Sudden Drop in Rankings/Traffic/Organic Impressions Without a Penalty
-
Hi Moz community!
I have a question about a local client in Raleigh, NC - http://paragonbuildinggroup.com
This client came to us from another agency who had previously not done such a great job with the design/development of the site, or with the marketing of it, so we are somewhat limited in terms of what we can do on design, user experience, etc. But, the SEO is all still easy to tweak and we've been working on it for some time now.
As of July 5th, their keyword rankings have dropped dramatically (we're talking from first page rankings to nothing, according to Authority Labs), and they've fallen completely off the map in the SERPs. Their local listing doesn't appear in search results anymore, and WMT is showing a drastic drop in impressions (from 457 on July 3rd to 92 on July 5th). There have been no manual penalties on the site, no recent major development work done, and from what I can see, no signs of hacking and no bad backlinks. The only thing I can see is that Mozcast showed an 83 degree day with some clouds and rain on July 5th, the day that our rankings dropped off, but I can't find any documentation showing what might have changed.
Any insight as to what might be going on? I'm completely stumped!
-
I did not go thru your entire list of links but I checked on BuiderDirectory.com and it costs money to be included in their directory. How is that not the same as buying links? Shouldn't this be a violation of Google's policy as well?
-
All great suggestions - thank you!! We're working with the associations that the client is accredited with at the moment to try to build some quality links. Branching out on top of that seems to be the right move to make at this point now, too.
-
I am not huge on directories but here are some you should go for - I am sure there are more:
http://www.thebluebook.com/
http://www.homeadvisor.com/
http://www.nahb.org/
http://www.epa.gov/radon/rrnc/directory.html
http://www.builderdirectory.com/ -
I am guessing the algorithmic penalty. Don't change your plans, just jump on them. Content and good, relevant links. I would also break up that interlinking if actually working on the other websites isn't something you are being paid to do. Separate from them, rewrite the content on the website that is your main focus and start working on links (clients, material vendors - anything relevant you can get quickly).
-
That's great feedback, and the content is definitely something that is on our radar to work on. We did inherit access to all of the company's sites, but this Building Group site is our main focus. Unfortunately, the client doesn't have the budget right now for us to combine all services into one mother site (as much as we would like to!!), so we are doing what we can with the way that things are set up between the various sites right now.
Content is definitely actionable - and I appreciate you taking the time to take a glance over things! Backlinks are another action item we have on our list. This change just came about so suddenly that it's really thrown us on the work we've had planned.
-
Question - when you took them over did you get all three websites?
paragonbuildinggroup.com/, paragonroofinggroup.com and paragonpaintinggroup.com
There is some pretty bad duplicate content between the building group site and the roofing group site and with the sites interlinking as they do, I would say Google noticed pretty quick.
I know you are limited as to what can be done but I would say explain to your client that each website needs to have content relevant only to what that particular website is offering - no duplicate content. If the building website wants to touch on roofing then link to the other website - that is fine. Honestly, I would personally rather see all of this put together on one website with different sections for the different services - then the other domain names could just 301 to the relevant sections of the mother website. Also - links. the building group website needs them badly. As far as what happened - there is no way to be 100% sure but I am guessing an algorithmic penalty - the way the three websites (that I found, there could be more) are set up could certainly look like an attempt to manipulate search results to the algorithms. Honestly... it probably was an attempt to manipulate search results, an attempt by the last vendor. Not a penalty for the duplicate content, mind you - but the duplicate content and interlinking etc... were probably signals that all added up to "hey, these websites are not following guide lines" this was just a quick look though - I could be wrong.
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
-
410 /demandware.store/ pages
I have a client that just migrated to salesforce commerce cloud. They have a large amount of 410 pages showing up in site crawls. They are all of the /on/demandware.store/ variety. Is there any reason to redirect thousands of these pages? Any value? Or should they be allowed to drop off?
On-Page Optimization | | bdcseo1 -
Ranking Fluctuations
I need your help. My rankings have been on a wild roller coaster ride since I started optimizing the site with standard on page optimization changes. (No keyword stuffing or over-optimization...) I have only made positive changes for the content on the page; I created unique descriptions for every product. I redirected some urls that weren’t readable into a more user- friendly format. I am only doing completely organic link building, really. Yet for some weird reason the rankings initially rose and then steeply fell and ever since have went back up to the top and right back to not in the top 50 results. Just to give you an example this is a graph of one of our main keywords: https://www.diigo.com/item/image/3vpdp/gd2q This is another keyword that we admittedly never were in the top 5 results but usually we were in the top 20. Check out the wild fluctuations. If it wasn't the main keyword we were going after, I would probably laugh. https://www.diigo.com/item/image/3vpdp/rcy9 I asked an expert he said he think it might be from a major issue with internal competition. The keywords that seem to fluctuate the most, have numerous landing pages that compete for the same keyword. Since we sell the same object in many many different sizes, thicknesses and colors it only makes sense that we have the same keyword on many pages. I would love someone that is an expert in this area to have a look at the site and give actionable advice so I can stop the craziness. Do you have any suggestions? Do you have anyone that you’d refer for this type of job/consulting?
On-Page Optimization | | EcomLkwd0 -
Wrong Page is Ranking
My client is an Ecommerce reseller of a few major scooter brands. We currently rank fifth for a particular brand name but our main brand page isn't the one that ranks. Instead, it's a product page. The main brand page has an A rating from Moz for the desired keyword phrases. Neither page has any backlinks. Any ideas on why our main brand page would be outranked by a product page? What could we do to change this?
On-Page Optimization | | TrinShin0 -
Looking for advice on rewriting page that is currently ranked.
Hi, we put up a page 2 years ago (available from our home page) that is currently ranking in top 5 for a few of the key words we built it for. The challenge is we did this quickly and know we can (and actually have) built out a better quality, informative page. The content while similar is completely rewritten. Does anyone have experience in rewriting low quality pages that are ranking well? Essentially we are trying to step up our game and build up our quality from a human perspective, but unsure what/if any would happen with our SEO and keywords we are currently ranking for. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | redfishking0 -
Need help with fluctuating ranking for a specific keyword
my website www.totalmanagement.com fluctuates for the search term: web based property management software I have been using SEO Moz for a few months now and have managed to get to the top 5 and jump around between 3 and 5. Does anyone have any suggestions to assist me? Long term goal is also to really target: Property Management Software But I am still very new at this. Thanks in advance for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | dgruhin0 -
Particular page fails to rank well
Hi all We are building, managing and marketing a Danish tourism site for VisitSweden. The site targets a Danish market-group with information and travel tips on going to Sweden. We have one page in particular that has always failed to rank well for some reason. http://www.meresverige.dk/rejser/malmo This page targets the keyword "Malmø". Another page, with similar layout and content seems to rank alot better. http://www.meresverige.dk/rejser/goeteborg Keyword "Gøteborg" Any ideas? Smart tips? Have the best of days Fredrik
On-Page Optimization | | Resultify0 -
Major Ranking Drop
My site bestdslrreview dot net was ranking number one for Canon T3i. I was amazed considering my competition. 🙂 Canon T3i was at number 3 to 5 usually for US traffic.. Canon 7d review was ranking number 2 and Canon 7D was on page one. Canon 7D keywords dropped about 10 places but Canon T3i Review dropped about 50. and same for Canon T3i. I worry about a number of things, including thin affiliate site but I don't know, my articles are original. I also worry about to many links with my keywords in anchor text. My on page results from SEOMOZ look great to me. This drop was my main reasons for going ahead and signing up. Hoping I could find out what happened. The site is only about six months old. I waited probably three months before doing any significant link building. The good thing is, I was ranking high from Black Thursday until a few days before Christmas. It can't be someone else just started doing SEO as I fell far too fall. Some kind of penalty. I had Google do this to another of my sites once though and after a couple of months it bounced back for most of my keywords. A site very much like this one. Is this just the Google Dance? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | RustyF0