSL cert. My question is, how can I trigger google to re-index all of the sites to remove the wrong listings in the index. I have a screen shot attached so you can see the issue clearer. I have resubmitted my site map but I'm not seeing much of a change in the index for my site. Any help on what I could do would be great. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cwscontent
Eric TeVM49b.png qPtXvME.png1 -
Is it necessary to use Google's Structured Data Markup or alternative for my B2B site?
Hi, We are in the process of going through a re-design for our site. Am trying to understand if we need to use some sort of structured data either from Google Structured data or schema. org?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Krausch0 -
Site was moved, but still exists on the old server and is being outranked for it's own name
Recently, a client went through a split with a business partner, they both had websites on the same domain, but within their own sub directories. There is a main landing page, which links to both sites, the landing page sits on the root. Ie. example.com is a landing page with links to example.com/partner1, and example.com/partner2 Parter 2 will be my client for this example. After the split, partner 2 downloaded his website, and put it up on his own server, but no longer has any kind of access to the old servers ftp, and partner 1 is refusing to cooperate in any way to have the site removed from the old server. They did add a 301 redirect for the home page on the old server for partner 2, so, example.com/partner2/index.html is 301'ing to the new site on the new server, HOWEVER, every other page is still live on that old server, and is outranking the new site in every instance. The home page is also being outranked, even with the 301 redirect in place. What are some steps I can take to rectify this? The clients main concern is that this old website, containing the old partners name, is outranking him for his own name, and the name of his practice. So far, here's what i've been thinking: Since the site has poor on-page optimization, i'll start be cleaning all of that up. I'll then optimize the home page to better depict the clients name and practice through proper usage of heading tags, titles, alt, etc, as well as the meta title and description. The only other thing I can think of would be to start building some backlinks? Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RCDesign740 -
Don't affiliate programs have an unfair impact on a company's ability to compete with bigger businesses?
So many coupon sites and other websites these days will only link to your website if you have a relationship with Commission Junction or one of the other large affiliate networks. It seems to me that links on these sites are really unfair as they allow businesses with deep pockets to acquire links unequitably. To me it seems like these are "paid links", as the average website cannot afford the cost of running an affiliate program. Even worse, the only reason why these businesses are earning a link is because they have an affiliate program; that to me should violate some sort of Google rule about types and values of links. The existence of an affiliate program as the only reason for earning a link is preposterous. It's just as bad as paid link directories that have no editorial standards. I realize the affiliate links are wrapped in CJ's code, so that mush diminish the value of the link, but there is still tons of good value in having the brand linked to from these high authority sites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | williamelward0 -
Client site is lacking content. Can we still optimize without it?
We just signed a new client whose site is really lacking in terms of content. Our plan is to add content to the site in order to achieve some solid on-page optimization. Unfortunately the site design makes adding content very difficult! Does anyone see where we may be going wrong? Is added content really the only way to go? http://empathicrecovery.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
No longer showing for 'money' phrases but long tail combinations rank high?
I hope someone can shed some light on this as I've been pulling my hair out so much there's hardly any left! Background: 12 year old website that for about 10 years had Top 3 rankings for 100's of phrases but rankings first dropped off August 2011. Panda seemed to be the cause but finding the exact issue is hard. We are an online travel agent and every hotel page has duplicate content copied from other websites. This has not been changed although lots of sections in the site still rank well, so do the hotel pages themselves. Lots of internal duplicate issues have been resolved but with no effect. Our old style link, link, link all day long with our 2-word main key phrase as anchor text has given us an unnatural backlink profile but no message has been left by G about this in WMT (yet). Internal link structure is poor with all pages linking back to the homepage with our 'money' 2-word phrase in 3 places. Penguin wiped two thirds of all our backlinks back in May 2012. Why then, do we still rank for our 'money' phrase on the homepage when it has some extra words included and becomes long tail? e.g. CityName Apartments (money phrase) - Now ranks page 2-3 CityName Apartments to rent for the night - Ranks #2 on Google in all countries To make things more confusing other pages rank really well for similar money phrase e.g. CityName Apartments Offers - Ranks 2nd on 185,000,000 results (not homepage) It seems only the homepage is effected (where 95% of inbound links point) but if the site wide duplicates or unnatural link profile was flagged it would effect more than one page of the site. Wouldn't it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lchoice0 -
A Client Changed the Link Structure for Their Site... Not Just Once, but Twice
I have a client who's experiencing a number of crawl errors, which I've gotten down fo 9,000 from 18,000. One of the challenges they experience is that they've modified their URL structure a couple times. First it was: site.com/year/month/day/post-name
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digisavvy
Then it was: site.com/category/post-name
Now it's: site.com/post-name I'm not sure of the time elapsed between these changes, but enough time has passed that the URLs for the previous two URL structures have been indexed and spit out 404s now. What's the best/clean way to address this issue?I'm not going to create 9k redirect rules obviously, but there's got to be a way to address this issue and resolve it moving forward.0 -
How Does This Site Rank So Well?!
So this website -> http://bailbondsripoffreport.com/ Ranks on the First Page for the term "Bail Bonds" It's the spammiest crappiest piece of junk website ever! lol - How does this site rank so well, it's not even a year old and it's link structure is crap. Can I like report them and have them removed lol. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | utahseopros0