Rankings Dropped Dramatically
-
Hi All,
I need some advice on this one, one of our websites is performing very badly and I am lost to know why.
We migrated from an old website www.myclient.co.uk and re-directed to www.myclient.com.
The issue we had was that the old site relied on search results i.e. www.myclient.co.uk/search+villas+in+marbella
However most ranked url's were not as tidy as the example above and had lots of characters. Because of this and the fact that all incoming links were to the homepage we do not carry out any 301 re-directs.
In some keywords we have increased our rankings but for others we have dropped dramatically.
keyword 1
4th Jan position 22
9th Jan position 90
keyword 2
4th jan position 34
9th jan position 89
keyword 3
4th jan position 12
9th jan position 16 (a smaller drop than the others)
We do have some top 10s for this domain so I don't think we have been penalised for anything but I am shocked to see such drops in rankings.
I have setup the website so that each page targets different keywords and I have checked and they get A grades within SEOmoz.
Any advice would be really appreciated, as the client is not too happy at the moment.
Many thanks
Andy
-
Hi Andrew -
If this question has been answer/the issue has been fixed, could you please mark it as Closed?
Thanks!
-
No nothing had changed on the homepage, the only thing we are trying to do is link build to internal pages so directories / social bookmarks would go to the specific page and not just the homepage.
However looking through the old stats before we worked on the site, he regularly had keywords going from page 1 to page 10, then a month or so later he would regain positions.
On the old site he relied on a search results page to generate different keyword positions, so they were not fixed pages. I wonder if this had an impact?
-
Odd that that the home page should disappear but not the other pages! Any ideas why that should have happened?
-
Good news, the rankings have re-appeared. Google decided to remove the homepage listing from its index hence the drop. However the homepage has now returned and listings have gone from outside 100 to positions between 8 - 20!
-
If it's had a complete overhaul then there's lots of things that might have affected the rankings. I'd tell your clients that any change is risky and may cause some disruption.
I don't see that there's been a total collapse of the rankings so the last thing you want your clients to do is panic.
Good luck!
-
Thanks John & Doug, really appreciate your feedback the site has had a complete overhaul and I think I underestimated the jump from .co.uk. The site never had many inbound links except from one website so I didn't think I would lose rankings.
I know the new pages are good as they are ranked well, so I will just boost the link building. But when clients are upset you want to make sure you have covered all bases and you haven't missed something obvious.
Cheers!
-
A few more thoughts - Did anything else happen apart from just the move to the .com domain? Any content changes or periods where the site was unavailable?
Apart from your rankings changing have you seen any other disruption of the SERPS?
I think I'm right in saying that a redirected link passes less link-juice than the original link. How competitive are the keywords your targetting? Will a small change in domain/page authority cause the changes to the rankings you're seeing?
What keywords are you targeting?
What was the reason for the switch to .com. Looks like both domains were registered at the same time and the domain name is pretty specific so I'm guessing that there are no negative signals associated with the .com domain.
I think John has the right idea. If you've ruled out all the obvious causes, I wouldn't get bogged down trying to work out what happened. I'd put the energy into building more links to compensate.
I don't know when this happened, maybe the drop in rankings isn't a long term thing.
-
Did you consolidate many domains into the .com, or just move the domain over completely from .co.uk to .com? In which countries have your rankings dropped? I am guessing UK.
The backlinks you have are not on great websites. Have you tried to get listed in places like the UK's version of the Better Business Bureau? Put in some work doing some guest posting and I bet your rankings will go up.
My guess is that if your rankings have dropped mostly in the UK, that it's the loss of the .co.uk ccTLD, which is definitely not an insurmountable hurdle, just might take a bit more work.
-
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently Content-Length: 160 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Location: http://www.TangoHolidaySolutions.com/ Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2012 19:46:04 GMT
looks like that is the right response.
-
I believe I have, as webmaster shows all the inbound links to the .com and not the .co.uk. the domain is www.tangoholidaysolutions.com. If you or John notice something stupid please don't be afraid to say!
-
Oh I see now. I honestly thought your site was myclient.co.uk. I see my mistake!
If OSE has picked up the 301, when you type in your old domain it will say something like "That URL redirects to (new url). Would you like to see that URL?"
Also, to spot-check server header responses, I use this tool: http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/check-server-headers-tool/
-
I haven't even given you the domain name? But if I do want to check the OSE index how would I do this to ensure the 301 re-direct is working for google.
I know it works for the human as if you type in the old domain i.e. co.uk it goes to the .com.
Thanks
Andy
-
Hey Andrew -
From what I'm seeing in the OSE index and in my browser, you moved the content over to your new domain but did not forward your old domain. I know you said that you had a lot of links to your homepage on www.myclient.co.uk, and since you did not 301 this page and older pages, you've lost all your links.
Can you explain why you did not 301 your old domain?
-
I'm guessing that you're not getting the benefit of your inbound links that you had pointing to your old domain.
Have you followed these guidelines from google:
Moving your site - Webmaster Tools Help
You say you've redirected to the .com domain. How have you set up this redirection?
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
-
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 -
Eligible To Rank For Few Queries
I can't figure out why this site (www.liveathomeseniors.com) is eligible for so few search queries on Google Webmaster Tools. I know there is a lot of work to be done, but this is my biggest puzzle right now. What am I not seeing? 379 pages are indexed and yet the site is has only been deemed eligible to rank for 3 queries over the past 3 months. Is it all the repetition in the way the content has been structured? I'd appreciate people's thoughts on this. I can't see the forest for the trees. Donna
Technical SEO | | DonnaDuncan0 -
Website redesign: impact on SEO rankings?
Hi We're redesigning a website for a client whose SEO rankings are fairly strong, and are driving a good volume of enquiries through their website. We would like to do our best to ensure the redesign has a minimal impact on the rankings but aren't sure if there's anything in particular we should be doing to avert a severe dip in results. The content will be similar on many pages, with the major updates being from 2013 products to the 2014 suite. Layouts and images will, of course be updated, and we're going to do our best to keep the inbound links going to the correct place - any advice here would be much appreciated, too. We'd be really grateful for any suggestions for how to avoid a ranking disaster, and any major pitfalls we should look out for. Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | Kal-SEO0 -
Are these redirects damaging my rankings
Hi, just been going through my google webmaster tools and i have found a number of soft 404 errors and was shocked to see these redirects going to my home page. | URL | Response Code | Detected |
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
| --- | --- | --- |<colgroup><col style="width: 45px;"><col style="width: 80px;"><col><col style="width: 120px;"><col style="width: 90px;"></colgroup>
| | 1 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/475-gastric-band-hypnotherapy-expert-says-government-are-not-doing-enough-to-fight-obesity | | 7/25/13 |
| | 2 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1068-coronation-street-nick-proposes-to-leanne | | 7/28/13 |
| | 3 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1086-coronation-street-fiz-nearly-gets-tyrone-in-trouble-with-kirsty | | 7/28/13 |
| | 4 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1155-coronation-street-kylie-considers-telling-david-about-her-affair | | 7/28/13 |
| | 5 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1157-coronation-street-fiz-is-worried-when-kirsty-pays-her-a-visit | | 7/28/13 |
| | 6 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/750-actress-hilary-duff-is-sued-over-car-accident | | 7/25/13 |
| | 7 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/843-what-your-dogs-bottom-scooting-behaviour%E2%80%99-really-meansI would have thought that the developer who upgraded my site would have either had these blocked or directed them to the correct page. i am now guessing that there are going to be hundreds of these appearing and would like some serious advice.normally with old pages i would have them going to the relevant articles or pages but it seems the developer has redirected hundreds of these to my home page, which i guess is going to confuse google. i would like to know if this will confuse google have all these pages going to my home page.i have tried to find out where the developer in my site has redirected the pages as they are not in my htaccess file, i use joomla.can anyone let me know what i should be doing with these to solve the problemmany thanks |0 -
Home Page Not Ranking... Need an EXPERT
Hi, for about a year now, our home page seems to have been "removed" from Google (except for our branded keywords). The home page is clearly indexed, but none of the keywords for the home page rank in the top 500 (again, except for our brand, trophycentral). Other pages in the site are fine and we rank in the top 10 positions for hundreds of keywords. We are also okay on Yahoo and Bing. So the issue is the home page from non-branded words. There have been no manual penalties, but since the words, such as trophies and trophies and awards are all but gone, something is going on. It has been almost exactly a year now and I have tried everything from removing backlinks (although I still can't tell which are "bad links", to changing titles, to improving speed and structure. I have had quite a few really nice people try to help, but their suggestions don't seem to work or are too vague. I really need an expert as the impact to the business of not having a home page performing is very damaging. Thank you!!!
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
Rank tracker and Rankings report differs
Hi all Is this normal? I have set up a campaign for a site. Tracking a variety of keywords. For one of them, which is a quite important keyword I've been working on I've moved down one step in my rankings report. This is first of all weird because my on page optimization went from grade c to a, and even weirder beacuse if I run Rank Tracker tool on the keyword and the URL I see that I've moved up 6 steps, to 15 in Google. Kinda makes it hard to grasp if I'm on the right path or not! (I've checked and they are both results on google.dk, same URL and same keyword - exact)
Technical SEO | | Budskab0 -
Duplicat content affecting SEO Rankings
We have one main site called buypropertyanywhere, it is a database it holds all the data for all our property websites. One of our most popular sites is housesalesbulgaria, which takes the data from buypropertyanywhere in regards to bulgarian property and display it. The same with housesalesturkey it takes the data in regards to turkish property and display it. We think because buypropertyanywhere and housesalesbulgaria has the same data it has high duplicate content . We think this is affecting the SEO rankings for housesalesbulgaria. Google is looking at housesalesbulgaria as if a copy of buypropertyanywhere. So therefore should we SEO buypropertyanywhere soley and link it to housesalesbulgaria through the articles and content we put on the site. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Technical SEO | | Feily0 -
Help - Rank is Continually Dropping
We are aggressively optimizing one of our internal pages for SEO related terms. http://www.arnima.com/Search-Engine-Optimization.aspx Some sample search terms are: SEO Florida, Florida SEO, SEO Tampa, Tampa SEO etc Based on recent work, we find that our anchor text distribution is good, if not very good. Our PA is for the internal page is 60 and our DA is 62 yet our Google rank for the above search terms is continually dropping. We have gone from #2 to #8 in the last few weeks. We have checked the websites of all that appear above us and their PA and DA are substantially less than us. Their anchor text links do not appear to be as well structured either. We have many unique domains - websites that we built - that point directly back to our SEO page. Some of these are fairly highly ranked sites... We are totally baffled. Can someone shed some light on this? What could the reason be? Any (and all) help and insights would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | RajeevRatra0