Sudden site drop google, not banned or penalised?
-
Hi all,
We've been working on our site weldingmart.com for a while. 4 weeks ago we got a sudden drop from google rankings even with our own brand name. No clear cause found, and decided to walk through all technicalities of the SEO fundament. thus we did the following
-> Setup google webmasters tools
no issues found, a few 404's, few 410's sure thats all ok,
-> Setup robots.txt to only index homepages, lister pages, content and product detail pages (disabled all filters and search queries) Also we banned russian and spammy bots for performance-sake.
-> Added sitemaps, and around 14k pages seemed to be already indexed.
-> When searching for "site:weldingmart.com" i can find 14k pages.
-> we had a low 33/100 page speed score and improved this to 76/100So we did a lot of clean up and improved a lot of items. but still 2-weeks in. we still have no ranking improvements. Before we went down we had around 100 clicks a day from google. now 5 avg.
by the way i think a main issue is the low link count of course but still googling your own name should return us in top3 right.
Is there something we are missing, do we need more time. I just want to verify that we do not mis anything!
-
of course we checked that but nothing special, we released a new site in October.
-
Can you tell a bit more about your improvements? What did you do before the drop?
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
-
Test site got indexed in Google - What's the best way of getting the pages removed from the SERP's?
Hi Mozzers, I'd like your feedback on the following: the test/development domain where our sitebuilder works on got indexed, despite all warnings and advice. The content on these pages is in active use by our new site. Thus to prevent duplicate content penalties we have put a noindex in our robots.txt. However off course the pages are currently visible in the SERP's. What's the best way of dealing with this? I did not find related questions although I think this is a mistake that is often made. Perhaps the answer will also be relevant for others beside me. Thank you in advance, greetings, Folko
Technical SEO | | Yarden_Uitvaartorganisatie0 -
Google Indexing Development Site Despite Robots.txt Block
Hi, A development site that has been set-up has the following Robots.txt file: User-agent: * Disallow: / In an attempt to block Google indexing the site, however this isn't the case and the development site has since been indexed. Any clues why this is or what I could do to resolve it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CarlWint0 -
My rank suddenly drop
Hi before i subscribe for MOZ i have hired a seo expert to do an optimization for my escort website, it was really hard since im not knowledgeable and have no clue about it also my niche is kinda hard as what everyone says. The SEO did a good job ranking my site but in less than 2 weeks my ranking goes down and every time it happen what i do is call him and tell him about the situation and in just few days my rank goes up again and im in page 1 of google. My question is, is that normal? like ranking drop in less than 2 weeks and he could easily rank me up in just few days? I pay just to make sure that im on page 1, so every time he put my site on page 1 i pay for it. Gawd i still have no clue whats going on, i have a lot to learn, black hat, white hat, proper back linking, etc etc so i'd really love to know if its normal cause if it is then no point for me to learn SEO as he is doing job well done. I was just afraid that he is doing this to rip me, not that i dont trust him but you know this days everyone needs something for a living 🙂
Technical SEO | | geefex6nsy0 -
No follow links from ban sites
Hello boys and girls. I'm auditing my link profile and came across links pointing to my sites, from a ban site (site: domain.com gives back no result).yet the links are no follow. should i try to remove them all? i know no follow should be enough, yet my links are set in a bad neighborhood. what would you recommend??
Technical SEO | | Tit0 -
Dev Site Was Indexed By Google
Two of our dev sites(subdomains) were indexed by Google. They have since been made private once we found the problem. Should we take another step to remove the subdomain through robots.txt or just let it ride out? From what I understand, to remove the subdomain from Google we would verify the subdomain on GWT, then give the subdomain it's own robots.txt and disallow everything. Any advice is welcome, I just wanted to discuss this before making a decision.
Technical SEO | | ntsupply0 -
What is the best way to find missing alt tags on my site (site wide - not page by page)?
I am looking to find all the missing alt tags on my site at once. I have a FF extension that use to do it page by page, but my site is huge and that will take forever. Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions1 -
Mobile site rank on Google S.E. instead of desktop site.
Hello, all SEOers~ Today, I would like to hear your opinion regarding on Mobile site and duplicate contents issue. I have a mobile version of our website that is hosted on a subdomain (m instead www). Site is targeting UK and Its essentially the same content, formatted differently. So every URL on www exists also at the "m" subdomain and is identical content. (there are some different contents, yet I could say about 90% or more contents are same) Recently I've noticed that search results are showing links to our mobile site instead of the desktop site. (Google UK) I have a sitemap.xml for both sites, the mobile sitemap defined as follows: I didn't block googlebot from mobile site and also didn't block googlebot-mobile from desktop site. I read and watched Google webmaster tool forum and related video from Matt Cutts. I found many opinion that there is possibility which cause duplicate contents issue and I should do one of followings. 1. Block googlebot from mobile site. 2. Use canonical Tag on mobile site which points to desktop site. 3. Create and develop different contents (needless to say...) Do you think duplicate contents issue caused my mobile site rank on S.E. instead of my desktop site? also Do you think those method will help to show my desktop site on S.E.? I was wondering that I have multi-country sites which is same site format as I mentioned above. However, my other country sites are totally doing fine on Google. Only difference that I found is my other country sites have different Title & Meta Tag comparing to desktop site, but my UK mobile site has same Title & Meta Tag comparing to desktop. Do you think this also has something to do with current problem? Please people~! Feel free to make some comments and share your opinion. Thanks for reading my long long explanation.
Technical SEO | | Artience0 -
Redirect Flash Site for Google Only - Is this against TOS?
A photographer client has a flash website, purchased as from a (well respected) template company. The main site is at the root domain, and the HTML version is at www.example.com/?load=html If I visit the site on a browser without Flash installed, I am re-directed automatically to the HTML version. I'm concerned as the site has some great links and the HTML version is well optimised, but doesn't appear anywhere in Google for chosen keywords (ranks perfectly for brand related searches). Google is indexing the Flash version of the site, but I would rather it didn't (there's no real content (just Javascript to load the SWF) and all of the pages load under one URL). How can I block the Flash version from Google but still make the incoming links count towards the HTMl version of the site? If I re-direct Google to the HTML version, is this cloaking, and is it frowned upon? Thanks for any advice you can offer.
Technical SEO | | cmaddison0