Change in sitemap from XML to PHP caused to lose all organic rankings
-
Hi MOZers,
I need some advice for my website: http://www.scorepromotions.ca/
I recently changed the sitemap submitted to GWT from http://www.scorepromotions.ca/sitemap.xml to http://www.scorepromotions.ca/google-sitemap.php
I deleted the previously submitted XML sitemap from GWT on Friday & submitted the PHP sitemap on the advice of our developer.
On Saturday, I noticed that all our organic rankings disappeared. So, I changed the PHP sitemap back to XML sitemap on Sunday.
I am hoping to see my organic rankings recover to previous levels.
Does anyone have any advice or experience to share about this issue ?
Ankush
-
Jesse,
Thank you so much for the response. Much appreciated. It really narrowed down the problem for me .
I will begin auditing the backlinks & adding them to the disavow tool.
Will really appreciate if you have any suggestions for a recovery?
Cheers!
-
Unfortunately I sincerely doubt it has anything to do with your sitemap changes.
Seeing as how Google released a major Penguin update Friday, the fact that your rankings were lost Saturday morning seems to fit that timeline perfectly. It would be a pretty crazy coincidence otherwise, and sitemap changes truly should not affect rankings like that.
A quick look at ahrefs to peep your backlink profile and it does smell a little fishy. The growth in linking root domains you've had over the past few months has been pretty intense.. huge leap from april thru july and that's indicative of some blackhat SEO work.
Your anchor text seems to be keyed to a lot of spammy phrases like "promotional products" and **"corporate gifts."**This could also be triggering the Penguin penalties. I see a lot of links from sites like "freeseodirectory.com" and that's another red flag right there.. directory links, forum spam, etc.
Start digging through those backlinks, check your google webmaster account and watch for notifications of manual action. It still could be an algorithmic penalty even without notification though.. Just check out your SEO practices. You should know what you're doing to gain links and my guess would be it's in violation.
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
-
Finding Ranking for search term and increasing ranking
Hi. The company that I'm working with would like to rank highly in google for certain generic search terms (dentist, dentists, etc.). Certain websites the company has used to rank highly in google for generic keywords, but has not for years now since google has revised their algorithm so many times. Moz lists that the company websites are not found in the top 51+ results in google. My first question is: **Is there a way, apart from manually searching the results, to find the ranking position of the website in google? **Ideally, I would like to find a program that will do this. Second, I've been reading a lot of the great articles and comments on Moz, and I've been learning a lot more about SEO. My focus has shifted to spending more attention on User Experience and Social Media instead of placing the exact keywords in the pages / tags of the website. What area(s) should I be focusing on to best increase the ranking of the company website for certain generic terms? Ideally, I'd like to create good quality content, so that users will not instantly click away. I appreciate any thoughts or comments. Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | americasmiles0 -
Sitemap Priority and Recency
Perhaps more of a discussion here than a definite answer, but we are looking at making periodic changes to the priority and recency of our sitemap pages, but would have to repopulate that information each time our plugin updates for our WordPress site. Is this something that is even worth doing or are these updates not impactful enough to merit adding it to our process? Thanks all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReunionMarketing0 -
Xml sitemap only shows up sometimes (magento)
Hi Moz community, I'm using Magento platform. I can generate a sitemap using their xml generator, but it will only pull up sometimes in web explorers, the rest of the time it will show a 404 page. GWT also tells me that I get a 404 error when testing the sitemap, but sometimes it will acknowledge that it's there. Anyone had this problem before or know how to help. sitemap= www.ice.com/sitemap.xml Let me know what other information I can provide to help. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IceIcebaby0 -
SEO is changing - how has your day to day changed?
I'm sure we all read on our alternatives to Google Reader that SEO is changing - "here's what we must do to be relevant in 2014". I find these articles boring and uninformative. I suspect I'm not alone. The reason I'm not their biggest fan is because I feel like I've invested 10 minutes into an article that I have no actual guidance from. Therefore, I thought I'd ask the real SEO's, you guys, what has actually changed for you? Are you now not creating content with the aim of getting links? If you run a commercial website, what are you doing different to rank your product pages - directly or indirectly? Please share with the group. I'm sure many like me are still brainstorming and creating content they think will grab people's attention and gain them links, whilst also pushing their Facebook, Twitter, Youtube profiles, etc etc. What has changed about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | purpleindigo0 -
Xml Sitemap for a large automobile website
Hello moz fellas, I need expert advice for PakWheels about xml sitemap generation. There are hundreds of thousands of pages (mostly USG) and these are increasing day by day. What is the best practice of controlling all these pages in xml format. Where can we generate sitemap.xml to submit in Google and Bing webmaster tools. Your input may help us in managing these URLs in an xml format. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | razasaeed1 -
Ranking Ranking Factors!
When you look at the keyword analysis, you see the following ranking criteria: - | Page Authority | Page Linking Root Domains | Domain Authority | Root Domain Linking Root Domains | How do you rank the importance of each of these factors from 1-4? For example, PA, PLRD, RDLRD, DA Please explain. How many of these factors do you normally need to get within top 5?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
Will ranking be improved or hurt by changing 1/5 of part numbers to key words
Note: I bold major content for your quick skim for your convenience. Does this help you decide if its a fit for your response? My site has been devastated by the Panda or unknown reasons so I need to think outside the box. I distribute industrial products with average brand recognition. I only have about 5 competitors selling this same brand. My other brand competitors are billion dollar companies that pay a lot for PPC and have sites with 10 times the product offering. Since my brand recognition is not as important as the function.I'm thinking about changing the part numbers to reflect function. This will affect about 1/5of the parts ( about 500 out of 3,000 parts) . My concern is will ranking be hurt or helped by changing these parts with these strong keywords in front of the part for such a high % of the site. The strong keywords cost $10 for a chance at a $200 sale with repeat business. Example: Current part is: 10-10 Black Plastic; which is a Big Red Truck with my brand part # as 10-10 and comes in different colors of plastic. . Keyword is Big Red Truck. I would like to put my manufactures brand in the description. My same brand competitors sell 10,000 parts and my logic is that if I have the brand in 1/5 of my parts ranking would be improved because of the % of brand per the site versus my same brand competitors.. So I would change the part # to : **Brand 10-10-Black Plastic Big Red Truck ** In conversation I would state the part as: Brand: 18 characters, Part #: 8, Material:12, Keyword: 27 If the keyword should be first I could change to: K,B P,M. Which is recommended?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wales0 -
Triple listing in rankings
We have a triple listing for the keyword vca cursus (Dutch keyword). But the page we optimized for that keyword ranks lower than our vca examen page. First we had the number one spot but now we rank 2 to 5. In opensite explorer i compared the competiton and we scored on almost all factors better. Do you know the causes why the vca examen page ranks higher then the vca cursus page. Is it possible to change that or reverse the triple listing somehow. And why does our competitor ranks higher?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PlusPort0