Rankings tanking fast and I cant figure out why. Any insight?
-
This site was created about a 18 months ago, and since then we did our own in house SEO. Well we did hire one recommended company on the Moz list for a few months and they did great linkbuilding but were super expensive. We always saw steady increase in organic clicks both via google and bing. We got to a maximum of around 25k organic clicks/month in July before we started to tank. We are now down to around 16k/mo and continuing to drop quickly.
Nothing has changed as far as what we are doing for SEO. The only thing that comes to mind was back in July we saw some negative SEO against us. Fortunately we keep a very close eye on our back links so we disavowed all of the toxic links pretty much as they were found. There was about ten of them from places such as:
sharklinks.info
bookmarkingforseo.com
compasslinks.infoWe don't have any manually actions in webmaster tools. Anyone want to help point me in the right direction? We have some competitors out ranking us with a horrible back link profile, beyond crappy website/content etc. I guess this is the nature of the beast and google doesnt always get it right, but I would love to hear your thoughts on why we are going backwards.
-
I would look at before and after dates in analytics and compare to see where your traffic loss is occurring.
Have you been manually tracking the rank of your keywords over time? have you noticed a drop off for a keyword that you would expect to be a high traffic driver?
It could be that you have lost a referring link that was sending over a lot of traffic, was/are you doing any PPC traffic that may have had an affect on your volumes, sometimes people forget that PPC spend also drives organic traffic, so you would see a natural decline in organic traffic if you slow down your PPC spend.
-
Unfortunately, Google Analytics does not provide a 'What's Changed' report, but you can somewhat easily make that report by exporting your Keyword information and traffic details to excel, then comparing your top terms over time.
I wouldn't suggest looking at all 1600 keywords. Instead, identify the keywords that sent 80% of your traffic and see what's changed among those. Was there a few specific keywords that sent huge amounts of traffic and no longer do so? Or can you identify a general decrease across all keywords (maybe signalling a seasonal change?).
-
I thought this might be the case, and it could be. When I run a semrush report, we went from ranking 1,400 keywords in July to 1,600 in Sept. So something is on the correct path, but obviously if the ranking is lower on aggregate for these keywords then we could be going backwards.
I am getting mixed signals I guess from the reports I am running and the actual traffic.
-
Are you referring to some sort of tool that will show you exactly "whats changed", or if I just took a look at the difference between the periods? I know that our top 20 traffic generating keywords stayed roughly the same in SERP positions, maybe an overall minimal drop when you take an average of them. We rank for some 1,600 keywords so cant manually check them all.
Is there an easier way of comparing now and then? I am importing into excel both time period and then just manipulating the data.
-
Given your scenario, there could me many areas to check and see what is has changed to effect your rankings. Have you done a 'what's changed' analysis to see exactly where your traffic dropped?
Month-to-month look at the keywords that were sending you traffic and identify which keywords have reduced their visits. Then track those keywords in Moz, see where you can improve on-page, and see what your competitors have done to outrank you.
Once you know why the change has happened, you can adjust to get that traffic back that you've lost.
-
Could it have something to do with your topic, rather than the site itself? When I look at "student debt relief" in Google trends, I see a big spike in July, and September is half that. I know on my site that traffic is related to seasonality.
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
-
Ranking issue for new website
Hi all, I have got a specific SEO challenge. 6 months ago, we started to build an eCommerce site (located in the UK). In order to speed up the site launch, we copied the entire site over from an existing site based in Ireland. Now, the new UK site has been running for 5 months. Google has indexed many pages, which is good, but we can't rank high (position: between 20-30 for most pages). We thought it was because of content duplication in spite of different regions. So we tried to optimize the pages for the UK site to make them more UK-related and avoid content duplication. I've also used schema to tell google it's a UK-based site and set up Google my business and got more local citations. Besides, If you could give me any suggestions, it'd be perfect.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Insightful_Media
Thank you so much for your time and advice.1 -
How to rank a product page
Hello, I have a product page and just did a little introduction ( 5 lines of text) but I have the feeling this is not enough for google. What is the solution ? Is it to increase the amount of content even though it is not going to be user friendly ? Or will google look at the product page I link too and take into account the content on those subpages to boost my "pillar / product page". Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Best approach to rank for this keyword?
Hi i want to rank for the keyword "white sandals" on Google Australia. Currently, the top 5 ranking pages are not optimised and specific to white sandals. See screenshot: https://image.prntscr.com/image/WenSRHqTTFSqYNg2MHvH1A.png To rank for this keyword, would you create a page dedicated to white sandals even though it looks like it doesn't matter and you could rank the broader sandals page (not colour specific). Any recommendations? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crazy4seo780 -
Completely inaccurate rank tracking data
So Moz, Rank Ranger and data from Search Console all show this domain to be position #1 on Google for a certain search term. However, we can't see the same in manual search (desktop, mobile, incognito, &pws=0, different IPs, phone a friend and so on) and Analytics is showing no organic traffic. We can't even find the website in the top 10 pages. ANY IDEAS? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Harry_TheClickHub0 -
My OSE stats have never been better but my rankings are tanking
For some reason my traffic to [Antique Banknotes] has declined drastically over the past month even while my OSE metrics have gone up. A typical example is this 1892 five dollar bill. I used to rank first for this search but now I am 3rd. Worse, a search for ten dollar bill used to have me near the top which brought a lot of traffic. Now I am way out in the weeds. Can anyone help me understand what is causing me to drop so much? I know there is a new competitor who outranks me with the url [Antique money] he is likely the cause of my fall in the ratings. I don't know why but OSE loves his site even though I seem to beat him in most areas OSE measures. His Page authority for instance is 45 while mine is 37 but I have higher scores in every category. I don't understand that. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Banknotes0 -
SEOMoz Keyword Ranking Accuracy
Getting some mixed message on this. Is the keyword ranking informational available in SEOMoz based on the data in Mozscape or based on live Google data? Reason I ask is that my ranking for "crown moulding" for www.worldofmoulding differs: Based on the today's scan my www.worldofmoulding.com ranks in position 40 in Google. Based on a manual check with cleared out cache no local setting ... the site is 4th spot Running a third party check using "Advanced Web Ranking" tool it comes up in 9th spot, but they count the local business SERPs in which case it matches my manual search. It seems that SEOMoz is not in line with actual ranking. Any suggestion for what can be used to accurately asses SERP placement for terms?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanadiumInteractive0 -
Ranking stuck
Hello, I have a client with whom we are doing all the "right" things. We have a blog we add relevant content to once a week, we post on facebook, google+, twitter. We have stumbleupon and tumblr links. We have nice high pr links from local non-profits whom we sponsor for charity events. We are in the local citation sites and have 5 real reviews (working on more) But we are stuck anywhere from page 4 to page 2 for most of our keywords, which are all insurance related in the Gainesville area. I would love to hear some fresh ideas! http://dukeinsuranceagency.com , thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webzenz0 -
One Website - Local + National Ranking
If a client (e.g. a winery) wants to rank both nationally and locally, what are some best practices for doing this on one Website? So the goal is to: Rank nationally for their wines, wine varietals, etc.so they're found by restaurants, distributors, customers (could include national directories, content creation ,etc.) Rank locally for their tasting room and wines for people looking locally or looking at that specific region (this could also include include Google places, local directories, etc.). I'm wondering if the site would need to be subdivided (or "siloed") where one section is heavily focused on national and another is on regional? Also, for the home page, which focus would be most important (maybe national because it's harder)? Thanks a for any ideas! Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DirectionSEO0