Sudden Drop in Rankings/Traffic/Organic Impressions Without a Penalty
-
Hi Moz community!
I have a question about a local client in Raleigh, NC - http://paragonbuildinggroup.com
This client came to us from another agency who had previously not done such a great job with the design/development of the site, or with the marketing of it, so we are somewhat limited in terms of what we can do on design, user experience, etc. But, the SEO is all still easy to tweak and we've been working on it for some time now.
As of July 5th, their keyword rankings have dropped dramatically (we're talking from first page rankings to nothing, according to Authority Labs), and they've fallen completely off the map in the SERPs. Their local listing doesn't appear in search results anymore, and WMT is showing a drastic drop in impressions (from 457 on July 3rd to 92 on July 5th). There have been no manual penalties on the site, no recent major development work done, and from what I can see, no signs of hacking and no bad backlinks. The only thing I can see is that Mozcast showed an 83 degree day with some clouds and rain on July 5th, the day that our rankings dropped off, but I can't find any documentation showing what might have changed.
Any insight as to what might be going on? I'm completely stumped!
-
I did not go thru your entire list of links but I checked on BuiderDirectory.com and it costs money to be included in their directory. How is that not the same as buying links? Shouldn't this be a violation of Google's policy as well?
-
All great suggestions - thank you!! We're working with the associations that the client is accredited with at the moment to try to build some quality links. Branching out on top of that seems to be the right move to make at this point now, too.
-
I am not huge on directories but here are some you should go for - I am sure there are more:
http://www.thebluebook.com/
http://www.homeadvisor.com/
http://www.nahb.org/
http://www.epa.gov/radon/rrnc/directory.html
http://www.builderdirectory.com/ -
I am guessing the algorithmic penalty. Don't change your plans, just jump on them. Content and good, relevant links. I would also break up that interlinking if actually working on the other websites isn't something you are being paid to do. Separate from them, rewrite the content on the website that is your main focus and start working on links (clients, material vendors - anything relevant you can get quickly).
-
That's great feedback, and the content is definitely something that is on our radar to work on. We did inherit access to all of the company's sites, but this Building Group site is our main focus. Unfortunately, the client doesn't have the budget right now for us to combine all services into one mother site (as much as we would like to!!), so we are doing what we can with the way that things are set up between the various sites right now.
Content is definitely actionable - and I appreciate you taking the time to take a glance over things! Backlinks are another action item we have on our list. This change just came about so suddenly that it's really thrown us on the work we've had planned.
-
Question - when you took them over did you get all three websites?
paragonbuildinggroup.com/, paragonroofinggroup.com and paragonpaintinggroup.com
There is some pretty bad duplicate content between the building group site and the roofing group site and with the sites interlinking as they do, I would say Google noticed pretty quick.
I know you are limited as to what can be done but I would say explain to your client that each website needs to have content relevant only to what that particular website is offering - no duplicate content. If the building website wants to touch on roofing then link to the other website - that is fine. Honestly, I would personally rather see all of this put together on one website with different sections for the different services - then the other domain names could just 301 to the relevant sections of the mother website. Also - links. the building group website needs them badly. As far as what happened - there is no way to be 100% sure but I am guessing an algorithmic penalty - the way the three websites (that I found, there could be more) are set up could certainly look like an attempt to manipulate search results to the algorithms. Honestly... it probably was an attempt to manipulate search results, an attempt by the last vendor. Not a penalty for the duplicate content, mind you - but the duplicate content and interlinking etc... were probably signals that all added up to "hey, these websites are not following guide lines" this was just a quick look though - I could be wrong.
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
-
How we can rank two keywords
Here is my example. I developed a property inspection app, where the keyword I try to rank is property inspection app, and property inspection software. Property Inspection Software got slightly more traffic than app. I would like to rank both of this keyword high for my main website, but there is only one title, one H1 tag I can use to have keyword, where if I use "App" there is no way to have "Software" on the title, etc. How can I deal with such a case? Any help will be appreciate.
On-Page Optimization | | terrysun0 -
How to rank in Google during domain name search?
We have received one requirement for this website. http://www.coldcasebeer.com/ We would like to rank in Google during domain name search. If we are going to search following search terms in Google then We are not able to see this domain on first page of Google search result. cold case beer coldcasebeer We have done quick research on this issue. And, We have decided to implement following tasks to make it happen.But, We are quite excited to read certain inputs on this question from experts! 1. Upload default Robots.txt file 2. Verify website on Google webmaster tools 3. Set up USA region on Google webmaster tools 4. Submit Google crawl request on Google webmaster tools 5. Title tag and Meta description optimization for all pages (There are 5 pages only on website) 6. Audit Google local listing 7. Develop quality links with domain name
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit0 -
Should old pages that have being 301 redirected but have no/mimimal traffic be deleted?
In other words, I have pages from years ago that are redirected but how can I tell if traffic still flows through them? And if there is no or minimal traffic should the 301 be deleted? Linck
On-Page Optimization | | LinckB0 -
Organic SEO for Local Towns
This is a fairly common question, but I am going to ask it again. I want to get ranked for many keywords: "hr outsourcing sheboygan", "HR outsourcing duluth", etc., all in my small state. Doing some random research, there are few if any pages with exact match phrases in the URL, Title, Etc. = No competition) Moreover, Google is not popping google places ads for these terms. My plan is to create fairly unique pages on my site optimized for each town. Right now, the pages are at 65% duplicate. I would assume that all of my pages will have some degree of duplication - there are similar elements on every page. If I run the content through a duplicate content tester, is there a % of unique content that would be fairly safe to avoid the duplicate content slap? Yes, I know it's more complicated than that semantic, heuristic, etc. - just looking for some general guidelines.
On-Page Optimization | | CsmBill0 -
Ranking report problem
Hello, I have two things that I'm a little concerned. Ranking report is not working because all these keywords were on google first page but the report is showing the calendar sign Crawl results, I just went from 5000 warnings and errors to 4 in two weeks. It seems a little crazy
On-Page Optimization | | angelowei0 -
Should you try to rank for misspelled keywords?
Hi there, 2 part question: Is it best practice to try to rank for misspelled keywords that bring in lots of traffic or should you instead just try to rank for the correct spelling of that keyword and hope that you rank better on the misspelling as an indirect result? E.G. The misspelled keyword "Hamilton island accomodation" is a common misspelling that brings in traffic but we have an "F" rank for that term (obviously because we spell accommodation correctly on our site). We don't want to misspell anything but are there techniques to rank better for misspellings that won't hurt content quality? The On-Page Optimization tool says that our website doesn't rank in the top 50 on Google Aus for "Accomodation Hamilton Island" or "Hamilton Island Accomodation" but when i do a manual search, we actually are the first result. Is this an error with the On-Page optimization tool? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | HamiltonIsland0 -
With a slash and without a slash
I have noticed recently on open site explorer that pages are listed that contact the ending / and that dont. so for example- www.onlinemediadirect.co.uk/blog-setup and www.onlinemediadirect.co.uk/blog-setup/ They also have slightly different page authority. Is it worth setting up a redirect or does google not need this ? The page ranks well of course.
On-Page Optimization | | onlinemediadirect0 -
Subdomains vs. Subfolders Inheriting Authority/Ranking Value
Our website is a continuing education website that is linked to a large university, and our URL is a subdomain of that larger university domain. We offer degrees as well, but because of the modifications we'd like to make to the degree webpages, our content management system won't let them be a part of our website. Now we're trying to figure out if we should create a separate subdomain for all degrees, and put the individual degrees in separate folders (so, all degrees' URLs woudl be degrees.us.university.edu/degree-name/), or if we should give each its own URL, which would be completely separate from ours (degree urls would be degree-name.university.edu). So our question is, how well do subdomains carry the value of the domain? Is it better to have twenty websites that are all separate subdomains of a strong domain, or one subdomain in a subdomain that houses all twenty websites in folders? And, as a side note, will housing the degrees in degrees.us.university.edu pass value to us (us.university.edu)? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | UWPCE0