Help. Recently my organic traffic has dropped 40%. Any advice / ideas?
-
Lately my organic traffic has dropped significantly as well as my adsense revenue. The moz report says, for example, my traffic is down 40%, but I a still #1 for that keyword.
Also, in the last week, suddenly my number of indexed pages doubled. We had done some page rewriting and maybe messed that up. We've fixed that though. Webmaster tools is still picking up all of our old pages and the new ones.
Background:
- We recently launched our new responsive website in March.
- March income was about the same as February.
- April dropped off suddenly (maybe late march - no sure)
- When we changed site, we did do 301's for all the old pages to the new ones
Any ideas or advice as to why my traffic and revenue has dropped off so sharply? Never submitted questions before - not sure if I am supposed to put urls here so if you just google Home Spelling Words - that's my website. Thanks everyone!!!
-
Kimberly
Here's a little more background straight from Google on "duplicate content" - http://www.thesempost.com/duplicate-content-penalty-exception/
-
Kimberly
You're welcome. To clarify, there is no duplicate content penalty for this. It just means Google can't crawl your site as efficiently and also might not pass link value (page authority) to all the pages as strongly as they might otherwise.
This article is pretty advanced, but explains the idea of crawl optimization really well.
-
I think this is the problem! I checked and found that Google thinks I have double the pages now. Maybe they are thinking I have duplicate content. I will fix this asap. THANK YOU!!!
"Internally, you should also avoid linking to 301 redirects. Link straight to your final URL. For example you link to http://www.homespellingwords.com/About (capitol A) but it redirects to http://www.homespellingwords.com/about (lowercase a). This hurts crawl efficiency and reduces how link authority flows through the site. This happens a LOT on your site, so update all your links,"
-
I agree, Easter weekend was quiet for us as well. Starting to pick up again now though.
-
Hi Kimberly
I don't think Google did anything to purposely hurt the site. The AdWords and Organic search depts are really huge in themselves, and I don't think there is much cross-conversation there. What sort of quality scores are you getting from AdWords for your pages? Are they good?
Bounce rate is a weird metric. A lower bounce rate could be bad too, because users are maybe not easily finding what they want on the landing page and are forced to click around.
Definitely play with the ads. Keep specific notes about what you change and when. And keep in mind, it may take some time (weeks) to reflect in any ranking change.
You should also make a proper 404 page in the template/design of your site - it's just the default server message. These sort of things help show Google you are a responsible site owner
Internally, you should also avoid linking to 301 redirects. Link straight to your final URL. For example you link to http://www.homespellingwords.com/About (capitol A) but it redirects to http://www.homespellingwords.com/about (lowercase a). This hurts crawl efficiency and reduces how link authority flows through the site. This happens a LOT on your site, so update all your links
-
Thanks. That's good information. I have to say, I really dislike the huge ad on the right. I kept getting emails from Google saying that I don't have enough ads and that they should be bigger. So, I gave in and put bigger ads and three per page as they suggested.
I did actually move the main ad down a bit below copy, which it used to be right up top before any copy. I also removed an anchored ad in mobile that sat at the bottom of the page no matter what.
Is it possible that Google asked me to do something (more and bigger ads) and then punished me for it?
My bounce rate is lower than it has ever been so I don't think users are put off. I'm sure some of my problem is ad blockers and lower click through on mobile ads as mobile traffic increases - but that is not my immediate problem - that's a long slow decline of income.
I think I will play with the ads and also see about the new information on adsense about how much ad is visible as I am sure that will have an impact on future revenue too.
-
I agree. I checked and found that I got much less traffic than last year though. Thanks for answering! My traffic really dies on holidays.
-
My initial thought is "ads above the fold". It's hard to tell in Archive.org's archive of your old design, but it looks like ad space increased a lot on the new site? You have the block on the left which kind of interferes with the content, as well as the banner ad on the right which is pretty large (but doesn't distract from the content much).
Plus these ads are not just on the homepage, they are on the inner content pages as well.
They way Matt Cutts explained "ads above the fold" - it's not so much you need to cut down the pixel size of ads, but make sure not ALL your pages have too many ads - so only make a %% of pages on your site have ads, and some not.
I would play with how ads are appearing on the site to begin with.
Your issue does not sound like a migration error, because that is usually immediate. This sounds like something Google takes a little longer to process (page layout / design, user metrics, ads etc).
-
I work for a UK company, and by the looks of things the school holidays and easter played a part in the slight traffic drop for us.
-
I guess that would at least make me feel better in that it's not something I did wrong. Thanks for responding. I feel like my site became invisible. I hope traffic comes back!
-
Thanks for your help. My url is www.HomeSpellingWords.com. I've been tracking my ranks in Moz and it seems like my site is getting a little better every week. However, my page views are steadily dropping, while my rank remains the same or better. The CTR for ads has not changed much. It's almost like I'm ranked but invisible? Anyway, I rank fairly well for many good keywords like spelling words, 1st grade spelling words, 2nd grade...etc and so forth. I've never done any kind of strange link building - was too busy and maybe too lazy.
When I think about this problem, it seems like I'm there (ranked) but invisible???
I need to get an imgur account - will upload images if I can find some that make sense.
-
Interestingly, our site traffic is down ~ 25% in the past 3 weeks as well, with no loss in keyword rankings. We are presently assuming that it has something to do with Google's removal of the separators from between paid ads and organic search results.
Just something to think about ...
-
Hi Kimberly, welcome to the forum, and thanks for your question! Yes, a URL would be very helpful, as would any relevant screenshots of analytics.
Christy
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
-
Need help related to SEO ?
Hi, Hope you guys are doing well! I need help from experts, I have a query that "Does google allows SEO for websites related to crypto currency ?" If yes, what is best way to do SEO for crypto currency website ?
Technical SEO | | JessicaThompson0 -
Need help with list schema!
Hi all, I am trying out list schema on my site, but in Google's structured data testing tool I'm having an issue with the URL section. Whenever I have the same URL for each position is says that duplicate URLs aren't allowed, then when I have different URLs it says that they all have to be the same URL. Does anyone have any pointers that can help make my list schema error free!? Heres my schema:
Technical SEO | | Saba.Elahi.M.0 -
Homepage has dropped out of search results
As of 9/12, my homepage has dropped out of the SERPs. If you google my business name (Sumy Designs) it shows other pages in my site, my Facebook page, etc, but not the homepage. My sitelinks are gone too. It IS still indexed, which you can see if you do site:sumydesigns.com I had been ranking for about 15 keywords that have all been lost since my homepage has disappeared. Here's what I know: There are no manual actions. The homepage is still being indexed, it's just not showing up for any keywords, even my brand Nothing has changed in terms of content, I have been a near daily blogger for several years There's no indication of a problem in search console The drop only appears to be affecting desktop searches, mobile search it still shows up which seems pretty weird. I would love any ideas as to what could be causing this disappearance.
Technical SEO | | sumydesigns0 -
Cost/Benefit of modifying a URL
Just as the title says, I'm looking for the cost/benefit breakdown of modifying a URL for SEO purposes. What are some examples of issues where the benefit outweighs the cost, and vise-versa? Thanks all! Frank
Technical SEO | | FrankSweeney0 -
Duplicate Title/Meta Descriptions
Hi I had some error messages in the webmaster account, stating I had duplicate title/meta descriptions. Ive since fixed it, typically how long does it take for a full crawl if Ive fixed these issues? Webmaster is still showing problems with various Title/Descriptions. Also was wondering if I should block individual pages on a large ecomerce site? EX of a Large site - http://www.stubhub.com/chicago-bears-tickets/ (Page is structure and optimized) Then you have all individual games http://www.stubhub.com/chicago-bears-tickets/bears-vs-lions-soldier-field-4077064/ they have an H1 and a meta description, should the page above be blocked from google and concentrate only on the Pain page? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | TP_Marketing0 -
Yoast settings help
I could use some real help here in my Yoast settings. I had some great settings before but we switched servers and it looks like we lost all our settings. I've taken some screenshots and I'm hoping someone can help! http://d.pr/i/chNQ http://d.pr/i/51TY http://d.pr/i/io7S http://d.pr/i/nak http://d.pr/i/acon The site is run by a couple guys. Please help!
Technical SEO | | ttb0 -
Video Sitemaps <video:content_loc>and<video:player_loc></video:player_loc></video:content_loc>
Hi guys, If I'm creating a video sitemap do I need to use both: video:content_locandvideo:player_loc</video:player_loc></video:content_loc> Or could I just use video:content_loc?</video:content_loc> Thanks
Technical SEO | | Tug-Agency0 -
404 help
Hello all, firstly let me apologize if this is the wrong place to ask this question. I have a site www.promptresponseaccidentmanagement.com which gets a 200ok when checked for crawl issues, however pages such as /whiplash-injury-compensation-claims.php , /road-traffic-accident-compensation-claims.php and quite a few more return a 404. That's fine (usually) as I can quite happily fix that most of the time. However if you actually go to those pages in your browser, or click through to them on any part of the site you will see that they are in fact not redirecting to a 404 and everything is fine!? Any body got any ideas? Best H
Technical SEO | | haydyn0