Can anyone see what hurt me in my traffic
-
http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/
I need some fresh eyes on this traffic of mine. I have compared the dates to when updates have been rolled out (panda, penguin, page layout, top heavy, etc...) and I cant match these dates with any of them. Can anyone maybe shed some light to my traffic drops and recovery then traffic drop again and see if there is a correlation with any major updates?
- Dropped Jan 22 2014
- Dropped April 4 2014
- Recovered August 25 2014
- Dropped September 18 2014
-
Yeah - it doesn't seem to match known updates, but it's certainly dramatic movement. This isn't some seasonal shift or cyclical thing - these are clearly steep climbs and drops. We don't know the dates of most of the Panda data refreshes, but we do pin one at Sept. 23, 2014, so even that's not lining up cleanly here.
Are you seeing a lot of losses in the long-tail? The site doesn't seem to have much authority, but you've got 10K+ pages indexed, and I strongly suspect that many of them may look thin to Google. It feels Panda-like, for lack of a better word, even if it isn't quite Panda (maybe just a very strong filter). Meanwhile, if the links you have our problematic at all, you could be hitting a double-whammy. It might not be a single update, but you could be getting hit by a number of different changes over time. The trend-line certainly isn't promising.
My concern is the individual definition pages, like:
http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/dictionary/word/barrio/
While it looks to have a lot of content, the definitions come from online dictionaries (or, at least, are shared with them), and the examples seem to be drawn from publicly available web pages. So, it's very possible that each element on these pages looks duplicated across the web to Google. With a strong link profile, it might not be a problem, but if you're struggling on links and with content, the odds could end up stacked against you.
Truthfully, you may have to see where your strongest ranking pages are (are they top-level or long-tail) and consolidate. If you've taken losses on individual word pages and most of your traffic is coming from pages like this:
http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/word-lists/words-with-a/
...then you might want to consider not indexing those lower-value pages and focusing on what's working. This could help concentrate your link equity on a stronger offering. It's a difficult choice, but I don't think you're looking at a technical problem here or a clear, single-shot penalty. I think you're looking at a systemic problem.
Looks like you've got a chunk of 404s in your category pages, too, such as:
http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/word-lists/words-with-z/10-letters/
Not sure what's up there - if you're trying to de-index those, or if there's a technical issue.
Unfortunately, I suspect this is a complex, multi-layer problem and there probably isn't a single solution. I hope I'm wrong, but that's my gut feeling at a glance.
-
I just saw that every one of my dictionary word pages 280,000+ of them all had a list of anagram words on them ranging from 10 to 50 of them and they all contained links like this
[[the word]](/dictionary/word/[the word]/ "check and see if [the word] is in the scrabble dictionary")
[the word] represents the specific word. "Scrabble Dictionary" was my main and hardest hit keyword. Could this have been spammy to Google? That title contained scrabble dictionary in it and it could have been on each one of those 280,000 pages at least 10 - 50+ times?
-
Well the biggest change I did in the last week was completely refresh my site to a new responsive design. I made sure all my canonicals and redirects are setup properly and checked them 10 fold.
Some changes I have done over the last few months was focus on Panda related issues and noindexed about 90% of my site. This was after the traffic drops and not before. The reason I did this was for instance all my dictionary pages get their definitions from an API provided from another site called wordnik. Since that would be considered duplicate content I went ahead and did that.
Example Page: http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/dictionary/word/test/
I also did the same for all my quotes and sentence examples as well since all those would be considered duplicates. Everything else is original content which used to rank very well. Because of all the duplicate content I thought that possibly could be an issue...no changes yet.
Went through my backlink profile and got some links removed that I suspected spammy as well and disavowed ones I could net get removed and were very spammy.
That is where I am at so far. I used to rank very well in my niche for years and during the Panda/Penguin days is when my rankings tank so I was suspecting that had something to do with it. At this point I have tried so much I feel like there is nothing else.
-
During the low traffic periods, did you make any changes to the site to try and recover? Was any additional link building performed? Anything else outside of the new site design? And do you know when that happened?
Your backlink profile certainly isn't the worst I have ever seen, although a bit of a disavow wouldn't go amiss with some of them, and I wouldn't necessarily be jumping the gun thinking that you have been hit by a penalty.
Where is your traffic at right now?
-Andy
-
Hi there
I would take a look at your backlinks - you have a TON of backlinks coming from sites that look just like yours. I am using Majestic data in my quick scan. From there you can decide which links you wish to remove or disavow. This is something you need to take care of.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
This is strictly organic / google
No changes that I am aware of, but at the time I had a old site design. I have a new one now
Never had a manual action
I annotate when I make changes so I had none then
I am strongly suspecting Penguin even though the dates don't line up but I have to wait for the refresh before I know
-
Hi there
Is this strictly organic traffic? Did you make any changes on these days pertaining to GTM and GA?
Did you check and see if you have any manual actions? From here on out, if you do any changes to your site or properties, annotate it so you can watch changes perform.
Hope this helps - good luck!
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
-
Chrome Add-on - see text version?
I used to have a chrome add-on to see the cached text version of a website. I lost it and was wondering if anyone knew an alternative or a good add-on Cyto
On-Page Optimization | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
New jobboard: Can redirecting folder (site.com/jobboard) to subdomain (jobboard.site.com) hurt SEO?
Hi there, I'm planning to implement a jobboard on my website which needs to be installed on a subdomain (jobboard.site.com) but I'd really like to use site.com/jobboard for promoting this jobboard (jobboard collects external industry jobs). Are there any possible disadvantages when I set up a 301 redirect from jobboard.site.com to site.com/jobboard? Also: What if I want to move this jobboard to a unique domain one day (e.g. jobboard-industry-xy.com), Would that be tricky (as I'd basically have to redirect the folder-to-subdomain redirect to an external domain and therefore get a folder-to-subdomain-to-external-domain redirect...)? Cheers, Thomas
On-Page Optimization | | stl990 -
Pages i dont want customers to see
Hi, I have a website and part of it is the admin page/s that my customers can log in and modify their pages( change pictures, change text, etc...) When i run SEO tools to check my site i get errors or warnings about these pages ( duplicate content, meta description missing, etc...) 1. Is this affects my SEO rank? 2. can i mark them as pages that don't need to be ranked or checked by Google? 3. Is Rel no follow is part of the solution? Thank you i.
On-Page Optimization | | iivgi0 -
Are lots of wordpress tags hurting my SEO?
When I started my blog 4 years ago and didn't know what I was doing, I set it up to be organized using tags (no categories). I have around 20 tags and around 250 articles. Each blog article typically has 2-4 tags associated with it. There is a lot of topic overlap and putting each post in only one category wouldn't work. I have been no indexing, do follow my tag pages because they are just a list of post titles, but I'm wondering if the whole situation is hurting my SEO. On my homepage I have a sidebar menu/list of all the tags so I have link juice going to no indexed (but dofollow) pages. Reducing the number of tags would be bad for user experience because people who were looking for info on a specific topic wouldn't be as easily able to find what they want. Ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | KateV0 -
Can anyone recomend a good, solid, review generator for WP?
Looking for some feedback on a good review generator for customer input and hopefully generate some testimonials. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | tvw1300 -
Is This Duplicate Content Hurting Our SERPs?
We sell 1000s of audio book title, many of which are published in more than one format (abridged, unabridged CD, and/or unabridged MP3) by the same publisher. Currently each title has its own page but the basic description of the title (story) is the same. Here is an example title that is offered in three formats. 44 Charles Street - Danielle Steel - abridged CD audiobook 44 Charles Street - Danielle Steel - MP3 CD audiobook 44 Charles Street - Danielle Steel - CD audiobook Each of the above pages has a different page title, a different URL, a different meta description however much of the body (from [Listen to a FREE Audio Clip] down is the same. Is this duplicate content hurting our SERPs?
On-Page Optimization | | lbohen1 -
2 URLs, same content, 1 with keywords. Does this hurt me?
I'm in the process of adding some new features to our site and have a question about our URLs. Most of our URLs consist of either sitename.com/contentname or sitename.com/content/contentid I'm in the process of building a directory to those pages. The directory has a number of filters which will ultimately point to the destination page. sitename.com/filter1/filter2/contentid or sitename.com/filter1/filter2/contentname The destinations will have references. From an SEO perspective, I would think I want the filter1/filter2 version of the link indexed since this will add keywords that someone might search for. However, since the filters are dynamic, if someone just searches for contentname I would want to have sitename.com/contentname returned in the search results. Do I get any SEO benefit out of building those filter links as described if they are not the canonical links?
On-Page Optimization | | JoeCotellese810