Shoing strong for last 2 years for search terms NOW GONE! What happened?
-
Hi All! I have a 9-11~ my website www.popscrap.com has been showing strong (top 2) for about 2 years now for many of the search terms we are targeting (scrap software; scrap medal software; recycling software; etc.), and I just noticed today that we are nowhere. What do you suggest for troubleshooting this to find the cause and fix?
Thanks!
-
Well, I removed the suspect content, and after 2 weeks, nothing. Then I added Google Authorship to each page, and the NEXT DAY the site is back in the top positions for our target terms, and the leads are pouring in. Was it the Google Authorship? It certainly felt like it. But I thought that was not a ranking factor.
Anyway, thanks for all the support! BB
-
On a quick look my gut instinct is that this is ok. However, on a site: search I'm seeing that you have over 19,000 pages indexed in Google. That's a bit of a Panda flag for me as most likely there are not 19,000 unique pages that add value on your site.
-
Thanks for the response, Marie
I asked the question as I was wondering whether I'd need to add "boilerplate" text to each description to fill it out. I'd rather not as a) it's not very scaleable and b) I'm not sure it would add value to our users per se, as in the main people want to see pictures. Here's an example of one of the shorter descriptions we run.
-Is the content the same MLS description that is on multiple sites? If so, then I'd noindex it Of the 4,500 pages, 95-98% are content that's unique to our site (the other ~2-5% are managed by individual realtors who I'm guessing probably copy and paste descriptions from their own sites. We're not in the US so aren't part of the MLS network).
-Do users engage with your content? Mos' def.
-
It's hard to say what Google views as thin. Here are some factors I would consider when making that decision:
-Is the content the same MLS description that is on multiple sites? If so, then I'd noindex it.
-Do users engage with your content? Short content can be useful. If Google sees that people are actually engaging with your site then they will have no problem with thin content.
It sounds to me like these pages are probably ok. But I can't say for certain.
-
"Thin content" question:
I run a real estate website and carry about 4,500 property pages (each page consisting of between 5-13 photos and about 50-300 words of a property description) Might the pages of ~50 words run the risk of being deemed "thin content" even though they have photos on them?
I also have around 200-250 article pages that are far more text-heavy.
FWIW, I don't think I've been hit by Panda 4.0. (I've slid from about #8 to #12 over the past 2 weeks but I suspect that's more to do with sluggish content marketing/link-building). -
If unpublishing causes the pages to either be removed from your site or noindexed then yes, that's the same thing.
-
Thank you! But what about unpublising? Is that the same thing as removing, in the eyes of Google?I want to remove ALL pages under the "Scrap Laws" menu, because I think that is where the issue is. But I don't want to delete totally and have to recreate them all later. Thnaks again!
-
While you can test this over time, it would be difficult because you will never know if you've done enough to satisfy Panda. And really, you don't even know for sure if Panda is the culprilt. (I think it is, but no one can say for sure.)
So, let's say you took out some of the low quality content and a month later nothing has changed. That could mean that you didn't take out enough to make the Panda algorithm see your site as high quality. But, it could be that you just need more time. While some sites recover within one Panda refresh (and that usually happens approximately monthly), others seem to need several refreshes.
In regards to unpublishing vs deleting the content, you can either delete the pages or you can use a noindex tag to tell Google not to include the pages in the index. Having low quality pages on your site that are noindexed will not hurt you in the eyes of Panda.
-
Thanks Marie! I'm getting the feeling it's the content. Quick question: Could I just unpublish the content and then test over time, OR do I need to completely delete the questionable content from the site? Does Google see it if it is unpublished and still penalize?
-
There were two major algorithm updates last week - Panda and the Payday loans algorithm. Payday loans affects sites that had done really spammy link building and it is very unlikely that this affected you. But, Panda is certainly possible.
I haven't had a good look at the site, but I see that you have 263 pages indexed in Google. Are all of these pages high quality pages that Google would be proud to show to searchers? If you've got duplication amongst the pages or if you've got "unhelpful" pages that are indexed then you need to remove or noindex them. On a quick look here are some examples of pages that should be removed or noindexed:
http://www.popscrap.com/component/content/category/11-demo-articles
http://www.popscrap.com/component/users/?view=remind
http://www.popscrap.com/24-products/120-scrapshield - It looks like a good amount of the text on this page is on multiple pages of your site.
Of course, there could be other issues. If you've made any changes to the site recently then I'd look at those changes first, but otherwise I'd go on a thorough cleanup so that only the pages that are the best are shown to Google.
-
To help figure out what is causing the 404 errors do the following in webmaster tools:
-login to your websites profile, then on the left hand side navigation hit crawl > crawl errors > not found. Under not found review the list of URL's for clues (you can also click on an individual link to see where the 404 page was linked from). Depending on how large your site is, if the 747 not found URL's is a large percentage of your total page count, you could be experiencing a temporary rankings drop that will disappear one you fix your error pages. If you could add a link to a few of the 404 error pages we could help you figure out what is wrong with your site code or server setup.
-
Just my two cents friend..
4 days back, Google released Panda 4.0. You can check if that caused the drop.
Here is a tool that can help you find if any of the Google penalties are behind the drop:
http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/
Once on the page, click on the 'Log-in to Analytics' button and allow the tool to access your Google Analytics account and check if the recent Panda caused the drop. Hope this helps.
Good luck. By the way, thin content is of no use these days and you should be investing all your quality time in producing quality content.
Best,
Devanur Rafi
-
I looked at some of your content, and some of it seems quite thin, such as the regulations for each state. There's really only a couple of sentences (in the instances that I saw) that deal with the individual state, and then there's a lot of boilerplate content, navigation, and other site elements that are the same from page to page. Just one more thing to think about.
-
It looks like google penalize you, it's happen to one of my websites on January, I was going nuts because I didn't see any message until 2 weeks after on my google webmaster tools. I would recommend a couple o days to see if you see something if not then try to check your links if a couple of websites you are linking got penalized they you can get in trouble too.
-
Kevin, any insight into where to start with respect to the 747 missing URL's?? What causes that? How to fix? Thanks!!
-
haha! Ok! Thanks Kevin!
-
No, no. My bad. You mentioned above that you've been ranking strong for two years, and then when I peaked at your site I saw the RT template. I wrongly assumed the Joomla template was released at the same time as the Magento template (I actually use the same exact template for Magento at www.88k.com.tw, although heavily modified). I was just thinking if you had done a site revamp with a new template that might be a factor in your recent bump off SERPs. Sorry to worry you about that. But it looks like you found an issue with the 404 errors. Good job.
-
Also, I just noticed this (see image). 747 missing URL's!?
-
What do you mean by "it's not 2 years old"? Is being under 2 years old a factor?
-
Thanks! Yes, it's Google. We actually are ranking better on Bing and Yahoo now!
Looked at Google Webmaster and it shows a steep drop on 5-21. (image attached)
-
A couple of things I'd do right away:
Look in Google Webmaster Tools to see if there are any notices there (I'm going to assume that it's Google where you are no longer ranking).
Look in your analytics to see if there was a particular day that you dropped off. You can then look to see if that coincided with any known algorithm update.
-
My bad. Looks like it is. It was release for Magento only late last year.
-
Always great to help out a fellow Rocketeer! Did you recently update your website, because that template is not 2 years old. This could certainly be a factor.
-
Thanks, Kevin. I haven't made any changes in months, and do not do any crazy linking schemes. Competitors seem to be at the same places on the page. We are the only one hit by this.
-
That's a tough one without more to go on. Google releases updates to it's ranking algorithm every so often and some site get hit hard. If you're content hasn't changed and you haven't engaged in any unusual activity in terms of link building or advertising, then I'd say wait it out. Give it a week or two, which is how long it's taken many other quality sites to bounce back from a Google update. Unlikely you'll have issues here, but you still might want to check your webmaster tools to see if any manual actions have been applied.
This might be a good time to go over your site, again, for the first time;-) See what could be done to answer visitor questions and lead them to the right pages.
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
-
Optimization for "Search by Photos" feature
Howdy, fellow mozzers, Does anyone know what affects a given company photos show up in the "Search by Photos" section? I can't find any decent info.. Here is the link to SEL, describing the feature (not even google themselves seem to have an announcement about it). https://searchengineland.com/google-showing-mobile-search-by-photos-option-in-selected-local-verticals-323237 Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DmitriiK0 -
Google Search Console Site Property Questions
I have a few questions regarding Google Search Console. Google Search Console tells you to add all versions of your website https, http, www, and non-www. 1.) Do I than add ALL the information for ALL versions? Sitemaps, preferred site, etc.? 2.) If yes, when I add sitemaps to each version, do I add the sitemap url of the site version I'm on or my preferred version? - For instance when adding a sitemap to a non-www version of the site, do I use the non-www version of the sitemap? Or since I prefer a https://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml do I use it there? 3.) When adding my preferred site (www or non-www) do I use my preferred site on all site versions? (https, http, www, and non-www) Thanks in advance. Answers vary throughout Google!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mike.Bean0 -
How to Improve Search Ranking from 10 to Top 5
Hi, I was just optimizing a page and have improved it from Page 2 -> Page 1 ; Position 15->10 for now by basic onpage seo edits. I want to understand how I would take it to next level by getting it to Top 5 or Top 3 results. My keyword and page are as follows (all checked in Google India (.in) ) Page - https://nirogam.com/ayurvedic-treatment-home-remedies-chikungunya/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pks333
Keyword - ayurvedic treatment for chikungunya What steps can I take to go from 10 - Top 3 or Top 5 results here? I was checking the Rank tracker & moz Grader for this - got all ticks except adding keyword in URL. Would this be recommended of changing the URL after it's ranking so well to just add this keyword in the same?0 -
Pages Disappearing from Search
Hi, We have had a strongly ranking site since 2004. Over the past couple of days, our Google traffic has dropped by around 20% and some of our strong pages are completely disappearing from the rankings. They are still indexed, but having ranked number 1 are nowhere to be found. A number of pages still remain intact, but it seems they are increasingly disappearing. Where should we start to try and find out what is happening? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simonukss0 -
Optimized Page Not Ranking for Head Term
We have a primary donation page that we've tried to position well for the term 'Donate' and some of its longer-tailed derivatives. The page has plenty of high-quality backlinks and internal links, and hasn't had any manual actions taken against it. The backlink profile is fairly good from what I can tell, definitely not mainly spam. The issue is that it doesn't rank for 'Donate', at all really. For 'Donate Online' and 'Donate Canada', it ranks roughly #3-4 across major Canadian cities, but we're not even in the top 100 for 'Donate'. There are pages and domains that are way less optimized, with much weaker backlink profiles, that are ranking well ahead of us. It's not a noindex or robots problem, as the page ranks fine for many other terms. We also have a strong domain with around 660k backlinks according to MajesticSEO. Here's the URL in question: http://www.redcross.ca/donate I'm hoping someone can help us diagnose what could be going wrong with this term specifically and how we can get this page into the SERPs where it belongs. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digitalcrc0 -
Will multiple domains from the same company rank for the same keyword search?
I'm trying to convince people that we need good marketing reasons for starting multiple domains, as it will be more difficult to rank multiple sites. Does anyone know if Google actively discourages multiple domains from the same company appearing in the search results for the same keyword? We are creating a separate content website which is related to an existing company website. Would you agree that is best to have these sites on one domain with the content site on a sub-domain perhaps? I'm worried about duplication of effort and cross-keyword targeting in particular. These sites would not have duplicate content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
SEOmoz is only crawling 2 pages out of my website
I have checked on Google Webmaster and they are crawling around 118 pages our of my website, store.itpreneurs.com but SEOmoz is only crawling 2 pages. Can someone help me? Thanks Diogo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jslusser0 -
Google Webmaster Now Shows YourMost Recent Links
I just saw this story today about a new Google Webmaster feature which lets you download a file of the most recent links. http://searchengineland.com/google-now-shows-you-your-most-recent-links-127903 I downloaded the file today and I already discovered a major site issue. Our site blog was completely duplicated on a secondary domain we own and Google was showing that site as recent links. I already emailed the dev team to fix this pronto. Anybody else using this new feature and perhaps can share if it helps you in any way.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | irvingw1