Why did my rankings drop?
-
Hi all,
In July I started to re-energise my link building efforts by getting a proper campaign together to build links.
Despite building about 20 new links my traffic has actually fallen. Here a a breakdown of what happen:
1)Late June I noticed my toolbar page rank up at about PR4 which, despite only being a small part of the algo, was nice to see.
- Early July I started my link building campaign by getting together a massive list of potential link partners by using Open Site Explorer on my competitors sites.
3)Because I'm a bit pressed for time I decided to go for the easier links first. I sorted my link list by Domain Authority and started to list on high DA directories used by my competitors. I listed on about 20 of these directories. I also livened up an old links page I'd previously hidden from the SE's because I was planning to do a bit of Link exchanging too.
-
A few days after I started building links from these directories I noticed my traffic start to drop off gradually. I also noticed the toolbar PR go down to PR3.
-
I decided to stop at 20 submissions because it looked like this was effecting traffic. I also removed the links page I'd livened up which produced a temporary improvement in traffic but it's since gone on to get a bit worse.
Traffic is now down by about 10% on when I started buying submissions to directories. I must add that during this period we have also been taking on new clients which, as a a real estate listing site, means we put loads of content on our site for the client. That content is also on the clients website and on other competitors sites. So there would be lot's of a content that appears elsewhere on the net.
Not really sure which of the two has caused the problem and not really sure how to progress. Do I remove the links on the directories? Do I wait for this newly added content to bed down so that new fresh can take it's place in our results which we rank from?
Any help would be appreciated.
-
I'd also updated a clients listings which meant dropping about 1000 pages of older content
That is clearly a large change which should have been mentioned up front.
When you drop a page from your site, you will of course lose any traffic that page generated. Even if those pages were low traffic pages, they did generate some traffic.
When you say the old content was replaced by fresh content, exactly how was this change done? If you have a page named "homes currently for sale" and you update that page with new information, the URL remains the same, the backlinks remain and the overall effects should be positive. Even a normal change such as this one could have a negative impact on traffic though in a corner case such as you listed a popular address or area before, the house sold and was replaced by less popular listings.
There is a lot of analytical data to analyze. How much traffic were the old pages generating vs the new pages which replaced them. How many back links did the old pages have pointing to them? Were all these pages properly redirected?
With respect to links, if your client has money to spend use it on other methods of traffic generation. Pay for high quality content to be created. Pay for advertising. Pay to be entered into the couple of directories that actually make a difference. Pay for A/B testing of the site's pages. Don't pay for junk directory submissions.
-
A closer look at the Analytics: Yahoo traffic seems to be down by 60%, especially on long tail terms. The shift happened on the 4th August. In the 10 days prior I had added about 10 paid submissions but I'd also updated a clients listings which meant dropping about 1000 pages of older content and replace it with fresh listings supplied by the client. I wonder!
Overall there is a slight reductions in most keywords but as you say this could be because competitors are building links too.
-
I started building links from these directories
The overwhelming majority of directories are a complete waste of time. They offer absolutely no value at all for SEO, and real visitors will never see and follow the links
I started buying submissions to directories
Buying links is a violation of search engine rules, If and when you are caught, you will suffer a penalty. In the meantime, understand that the search engines know which directories sell links and most likely offer those links no weight at all. If they see your site has acquired links from multiple paid directories they could take that as a sign you are attempting to manipulate rankings.
Despite building about 20 new links my traffic has actually fallen
There are so many factors involved to even begin to properly respond to this statement. If you had 1000 links previously and build 20 links, then you have increased your links by 2% which may not have any effect on traffic at all. You need to research what is driving visitors to your site. Is it organic search results? An advertising campaign? Social networks? etc.
Once you break down the traffic drivers, you need to further investigate the overall traffic. For example perhaps the keyword "vitamins" is the top driver of traffic to your site. You can check to see how much overall traffic the search term provided this month compared to last month.
What are your competitors doing? If you built 20 links and your main competitor built 30 links, or received 1 high quality link, then you may drop in rankings. Your search results are always a competition with your competitors.
In summary, any time you spent with directories is not likely to add value to your site. If you want to use directories the main ones I would suggest are Yahoo, BOTW, DMOZ and Business.com. If your industry has any high quality niche directory that can be considered as well. Otherwise your focus should be on creating very high quality content which is useful and touches upon important industry topics, then obtaining links to that content.
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
-
Redirect Issue - Drop in ranking after CMS change
Hi Website - https://www.aasprint.com.au/ After we moved the site from wordpress to codeIgniter + angular there has been a huge drop in traffic and ranking. One of the thing we recently realized is the redirection - COULD THAT BE THE ISSUE? On the browser and sitemap the URL doesn't have "/" at the end When checked on redirection tool the URL seems to be redirecting to one with "/" at the end Attached are the screenshots. Also moz bar shows no redirection. However, the issue seems to be flagged by the site audit tool as 301 redirection. Not sure if it's the cause for the drop. What action to take? Any advice would be much appreciated. V7CNtqt j3dJ4TW
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bhisshaun0 -
Why rankings dropped from 2 page to 8th page and no penalization?
Dear Sirs, a client of mine for more than 7 years used to have his home page (www.egrecia.es) between 1st and 2nd page in the Google Serps and suddenly went down to 8 page. The keyword in question is "Viajes a Grecia". It has a good link profile as we have built links in good newspapers from Spain, and according to Moz it has a 99% on-page optimization for that keyword, why why why ??? What could I do to solve this? PD: It has more than 20 other keywords in 1st position, so why this one went so far down? Thank you in advance !
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tintanus0 -
My homepage ranks but not my target page.
Hello, I have an issue with one my pages. I have a page about "Bike tours in France+ exclusively that has been existing for almost 8 years. Since day 1 I changed the web address a few times but I have the necessary redirect (actually only 1). I can't find this page (pretty much since day 1) on the keyword "Bike tours France" and I am wondering why ? However, I can find my homepage rank on "Bike tours France" even though it doesn't only talk about "Bike tours in France" instead of my page which is only about "Bike tours in France". I am wondering why only my homepage shows and not the other one. For information, I have about 30 % of my external links that say Bike tours France and that go to my homepage because when I started my website I was only doing "Bike tours in France" Could google say we don't care about your page about "Bike tours in France" because you got so many links to your page with the keywords "Bike tours France" and could it be why I don't see it rank. However, it is index but doesn't show up in search results ? Or could it be the fact that made many content changes over the years on this page and that google is saying I will rank you but it will take years because of so many changes. What can I do to make my page about "Bike tours in France" appear in search results for the keyword "Bike tours in France". Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Landing Page Drop Out
Hi, If a product page drops out of organic ranking, but you've made no changes is there a good place to start in order to find out why? I feel like it's almost impossible? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Is it worth buying a Dropped domain?
I've got a domain which was registered in July 2010 and had a website on it. I believe the domain expired and it was dropped for a couple of months. I snapped it up after discovering it in November 2012. Subsequently, the whois records show the domain was created in Nov 2012. What exactly is the "real" age of this domain from Google's perspective? Or at least, as far as SEO is concerned? Cheers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | syed002
Syed P.S - domain age does indeed warrant some merit in ranking factors!0 -
Internal page ranking
If I have a domain: Example.com I want this domain to rank for several keywords. I build a page on the domain called Example.com/glasses If I SEO the page Example.com/glasses with backlinks etc... will that URL come up on google or will it simply bring Example.com up on the SERPS. If I have three keywords, should I make a subpage for each page and SEO that page? Will that make the domain rank for all three keywords?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JML11790 -
Rankings improvement strategy
I am working on my SEO strategies and though it would be good to get advice from awesome members: Our current rankings are on (Google United States) page 5. Our keywords have high competition and hence we need to follow tight plan. I want to learn some best strategies to get Page 1 rankings and how much time would be required approximately. (though I know its weird to ask for time in SEO but what I mean is some case studies or examples of how long you waited when you have pushed your website from page 5 to page 1) What rank maintenance strategies you follow in general. Does anyone have used any agency for rank maintenance for their niche.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EG0CENTRIX0 -
Why does this site rank on the 1st page
i dont mean to be calling any site out im just scratching my head on this one.- I can't see any signal that would make it worthy of ranking on the first page for keyword loose diamonds. page http://www.jewelryexchange.com/DiamondResults.aspx Am i missing something all tools seem to say the site isn't worthy- All help appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidKonigsberg0