Huge drop for main branded keyword
-
The past week the main branded keyword for a site i am working on has dropped from the top three on Google US to page 7! It is still ranking in the top three on Google in other areas. I recently redirected /index.php to / using .htaccess. Could this have caused a problem?
If not, what else could have caused such a huge drop?
-
Can an EMD update remove SERPS for all keywords, or just the exact matches? We recently lost all our foreign language domain serps, roughly on the 4/5th
-
Quite a lot of traffic lands on the listings pages so im reluctant to set them to noindex. There are only approx. 4,000 listings pages. I'm trying to find where these other pages that are being indexed are coming from.
-
If most of your organic search traffic lands on your homepage, you might want to consider setting all the listing pages to noindex. That'll get the duplicate content out of Google's index.
-
The duplicate content is a problem as a lot of teh listings are pulled in via XML from agent sites. I've been trying to find a way to make it all more unique without editing each listing manually.
-
Thanks for this.
What is the best way to find where all of these links are coming from? The only place i can see is the search results page. I have set this 'noindex, follow'. Should i set it to 'noindex, nofollow"?
-
Good point. All those sub-pages (listing pages) have content that is duplicated across multiple other sites, too.
-
I don't think anyone has mentioned this but your number of internal links is borderline nuts. I found about 190,000 internal pages.
If you remove those internal links and Google this:
"www.phuketproperty.com" -site:www.phuketproperty.com
You'll see that your site has 13,000-ish backlinks. Take a look at the highest ranked ones. They're mostly all cheap/low quality inbound links. You don't have a huge backlink profile based on the tremendous size of your site.
To put it in perspective
www.microsoft.com has 688,000 internal links and 28 million incoming links.
www.century21.com has 11 million internal links and almost 50 million incoming links.
www.phuket.com has 5530 internal links and 287,000 incoming links.
Internal links are not usually 10x incoming links. That could be part of it. You have 13,000 not-quality inbound links. And 200k indexed pages.
-
Thanks for your help. It looks like I'll just have to keep doing what i am doing and hope it bounces back quite quickly.
-
Generally speaking, you want to remove bad links while building good, new ones.
-
Before i took over the site the owners had taken on the service of some link building company. The links the company added where just added in to any wiki type site they could find. it seems that they only used four different types of key words when they were doing it. I have managed to remove over 600 of these links and the site was just starting to rank well for a variety of keywords, then all of a sudden this week the site has dropped back for its main keyword.
Do you think the best strategy is to keep removing the bad links? Apparently the site ranked better before these links were built.
-
I was thinking the same thing, you got hit with the EMD update recently especially if it happened this week.
-
Sounds like you got hit by the EMD update: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2214115/Google-Warns-of-Upcoming-Exact-Match-Domain-Algorithm-Change
-
I doubt a 301 redirect from index.php to / would have done that.
An EMD issue could be the reason, as could an automated penalty (Penguin, Panda, anchor text over-optimization, etc.). If we had your URL and keyword, it would be easier to make specific suggestions.
-
Hi
Can you provide me your keyword which dropped and URL of your site?
I think if index.php contains backlinks and you have 301 redirected then some % of link-juice may be loss but it does not have huge affect as you said. Have you contain EMD?? After EMD algorithm updates by Google it may be possible your domain was affected by this update.
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
-
Organic Traffic Dropped By Half
My company website (https://factoryexpodirect.com/) organic traffic is dropped in March 2017 and after that it never recovered. I am not sure what is the reason. Can anyone help me out to figure out the reason.
Technical SEO | | christmaslaserlights0 -
My PA and DA dropped Higest Rate
hi i got a domain with 49 DA and 36 PA and bought it through namecheap after uploading on their server with https:// after 5 days the site lost its PA and DA now it was 1 PA and 9 DA Could any one tell me what the issue behind this the links is fair and not spam but why the dropping of cause for???
Technical SEO | | gamajunova0 -
Do Meta Keywords matter?
I am a firm believer in the fundamentals of SEO but is there any data to support its impact positively or negatively towards a sites rank?
Technical SEO | | Brandonp0 -
First Link Priority - Drop Down Menu
Hey Mozzers Just want to make sure I have this right - If a website offers a service, say "digital marketing" - and has this link in a dropdown menu in the header, would this make any link in the body of a page (using different anchor text) pointless in SEO terms?.. e.g. a link with "online marketing" or "digital strategy" Cheers!
Technical SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
2 pages ranking for same keyword.. Need some advice on what to do.
Here's my question. When I first started my website we started Using keyword anchor building links To my homepage . Over the years Our business has expanded to more than just baby headbands. I now have a baby headband page. When tracking my rankings. I sometimes see Both pages in Google for the same keyword. Other days I do not see both of them. My question is Should I continue building links and keyword anchor text for the home page Or should I switch them and start building keyword-rich anchor text for my baby headband page. I'm just wondering if the Search engine is confused by the two. When searching for the keyword baby headbands. I will sometimes show up for eight and nine. 8 is my home page and 9 is for the baby headband page. I have always shown up for the keyword "baby Headbands" for my home page.
Technical SEO | | PB20070 -
Brand name as H1 on every page
Hi, Along with the title of each page, a Wordpress client has their brand name as a H1 on every single page. This is situated in the footer and just sits within the company info/address. Should these tags be removed, leaving just the page titles as H1s? Cheers, Lewis
Technical SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Excessive use of KeyWord?
Hey I have an Immigration website in South Africa
Technical SEO | | NikitaG
MigrationLawyers.co.za and the website used to be divided in to two categories:
1st part - South African Immigration
2nd part - United Kingdom Immigration Because of that we made all the pages include the word "South Africa" in the titles. eg.
...ers.co.za/work-permit-south-africa
...ers.co.za/spousal-visa-south-africa
...ers.co.za/retirement-permit-south-africa
...ers.co.za/permanent-residence-south-africa I'm sure you get the idea.
we since, removed the UK part of the website and now are left only with the SA part. Now my question is: Is it bad? will google see this as spammy, as I'm targeting "South Africa" in almost every link of the website. Should I stick to the structure for new pages, or try to avoid any more use of "South Africa". Perhaps I can change something as it currently stands? Kind Regards
Nikita0 -
Repeating brand name on all subcategory levels
As part consolidating our site navigation, I have an opportunity to change how we name url s on child pages. At present, I think there are 2 problems that could be fixed.
Technical SEO | | stephenfishman
1.As you drill down, the brand name is not part of each url.
2. Also, the urls show abreviations that are not customer friendly. Are these worth changing? I am redirecting pages whether I change the naming or not. Below is my current navigation and below that the changed navigation I am considering. Many thanks to all that look and share their thoughts. Handcrafter --- details -- This is an e-commerce site with on hand products and similar products which are custom ordered from a catalog: Current Navigation Drill Down: /ctgy/brandname.html /ctgy/brandname-onh.html
/ctgy/onhmir.html then the specific products:
/onhmir/30322-onhmir92_741.html
/onhmir/30324-onhmir96_743.html The catalog has more products and so has 1 extra level of child category pages:
ctgy/brandname.html
/ctgy/brandname-cat.html
/ctgy/brandname-catmir.html
/ctgy/design1catmir.html
/ctgy/design2catmir.html then the specific products:
/catmir/30322-catmirhappy.html
/catmir/30324-catmirhappy.html Changed Naming Under Consideration:
On pages above the product page, (category pages) spell out all words and place the brand name in the parent url. The result would be: /ctgy/brandname.html /ctgy/brandname-on-hand.html
/ctgy/brandname-on-hand-mirror.html then the specific products:
/brandname-on-hand-mirror/30322-onh-mir92_741.html
/brandname-on-hand-mirror/30324-on-hand-mir96_743.html The catalog has more products and so has 1 extra level of child category pages: /ctgy/brandname-catalog.html
/ctgy/brandname-catalog-mirror.html
/ctgy/brandname-catalog-mirror-style1.html
ctgy/brandname-catalog-mirror-style2.html then the specific products:
/brandname-catalog-mirror-style1/30322-cat-mirhappy.html
/brandname-catalog-mirror-style1/30324-cat-mirhappy.html0