My new site experienced a sudden drop in Google rankings
-
We launched a new affiliate site at the beginning of April this year dealing in reviews, vouchers and price comparison for a niche product.
We had a pretty good start, with some of our target keywords ranking #8 #10 #7 but this week they have suddenly dropped off dramatically - like 36 or 42 places.
We haven't made any changes to the site apart from publishing new content pieces, such as news posts and reviews - does anyone know why this would suddenly happen?
Thanks
-
Yes, I was about to mention the honeymoon period as well. I had exactly the same issue. I can reassure you that yes, a few quality links would do wonders for your site. That's all there really is to it.
-
Various, but coffee machines reviews dropped 37 places in a week.
-
That's why then... Get a few links & you'll be dancing again
-
No. Hove focused purely on-page and content. no offsite activity at all as yet.
-
Some would call it the "Honeymoon Period"
This may help: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/google-sandbox/
-
What about off site elements? Any directory submissions that were of low quality? Or did you lose a link that you might have had before?
-
What are the keywords that are dropping?
-
Here you go: http://www.coffeemachinesreviews.co.uk/
Thanks!
-
Can you post the URL of the site so we can take a look?
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 to Maintain SEO Rankings After Redesigning a Website?
Hi everyone! Presently, our web developer team is redesigning our website(live football today). Right now, our website is ranking well on all our targeted keywords. Soon our new website are going to be live. I'm worried about our present ranking. Will it affect our current ranking? If yes, how can we maintain our SEO rankings? Thanks!
Affiliate Marketing | | fktos.tam.906n0 -
Sudden substantial drop in rankings - no manual penalty so far as I can see.
Hey, Wondering if anyone can help. There are a few things within this query, specific to our site, so thought I would group it all together in one post, as they are no doubt all connected. I’ve been working on SEO for my price comparison website for the last year or so. https://www.fitness-savvy.co.uk However, our rankings have not noticeably improved since we first started ranking in Google around 6-9 months ago. I have been building high DA links to the site, getting the on-page SEO perfect according to Yoast, Squirrly and Moz on-page checker, site speed for the pages I want to rank for is better than the competition on page 1 etc. I can see things like our Protein Calculator on page 1 of Bing, and Exercise Bikes on page 4. So the work I am doing seems to be having an effect there at least. However, in Google it just seems static. In fact, January should be the best time for our site. Searches on our keywords double around now. Since 2<sup>nd</sup> January there has been a huge drop in organic traffic to our site according to Google Analytics. Checked Search Console, and as suspected, massive drop. Lowest average position and impressions for the last 3 months. We were having around 1,200-2,000 impressions per day with an average ranking of 35-45. Now 600 impressions per day with ranking of 75. I thought I would leave it a few days before posting on here to see if there was any improvement but unfortunately there hasn't been. We had our 3 best days in a row at the end of December, in regards to organic traffic before the drop off. Thought this was a sign of what was to come in January, so needless to say I am gutted that our visibility in the search engines seems to have gone at the most important time of year for our site. We have no manual penalty, I have looked to see if there are any algorithm updates and have not seen anything, nothing fundamentally has changed with our site. The only potentially significant thing that happened at the start of January was that we released our first press release. This was done through PRWeb, and has been published in a few places, so there was a jump in links back to our site – all no follow links. Our DA according to Moz actually increased a couple of days ago from 23 to 25. This does not take into account a lot of recent backlinks which Google Search Console is showing from high DA sites – one of which is a .gov directory with Moz DA of 100, and some bloggers I reached out to with DA's ranging from 40-50. So, if anything, I would assume our rankings would increase and then even more traffic to arrive at our site due to the time of year. On Ahrefs, the number of organic keywords we rank for was 1,800 about 4 months ago and now 2,200. We were ranked 18,000,000 or so a few months back, we are now 4,700,000 based on our backlink profile. So while there has been an increase in keywords we rank for, it is not substantial given the amount of work on the SEO side of things I have been doing. Interestingly, the only thing we rank for is our article on top personal trainers for 2017. And the ranking for this seems unaffected during the recent drop: https://www.fitness-savvy.co.uk/best-online-personal-trainer-websites/ This article was produced with the intention of securing links back from those we listed. However, it is now ranked page 1 of Google for numerous keywords – regardless of the fact that on page SEO was non-existent, there are no links back to that page, the page authority is terrible etc. By all accounts, this page should not be ranking like it is - especially given the keyword difficulty (25) compared to most of the other "low-hanging fruit" keywords we are looking to rank on (0-20). Needless to say, after thousands of hours of link building, on page SEO, research, learning, and investment into tools such as Moz, Ahrefs, Squirrly, Yoast etc, investment in developers to help improve page load speeds, I am feeling defeated. Any advice on the following would be much appreciated: Why might this page for personal trainers be ranking so well? Page speed is horrendous – 40 on mobile and 38 on desktop. Much lower than any other on page 1. The only thing I can see which is different about this page is the number of social shares. This page also links out to lots of external “relevant” site, so maybe that is having a strong effect. There is about 1 external link per 150 words or so. If we were to receive a manual penalty for some reason from Google, would this be issued before/at the same time as the drop in rankings, or could this have happened but we have simply not been notified yet? Why, after nearly a year of link building has there been very little increase in traffic? I would have expected to rank significantly better with the amount of high quality, high DA sites we now have linking to us which were not there 6 months ago. Our domain is nearly a year old. From what I read, domain age doesn't play a huge role, but maybe this is a reason why we are still not ranking for very much. I am hoping that this is the main reason - that we are less than a year old, and that once we've been around more than 12 months there will be an improvement. Is there something fundamentally wrong with the site, or what I am doing which is negatively affecting it? I’ve disavowed a few spammy sites that link back to us, but maybe I should be doing more? I’ve tried just about everything with link building that I have read up on – guest blogging, directory listings, forums, producing valuable "linkable" content, resource pages, ego bait etc. Do I continue in this way and just keep chipping at it and rest assured that rankings – at some point – will improve? What would your advice be, regarding what I should prioritise to start seeing results? Many thanks in advance, Robin.
Affiliate Marketing | | Fitnesssavvy0 -
I'm routating keywords to find my website and to get better ranking; I know i want to use the most keywords that are prevelant in my site; iss that the only keywords I want to use for ranking purposes; if not what keywords were do i find them?
I want better page ranking for my website; keywords that work and backlinks;
Affiliate Marketing | | prostene13590 -
KWs for review site: target *product* or *product review*?
Hi there,
Affiliate Marketing | | Ltsmz
Goal: increase organic targeted buyers traffic on a review site.
What I'm working on now: page optimization According to Google's Keyword Tool usually the keyword Product has 50x searches than Product Review. If you haven't tried it before you don't know how weird it sounds inserting too many times the keyword Product Review inside an actual review. Given that my goal is to increase organic targeted buyers traffic on a review site. My questions are: Do you target product or product review? If you target product review does it make any difference if I insert the keyword product review in sidebar, menu, footer, breadcrumbs instead than in the actual body of the review? What is best? Body or surrounding? Getting back-links on a blog is fairly easy. Anybody has any suggestion on how to get targeted backlinks for a review affiliate site or in general how to increase the organic targeted buyers traffic? Thank youD.0 -
How to rank in google local listings with multiple entities?
I actually have a portal with multiple listings from different users. Every listing is a physical shop with a different address, but more than the half of them doesn't have a website. I was thinking on creating a local business for them and then add a link to my website in the section where google asks for your web address. Does anyone already made something similar? does google allows links to inner pages and from multiple domains? Do you have any other and better idea on how to show in local results if you're like an affiliate and not the direct owner of the shop? With google local listings crowding the serps it should be interesting to know how to fit in there.
Affiliate Marketing | | mememax0 -
Best way to start affiliate marketing a new mens magazine website?
I have just started up a new mens magazine website featuring articles, videos, sports news and photos to help drive traffic to the website. I write all the articles myself and do the social media updates in my spare time. I was wondering if anyone has any tips on the best way to start doing affiliate marketing for a new website? I was inspired to do this by successful internet marketers who make a passive income off their websites. So far I have added Amazon and William Hill as affiliate links as I think my target market will be looking for these types of product links. Also, for anyone who has experience in this, how long it taken for your blog to become successful and make money? Many thanks, Alex
Affiliate Marketing | | AlexBarnes0 -
Why Does This Website Rank?
Hi, I was looking over some mobile phone deals today and after search for Blackberry Torch Deals in Google UK I came across this site - http://www.phoneslimited.co.uk/Blackberry/9800+Torch.html When I hit the page I was amazed it was ranking #1 because it literally just lists affiliate link after affiliate link. The page has next to no unique content and keyword density is non existent. In fact, the whole on page seo is just whack. So why does it rank so well? The site seems to rank well for a variety of similar keywords? I think we could learn a lot breaking it down
Affiliate Marketing | | mwoody0 -
How Google Shopping Relevance Determined?
After looking at Google Shopping results, I was wondering how the "Relevance" is determined. It would obviously be hugely beneficial to be ranked as one of the top 5 most relevant products, since that is the default sorting criteria. Originally, I thought it was a combination of Price and Seller Rating. But after examining a few examples, that doesn't seem to be the case. When doing a search for "Radian XTSL" - a car seat that our website features - JustKidsStore.com appears at/near the bottom of the Google Shopping list, despite having a competitive price and ranking well for that term organically (8-13). http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=radian+xtsl&hl=en&safe=off&cid=15471698622239402479&os=sellers# Do you know what the ranking factors are? And if so, can you give a few pieces of advice for best practices? Thanks!
Affiliate Marketing | | BarrettAhern0
