Sudden Large Traffic and SERP Drop
-
Hi
This site www.militaryplaques.com
We have had steady traffic over a number of years with the site both on terms of impressions, click through rates, bounce rates, time on site and most importantly sales.
The site has remained fairly static over the last 6 months with no significant changes to content or structuire.
However, on July 11 our traffic and impressions crashed by over 90% and remain at this low level.
We have never been hit by Panda but this looks like such a case?!
Any insight or suggestions as to why the sudden "de-listing" may have happened?
R/
John J Morgan
-
I looked at some of your main keywords. Looks like they are back to decent ranking. So did you fix the issue already? If so, can you share what you did? I had a similar issue around the same date with my site. Ranking has not been returned yet. This is the details of my specific issue http://moz.com/community/q/is-this-site-hit-with-penguin-or-something-else . If we can compare notes, it would be great
-
Thanks for the responses.
We're still examining the change in traffic volume, source and search terms.
We have a couple of theories on what's going on and will revert back after the next Mozscape index update.
-
I saw two major problems in your link profile... I won’t call the link profile too bad but there is no way I can call it a good link profile!
Your link profile got links from mediocre sources but very few links that are coming from high authority relevant sources and the other problem is that your link profile is not diversified and links are coming mostly from forums, blog comments and PR websites....
Rankings in the month of July in my personally opinion has shifted a lot so my advice would be to get good quality links from diversified sources and you will see a positive bump in rankings!
Hope this helps!
-
HI Tom
Thanks for this. I looked at the suspicious links and they seem to be false positives. Mostly revolving around our brand name "military plaques"
Noted on the low quality /dead links - will have these removed.
-
Hi John,
Your back links are not great I did a quick check
http://www.linkpartners.com/lparts53_23.html
http://blpdirectory.info/Business/Products/
http://freedirectorysubmission.in/Military-Plaque.html?cid=28338
http://blpdirectory.info/submit_article.php?c=709
Even dead or 404 URLs
http://free-listing.org/Military-Plaque.html?cid=157597
This stuff must go
Use tools link OSE & then http://www.removeem.com/ to get rid of the links.
FAQ
http://www.removeem.com/faq.php#suspicious
So you did actually received a notice of the problem from Google?
Using http://www.removeem.com/
Via only 1 data source, we estimate about 51 links with suspicious anchor text ignoring 373 safe links automatically. Some of these may need to be removed!
Check your MozCast every day it is a SEO weather map
Weather for Saturday, July 13
MozCast is a weather report showing turbulence in the Google algorithm over the previous day (or see the 5-day history on the left). The hotter and stormier the weather, the more Google's rankings changed.
Use one of the SEO listed here to fix your site if needed
http://moz.com/community/recommended
Hope this was of some help,
Tom
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
-
SERPs Help
Hey Mozzers, Please can someone advise? I manage the on-line content for an estate of Gyms in the UK. We had an existing gym location in Birmingham - www.nuffieldhealth.com/gyms/birmingham and 5 months ago we opened a new location in Birmingham - www.nuffieldhealth.com/gyms/birmingham-central. The 2 pages have different in-page content, different H1's, different title tags, different citations in page both have a few back links from different root domains, however the 2nd page (birmingham-central) does not rank in the top 50 results even though our domain is strong that the vast majority of results? Our original page (/gyms/birmingham) also slipped from page 1 in SERPs to the bottom of page 2 when the second Birmingham gym page was deployed?? I am guessing Google does not know which page to serve in SERPs, bud i am at a lose as to how to fix this issue. Can anyone please advise?? Regards Ben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Bendall0 -
Link profile heavy with press release syndication links caused drop at Penguin 2.0
I'm wrestling with something that I'm hoping members of the community can provide input on.... I've working with an enterprise level client that is in the business of data capture and distribution. I've diagnosed a clear drop of traffic on May 22nd, i.e a loss of search visibility post Penguin 2.0. Their link profile is big! Discussions with internal stakeholders who have been with the company 10's of years confirm that no "link building" service providers have ever been hired and no over-zealous employee is ever likely to have tried to "do" link building internally. They are just one of those lucky companies that by their nature publish information that people want to link to and share. As a first port of call I've grouped links by anchor text and can see groups of hundreds of matching anchors based on their brand URL and specific page titles. The matching anchors have resulted from big take up of interesting data that they have marketed via press releases. NOT for link purposes. My question is this.... Does the community think or have evidence (or can point me toward any case studies) that show that Press release syndication alone could result in: a) a penguin penalty or...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | QubaSEO
b) a devaluing of press release type links during Penguin 2.0 that could have resulted in a loss of search visibility and give the impression of a penalty Your thoughts are much appreciated!0 -
Rank drop ecommerce site
Hello, We're going to get an audit, but I would like to hear some ideas on what could cause our ranking drop. There's no warnings in GWT. We deleted 17 or so blogs (that had no backlinks pointing to these blogs and were simply for easy links) last summer thinking that they weren't white hat so we had to start eliminating them. At the same time, we eliminated a few sitewide paid links that were really strong. With all of this deletion, our keywords started to drop. For example, our main keyword went from first to third/fourth. With the deletions, our keywords dropped immediately a couple of spots, then with no more deletions, all of our keywords have been slowly dropping over the last seven months or so. Right now we are at the bottom of the first page for that same main keyword, and other keywords look similar. We have 70 linking root domains, of which: 15 are blogs with no backlinks that were created simply for the purpose of easy links. We didn't delete them all yet because of the immediate ranking drop when we deleted the last ones. One PR5 site has links to our home page scattered throughout it's lists of resources for people in different states in the US. It doesn't look like a standard paid link site, but it has many paid links in it's different pages. One PR4 site has our logo with another paid link logo at the bottom of one of it's pages. There are 2 other paid links from two PR4 sites that look editorial. There are other links on the sites to other websites that are paid. All links for these 2 sites look editorial. That's all the bad stuff. Other things that could be causing drop in rank - > Our bread crumbs are kind of messed up. We have a lot of subcategory pages that rel=cononical to main categories in the menu. We did this because we had categories that were exactly the same. So you'll drill down on a category page and you'll end up on a main category. To the average user, it seems perfectly fine. Our on-site SEO still has a few pages that repeat words in the titles and h1 tags several times (especially our #1 main keyword), titles similar to something like: running shoes | walking shoes | cross-training shoes where a word is repeated 2 or 3 times. Also, there are a few pages that are more keyword stuffed than we would like in the content. Just a couple of paragraphs but 2 keywords are dispersed in them three times each. The keywords in this content is not in different variations, it's exactly the keyword. We've still got a few URLs that are keywords stuffed with like 3 different keywords. We may have many 404 errors (due to some mistakes we made with the URLs in our cart) - if Google hasn't deindexed them all then we could have dozens of 404s on important category pages. But nothing is showing up in GWT. Our sitemap does not include any broken links. Google is confused about our branding it seems. I'm adding branding to the on-site SEO but right now Google often shows keywords as our branding when Google changes the way the title tag is displayed sometimes in the search engines. We don't link out to anyone. We have lots of content, almost no duplicate content, and some authoritative very comprehensive articles. Your thoughts on what to do to get our rankings back up?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Traffic Generation Visitor Exchange Systems & Google Algo / Punihsments
So, in recent years some services have been developed such as Engageya I want to ask the experts to weigh in on these types of services that generate traffic. I know of sites that have achieved higher ranking via these NON-bot, user browser visitors. Here's their own explanation. Any thoughts will be appreciated. I could not find what Google's Matt Cutts has to say about these affairs, I suspect not very good things. However, I KNOW of sites that have achieved higher ranking, with about 30-40% of traffic coming from similar systems to this. Join our exclusive readers exchange ecosystem Engageya offers an exclusive readers exchange ecosystem - either within the network only, or cross-networks as well - enabling participating publishers to exchange engaged readers between them in a 1:1 exchange ratio. No commissions involved! Why networks work with Engageya? Create traffic circulation within your network - increase your inventory and impressions within your existing properties.Engage readers within your network and experience an immediate increase in network's page views. Enjoy readers'- exchange from other networksOur engine intelligently links matching content articles together, from within your network, as well as from other networks. Get new audiences to your network for non-converting users clicking out. New revenue channel - monetize pages with reader-friendly content ad units, while making your readers happy!This is the time to move from aggressive and underperforming monetization methods - to effective and reader-friendly content advertising.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ripe
Let our state-of-the-art semantic & behavioral algorithms place quality targeted content ads on your publisher's content pages. Enjoy highest CTRs in the industryContent ads are proven to yield the highest CTRs in the industry, starting at 2% and up to 12% click-through rates! This is simple. Readers click on an article they are interested-in, whether it's sponsored or not. Enhance your brand - Offer your publishers private-label content recommendations today, before someone else does.Content advertising is becoming more and more common. New content advertising networks and suppliers are being introduced into the online advertising market, and, sooner or later, they are going to approach your publishers. Engageya offers you a private-label platform to offer your publishers the new & engaging content ad unit - today! Comprehensive reports and traffic control dashboardTrace the effectiveness of the content recommendations ad units, as well as control the traffic within your network.0 -
Partial Sitemaps Impact on SERP
I have a website having 20 different categories. But have the sitemap for only 1 category and rest 19 categories will not have the sitemaps will this have an impact on the search results on not
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seosogo0 -
It appears that no matter what I do, my website is not picking up traffic. What can I do?
I have tried everything, followed everything by the book...yet nothing is happening. I I yet have to try PPC, but I am sure that by now the website is healthy since I have spent from January to the current date fixing every sort of warning and errors. While I have worked on link building strategies(only submitting links to directories for the moment) However the website is dead. What should I do? Is this due to a Google penalty?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ts24group0 -
Big Rank Drop - Is My Site Spammy?
Like many others one of our niche sites - aluminumeyewear.com got slammed in the recent algo updates (4/18). All of our pages dropped at least 40/50 places which seems like a penalty to me. The site still ranks for its name thankfully. I'm trying to figure out if this is an over-optimization penalty, or a devaluing of back links or both. I would be grateful if I could get some feedback as to whether you feel the site is over optimized and how I could check if sources of back links have been penalized which in turn has effected us? Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | smckenzie750 -
Drop in non-branded organic search April 1
I saw an intense drop in non-branded organic search for major pages on my site on April 1st this year. The homepage wasn't affected and it's not an annual thing. I've attached a screen shot showing the drop. I'm new to the company and recently learned that they had hired a pretty black hat company last year and I'm worried that this is Panda...although the timing seems wrong. Has anyone experienced panda effects between the two updates? I'd love to get some feedback!! 1ry2a.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CIEEwebTeam0
