Google smacked my site and dropped all rankings, can't find out why

[s-s]

I have checked out everything, I mean everything.

We have no dupe content, our content is a little thin, but it is ours and accurate enough to help our customers.We follow all SEO guidelines and make sure we de-index any pages with no / little content (like privacy, or faq)

All in all, we haven't done any major updates to the sites, and everything was great (page one on almost all kw) but beginning of the month, all kw wiped to the second page, than third, than back to one and now pretty much gone (rank 100-200)

I really don't know what to do. We didn't receive a manual action, and the last algo update was nothing big to cause such a drastic change.

Meanwhile our competition (multiple sites) are gaining in ranks and nothing happened to them (most of them have even less content and not even SSL)

Negative SEO is out of question, I check all links via ahrefs every other day.

Any help is appreciated

Thanks

[s-s]

Moosa,

I am currently looking into it.

One thing I know for sure is that a lot of my links dropped, because I stopped using the individuals that were building links for me.

I know what needs to be done on that end.

Thank you for your insight

[s-s]

You might actually be a little stubborn me too, tho.

I called months ago, spoke to different people, legal team even called back one day and they said, unfortunately they don't allow that type of product, even it not being loaded rounds.

I said... well if you don't want my money, what can I do. 

[David-Kley]

I would try it anyway, but maybe I'm just stubborn, lol.

http://searchengineland.com/google-weapon-listings-shopping-search-126487

Perhaps since you are selling casings, and not "ammunition" per say, you may be able to get your ads showing. Either that or just spend 5 minutes on the phone with Google adwords help. I'm sure they would be able to let you know what your are eligible to advertise. 1-866-246-6453

[s-s]

David,

you are absolutely right, there are ads popping up here and there. Mainly people selling over amazon.com and etsy, but very rarely are there any direct ads from my competition.

There was no error message, as we did not even go ahead and submitted it due to this:

https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6014299

It has gotten so ridiculous that even if one day I want to run a blog with info only and place ads, I'm not allowed to show any adsense ads

[David-Kley]

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=used%20shell%20casings

There has to be a way. If you search for used shell casings on Google, other sites show ads and product feeds. What was the exact error message you received when trying to submit your ads?

[s-s]

David,

you are right, an Adwords campaign would help me find the right terms and also get me much more traffic, but unfortunately Google does not allow us to advertise on their platform due to our products being prohibited (google policy).

I even had build up an automated feed for google shopping, but again they don't allow us to be a part of it. Even for google trusted stores, we were declined.

So I am fighting a battle like others, but I am not allowed to use all the same tools.

[David-Kley]

Its cool, we're still bros lol. I understand what you mean, I was just giving him an example of what to look for, or how to optimize for his search audience. Honestly the best way would be to run an Adwords campaign for a month, and look at the Dimentions>search terms to see how people are searching for his products. Could also use the keyword planner, but I have found that to be...lacking in some areas.

I agree in that one of the most important areas to look into would be the backlink profile, as it seems that he is losing authority to his competition.

[David-Kley]

It could be, if the redirect was not done correctly. Also it can take time for Google to realize a change has been made. I remember when we redesigned our whole site, and saw a ranking drop for about 2 months, then we came back stronger than ever. The one thing you don't want to do is freak out and change a lot of things at once when you are still unsure what caused the drop. It might be a good idea to take a hard look at the competitors sites that ranked up for your keywords, and do a backlink profile on their domains. It's one easy way to see why Google is ranking them so well.

I would make sure that all the old pages have a place to go, even if that means going through the site search in google and clicking on each URL. This will tell you if you have any dead or 404 pages not covered by a redirect. I know that people are changing to the SSL to try and rank since Google announced it could help, but you still have to make sure your pages redirect properly. Drop this in your URL bar and see what pages dont go anywhere: site:eastcoastarsenal.com/

Depending on your location focus, I would also look and see what citation profiles your competitors have.

[s-s]

I know this is a stupid question to ask, considering that every little bit makes a difference with Google, but do you believe that the redirect would have been such a huge influence in the rank drop?

[David-Kley]

Not a problem! I'm aware that you sell more than one type, I just used the rifle casings as an example. Also, looks like the SSL redirect is working now. Once you get some of the items fixed and resubmitted in webmaster tools, you should see some fluxuation in your rankings. Glad I could help

[s-s]

David,

thank you so much for your time and detailed explanation. It is very much appreciated.

For the first point, we don't only sell rifle cases, we sell all cases, be it rifle, pistol or revolver.

I will look into everything today and keep everyone posted. As far as I know the 99 urls, are actually only 45, since I have some no index in there and have removed "empty" pages from google a few months back to make sure not to get penalized for thin content.

[s-s]

Travis,

EDIT: I believe that issue is fixed and I am working on the rest.

thanks for the info, nice to meet a fellow shooter

I have been trying to re-produce the redirect errors for the www and can't seem to find them.

Could you give me some detail as to how you saw that issue.

Thanks

[DougRoberts]

Got to say I'm totally with Moosa on this one. Your link profile is a significant weakness.

I would start by looking at your business relationships/partnerships etc and see if you can get branded links from other sites related to your niche. There's little other content on your site that will learn more general/broader links. (There's no blog/resource/faq pages etc.)

Even though the link may be using branded anchor text, they are still coming from topically relevant sites.

[Travis_Bailey]

I would say this has more to do with off-page tactics. Though the on-page could use some work. The site has only been live for a little over a year. A lot of the links the site had appeared to have gone in August, per crawl.

That's actually a good thing. You're going to learn about over-optimized anchor text. In short, don't do what has happened.

The vast majority of the anchor text for the links were 'xyz brass'. These aren't competitive terms, so a few links went a long way. Now the majority of the few links are gone. Thus the rankings are down.

It looks like you can still do pretty well taking a semi-local approach, from a links perspective. The local approach is generally clean. Claim your business listings, include enough relevant information - rinse, lather and repeat. That should help some.

Now, the one thing that appears to be discounted is the fact that shooting/reloading has a wide and passionate audience. There's a lot that can be done there to gain legit links. One just has to be a little creative.

I understand shooting. I like a lot of the military guns, especially curio & relics. I know not to buy combloc ammunition with brass casings from the 50's-60's. Shooting squibs or generally having a receiver or slide blow up in my face is not my idea of fun.

That being said, I think you should definitely start targeting more 'reloading' keyword variants. That's what the site is there for, right? I have to disagree with the '9mm brass casings for sale' example. (Sorry David. I know it was just an example. Still bros? Good.) 'Once fired caliber brass' is definitely a better target. It's what you're selling, it has some volume and it isn't terribly competitive.

David is most definitely correct about the WWW version of the site and HTTPS. You should get that redirect fixed, ASAP.

The images you do have look fine to me, in regard to file names. You have the caliber and the keyword in there. They also have alt attributes that make sense enough. Though some of the images are on the large side, in regard to file size. Having the image dimensions of the image in the file name is actually a recommended practice as well. Folders with the month and year is really a quibbling point, but some could argue that numbers in the URL (within reason) increase the speed of the on-site DB query for a visitor.

There are some of the finer points you can definitely fix, but I think this mainly boils down to:

1. Newer site
2. Lost links
3. Over-optimized Anchor Text (And lost over-optimized anchors text.)

And yes, the site should show me some casings before nearly the bottom of a 1920x1080 display.

[MickEdwards]

yep, didn't even get to anchor text.  Absolutely right, this has been spanked for all the reasons you can get spanked.

[MoosaHemani]

I don’t see any big issue with the website that takes you from 1^st page to 100+ in rankings for most of your keywords until I looked n to your link profile. I looked at it and it took me less than 15 seconds or less to figure out where the problem is.

Here are few of the things that you are doing wrong:

-          Link with Brand name as an Anchor

Imagine a scenario where all the links you are getting to your website will be natural and think about the possible anchor texts you can receive. Why would someone link back to your website an exact match keyword instead of some general keyword or brand name?

You have very few links with the brand name as an anchor text in the link profile and general keywords are simply none. This is a clear indication that your link profile is not natural.

-          Quality of Links

I am not sure why you was ranking on the first page but keeping your links in mind I don’t see any quality in it and whatever you are going through completely make sense to me.

In order to get the rankings back my recommendation is to get good quality links (as many as you can) with natural anchor text and brand name so that Google can consider you as a ethical and legit business and give you your rankings back.

[MickEdwards]

Without delving too deeply it may be your link profile, especially if you have bombed in the past few days.

You have a lot of forum links. There are also directories and article submission sites.  One site in particular A Seek is a database of suppliers for products searched for.  If the product is not available there is no 404 page rather the same homepage view, so effectively you are part of what may look to Google as mass page 'advertising' as your link as well as all the other suppliers appears wholesale.  These all make up the backbone of your link profile and if not the cause I would be very nervous leaving as is.

[David-Kley]

Perhaps you didn't do anything wrong, but didn't do anything right..?

It's really important to look at ALL the factors as you mentioned. I looked at the site, and here is what I found in about 5 minutes.

1. IMPROPER VISUAL CUES: The site is about * removed per member request *, correct? On the home page, nothing immediately pops out at me and says * removed per member request ! Visual engagement can be the first thing that makes a user interact, or leave your site. Look at analytics to see where people are leaving, and see if there is a trend.
2. UNCLEAR TARGETING: What is your goal? Are you trying to rank locally, (since you mention the location) or nationwide? Perhaps since it is unclear on the site, search engines are also unsure.
3. BROKEN REDIRECTS: Notice that you can access the site from multiple ways, both with www. and without. Doing with prompts a security error which I'm guessing is a incorrect setup cpanel redirect or SSL, given the visual cues. Does a search engine even know what version to index? (www. vs. non-www) To word it better: have you told them what version to index, and submitted that version to the search providers? Don't just do an SSL because an SEO says it will improve your ranking. Make sure you understand how to implement said redirect, and all website pages to the proper version.
4. IMPROPER KEYWORD TARGETS: We hear people say every once and a while, that they don't show up for keywords. But we also see that they get a ton of traffic and leads. Targeting what people are actually searching for vs. what you think they are searching for can be a huge difference in perceived success and failure. What keywords have you seen improve? What keywords have you seen drop off since you mention you went to a lower ranking? How is this tracked? What keywords fell off? Did you gain in rank for any keyword variations?
5. IMAGE SEO: Went through and checked some images. Noticed that none of them are titled specifically what you want to rank for. You never know what a user will type in, as there are many thousands of variations, but you can be sure to cover your bases from the very base level. A user might search in the web view, but could also use the images tab to see what they are getting. I can assure you, * removed per member request * will rank better than * removed per member request * almost every time. 
6. H TAG MADDNESS! Might want to see how your site renders out in the eyes of a search engine: removed per member request *
Lots of H tags make it hard for a search engine to determine what your page is about. Sure, lots of things have changed since the introduction of HTML 5, but the basics remain in place. Think of the pages on your site like a document you would write for college. You would have a header, secondary header that elaborates your opening header statement, and so on. The page layout in the eyes of a search engine is confusing, and needs to be cleaned up a bit. Contact your coder or CSS person to have some of the headers render out as

text rather than <h1, h2="" h3,="" h4="">tags. 
7. PROPER ROBOTS SETTINGS: Did a site search and found 99 results. Might want to check and see if 99 URLS are how many exist for your site. if not, you may have other links from server and database generated wordpress pages. Overall, the pages of results I looked through looked legit, but most were a bit generic in terms of basic SEO. Example:

• removed per member request *</h1,>

This is just a basic analysis, and there are plenty of other places to look/ data to analyze. I hope this helps to give you a wider scope of where to start. I have this thread on auto-alert so any reply you post will email me.

• Dave