Our web site lost ranking on google a couple of years ago. We have done lots of work on it but still can not improve our search ranking. Can anyone give us some advise
-
A couple of years ago the ranking on our site dropped over night. I believe someone working here at the time purchased links about that time. We have been doing lots of work on the site since then to improve it. We can not get our rankings back up on google searches.
Can anyone give us some advise about what to do or where to go for some help that we can trust.
-
"On the category page - we are wondering whether we should also remove the right side menus ?"
Do you mean the left side menus?
If so, I can give you a simple answer and I can give you a more complex answer.
The simple answer is "if you link to categories and sub-categories that are not directly related to the category you are on at that time, it is at least somewhat of a distraction and dilution issue".
The more complex answer is "it depends, and without a full audit, I can't answer that because there are many other factors to consider, some of which are purely User Experience, some are SEO and User Experience, some are crawl allocation related, and some are pure technical considerations".
-
Hi Alan,
Once again thanks for the advise. It makes a lot of sense when I add it to the information I have worked out while trying to improve our site. Also a lot of these menus etc. were added about the time the rankings dropped.
Just a question. I have removed a lot of the unnessary links on the bottom of the pages.
The way our platform works, we have a home page - which I have removed the right side menus and left side.
On the product page we have removed the right side menus etc. also a lot of the left side - just leaving the wish list.
On the category page - we are wondering whether we should also remove the right side menus ?
Regards
Adrienne
-
I am glad to hear you will work through the issues. Be aware that there is no guarantee that these things alone will do the job, however each is an important step in the correct direction.
-
Hi Alan,
Thanks for your advise.
I think most of the things you mentioned were set up by an expert we had working here and also are features of the platform we us.
I am working on removing the excess links at the bottom of the pages, and will work through your other sugestions.
They sound like they will help us.
Thanks
-
Hi
It dropped November 2013.
Regards
-
Hi Rebecca,
Our site dropped ranking November 2013.
Regards
Adrienne
-
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you have problems that you either aren't aware of, or don't realize the impact of.
1. The bottom of the main content area of your home page and your footer are spam central for the keyword stuffing. The range of phrases you use that are obviously intended to boost rankings for specific phrase variations is off the charts severe.
2. The scale of topical dilution on the site is also a concern. Individual product descriptions are almost non-existent. Consider the impact of the left side "link to all the things" content, right side "related" and "recently viewed" widgets, and the lower page "Also viewed" content, (and again, that scary keyword stuffed footer), and the "uniqueness" of that page is seriously questionable and you're forcing Google to struggle to trust uniqueness.
3. The shear number of "categories", plus brand funnels, plus costume "Ideas" funnels, just reinforces to me that it looks like the site is trying to rank for "all the variations" (which that footer screams is actually what you are trying to do).
4. Your "Search" subdomain is typical of now proven to be failed "enhanced automated content" that was supposedly a way to get more search visibility a few years back, and yet where all it does is create more duplicate content mess, since it just links back to the main site and is not actual, best practices SEO.
Those are only the first few things I found in a quick check. There's almost certainly a full range of issues you will likely need to get cleaned up if you really hope to ever see a strong, sustainable organic presence.
-
What month did it drop?
-
Can you be more specific than "a couple of years ago"? It's going to be much easier to narrow down if we know what the search landscape was like, what algo changes were happening at the same tuime, etc.
-
I looked in your back link profile and not many SPAM links are available on the website and SEMRush data tells that the website is ranking for around 1.6k keywords (in AU) which was 490 keywords back in 2013. I understand that you rank for 2k plus keywords back in good days but it seems like you are improving and your strategies are working for you.
In my opinion all you need is to accelerate your efforts and keep working and you will see better rankings in the near future.
In order to tell Google that you are actually working on betterment why not changing your content from time to time on your website (different parts of the website) and get some media links back to your website.
I think it should work.
Hope this helps!
-
BTW: love your website
(sorry for off-topic)
-
Thanks,
I will try both of those.
Regards
-
Hi Adrienne,
I would try to use Barracuda's tool: http://barracuda.digital/panguin-tool/
sometimes it gives a clue when exactly the drop has happened (and what update has been near that date).
Also you could check Moz's Updates history: https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
These will help you, if your website has been hit by an algorithmic update.
Let me know if you need further assistance.
Keszi
-
Without seeing the website, content or links to your site it sounds like a penalty.
You can check the drop in your traffic against algorithm changes here https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
Also, it could be the keyword you are ranking for - if you were spamming this or using tactics to rank #1 you may have just been penalized.
Regards,
Jason
-
-
I can try to take a look for you, what is your website?
-
Hi Jason,
Thanks for your response. As far as I know we have no warnings in webmaster tools. I am not sure how to tell which links are damaging. Some have been removed.
We lost about 50% of traffic organic traffic. Our site dropped from 1st page to 3-10 page.
Regards
Adrienne
-
Hi Li,
Do you have any warnings in Webmaster Tools for penalties? Have you removed all the damaging links to your site?
When you say dropped over night, do you mean you lost 90% of traffic or did you lose all traffic from a certain source?
Cheers,
Jason
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
-
Google image search
How does google decide which image show up in the image search section ? Is is based on the alt tag of the image or is google able to detect what is image is about using neural nets ? If it is using neural nets are the images you put on your website taken into account to rank a page ? Let's say I do walking tours in Italy and put a picture of the leaning tower of pisa as a top image while I be penalised because even though the picture is in italy, you don't see anyone walking ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Organic search traffic improved (besides Google) for last 6 months
Hi, to follow up on my previous post (http://moz.com/community/q/low-on-google-ranking-despite-error-free), I was wandering if someone can tell me whether we are penalised by Google or not? Since the last 6 months, we see a rise in organic visitors coming from Bing, yahoo but Google remains the same. Despite the advice given in previous post, I just feel that something else must be wrong. Perhaps more inbound links with high PR? Socially, we are pretty much engaging 50-60% of our audience, yet no link flow will count for our organic ranking sadly enough... Hopefully someone can have a look at our site www.mercadonline.es in more detail? Ask me in a PM for more info! Thank you Ivordg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ivordg0 -
Which URLs were indexed 2 years ago?
Hi, I hope anyone can help me with this issue. Our french domain experienced a huge drop of indexed URLs in 2012. More than 50k URLs were indexed, after the drop less than 10k were counted. I would like to check what happened here and which URLs were thrown out of the index. So I was thinking about a comparison between todays data and the data of 2012. Unfortunately we don't have any data on the indexed pages in 2012 beside the number of indexed pages. Is there any way to check, which URLs were indexed 2 years ago?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sandra_h0 -
Why does old "Free" site ranks better than new "Optimized" site?
My client has a "free" site he set-up years ago - www.montclairbariatricsurgery.com (We'll call this the old site) that consistently outranks his current "optimized" (new) website - http://www.njbariatricsurgery.com/ The client doesn't want to get rid of his old site, which is now a competitor, because it ranks so much better. But he's invested so much in the new site with no results. A bit of background: We recently discovered the content on the new site was a direct copy of content on the old site. We had all copy on new site rewritten. This was back in April. The domain of the new site was changed on July 8th from www.Bariatrx.com to what you see now - www.njbariatricsurgery.com. Any insight you can provide would be greatly appreciated!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WhatUpHud0 -
Can we retrieve all 404 pages of my site?
Hi, Can we retrieve all 404 pages of my site? is there any syntax i can use in Google search to list just pages that give 404? Tool/Site that can scan all pages in Google Index and give me this report. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Best way to improve page rank
I notice many small business sites seems to have a page rank of 3,4, or 5 which don't appear to be doing a great deal of SEO on their websites. i.e these are very basic sites with a little static content that rarely changes, no blogs or particular links. Does having a high page rank still mean your will achieve better search engine positions? whats the best way to improve page rank for small business sites? thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bristolweb0 -
Not ranking well after site was hacked
My site was hacked and that seemed to have a pretty big effect on search rankings. I'm pretty sure I've gotten the hack completely removed (as of 10/16.) During the hack and even now, all of my posts created after Aug 1 don't rank in regular Google searches at all even if I search for the titles in quotes. But I can tell they are indexed because I see them when I do a site search in Google. And I see that they are cached. Posts from before Aug 1 rank well in Google searches. The issue with August and after posts no longer appearing started in mid September. Prior to that the some of the August posts were actually performing very well. The September date corresponds to when we first started working on removing the hack. It looks like the August and after posts all have a pagerank of 0, whereas the mozrank is much higher. I've request reconsideration from Google and was told that no manual action was taken against my site. I know that's a lot of background, but I'm wondering how long do I need to wait before the August and after posts start ranking? Is there anything I can do in the mean time to address this pagerank issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris-at-Magoosh0 -
Why my site is "STILL" violating the Google quality guidelines?
Hello, I had a site with two topics: Fashion & Technology. Due to the Panda Update I decided to change some things and one of those things was the separation of these two topics. So, on June 21, I redirected (301) all the Fashion pages to a new domain. The new domain performed well the first three days, but the rankings dropped later. Now, even the site doesn't rank for its own name. So, I thought the website was penalized for any reason, and I sent a reconsideration to Google. In fact, five days later, Google confirmed that my site is "still violating the quality guidelines". I don't understand. My original site was never penalized and the content is the same. And now when it is installed on the new domain becomes penalized just a few days later? Is this penalization only a sandbox for the new domain? Or just until the old URLs disappear from the index (due to the 301 redirect)? Maybe Google thinks my new site is duplicating my old site? Or just is a temporal prevention with new domains after a redirection in order to avoid spammers? Maybe this is not a real penalization and I only need a little patience? Or do you think my site is really violating the quality guidelines? (The domain is http://www.newclothing.co/) The original domain where the fashion section was installed before is http://www.myddnetwork.com/ (As you can see it is now a tech blog without fashion sections) The 301 redirect are working well. One example of redirected URLs: http://www.myddnetwork.com/clothing-shoes-accessories/ (this is the homepage, but each page was redirected to its corresponding URL in the new domain). I appreciate any advice. Basically my fashion pages have dropped totally. Both, the new and old URLs are not ranking. 😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | omarinho0