Bought old site. Two weeks later, rankings burnt... could this be why?
-
Hi all,
Just joined SEOmoz. Good to be here.
I bought an amateur business directory site (not a web directory, but actual profiles of professionals) started in 2004 with page 1 rankings for the top 2 keywords in a professionals niche. Very stable rankings for years and super clean link profile.
However I fear I have killed the asset in a matter of weeks, hopefully it's not terminal... here's what I did:
#NOTE: I have reverted all changes 2 days ago, but still going down in the rankings.
**A) Added Google Analytics:**I think this is what killed it. Why? I didn't realize the analytics account I used had been previously used for a website that was burnt by the search engines, I believe because of duplicate content (I copied a full glossary from a book, didn't know better at the time).Looking at my AWstats the traffic started going down slightly the same day I put the code. It's gone from 170 to 80 visitors per day in 1 week, steadily going down. I rank page 4 or 8 now for what I was page 1 before :(Could it be Google all of a sudden linked that blacklisted (I suppose) Analytics account with the newly purchased site and decided to doom it as well?How can I redeem it?I have taken out the analytics code snippet and deleted the url from the account.OTHER CHANGES:
B) On-site SEO:
- Added H1 in homepage with main keyword (only had H2s before)- Added H1 in each professional profile page "[Professional type] in [Region]" (only had H2s before)- Changed title "[Professional type] - Region: [Region], Professional [Name]The idea behind the changes was to add H1 which in my understanding is very important and was missing, and to include the location in the title, as many searches are of the type "[Professional] in [region]".I think what could have hurt it is now many pages have the same H1.I have reversed all changes.C) I launched a Google Adwords test campaign.In the campaign, because it was a quick test to see how much traffic I could get from the kws, not an attempt to get new sign ups, I simply copy-pasted a landing page from another site and tweaked the text so it made sense to my audience. I run the test for a day or two.
D) Added Hellobar.There was no correlation in time between adding the hellobar and rankings going down, so I don't think this mattered. I have taken it out too.**THANKS FOR YOUR HELP!**I really want to develop a long term asset I can focus on full-time but I fear I may have stupidly doomed the whole website already.
- Added H1 in homepage with main keyword (only had H2s before)- Added H1 in each professional profile page "[Professional type] in [Region]" (only had H2s before)- Changed title "[Professional type] - Region: [Region], Professional [Name]The idea behind the changes was to add H1 which in my understanding is very important and was missing, and to include the location in the title, as many searches are of the type "[Professional] in [region]".I think what could have hurt it is now many pages have the same H1.I have reversed all changes.C) I launched a Google Adwords test campaign.In the campaign, because it was a quick test to see how much traffic I could get from the kws, not an attempt to get new sign ups, I simply copy-pasted a landing page from another site and tweaked the text so it made sense to my audience. I run the test for a day or two.
-
Todd, I have Private Messaged you the Url. I'd rather not put it out in the public thread. Thanks!
-
Do you want to share you website Url I have a few things I can check if you like.
-
I didn't do any new linkbuilding since buying the site a month ago.
Since the drop happened 6 days ago are you suggesting someone could have given me bad links on purpose?
I didn't change URL/domain.
I'm trying to see if I can revert instead of add things to the site, which would make figuring out what affected the rankings even harder. I will install webmaster tools once nothing else seems to work, thanks!
-
Webmaster tools will let you know if you have unnatural links
Crawl errors
It is easy to set up.
If you changes the URL's make sure you 301 them to the new ones
Did you switch domains?
-
@Russ: I'm not certain when I lost my ranking, but looking at my traffic stats in AWstats, they started going down on April 26th, which is the day I installed GA. This is less than a week ago so I doubt it has to do with algo updates?
PS: read your chairman's first book ages ago. Cool to see you here.
I forgot to mention the On-site SEO changes of point B seemed to increase the traffic from 170 to 200-300+ for the following 4 days, until I added the GA code snippet...
-
Only 1 H1 per page. Now I have taken them out as before, when it ranked well (no H1s in any page).
-
I believe Title was relevant, which is why I added the location in it, though I have reverted to old one now.
-
Adword: ok, I think we can discard it as reason.
-
Hello bar: ok, I think we can discard it as reason, also it was on for 3 weeks and nothing had happened.
Page time: hadn't thought of this!. I just tried pingdom.com on my homepage and it gave Perf (75/100) Requests (55) Load time (956 ms) Page size (288 kb) "site faster than 89% of websites tested".... so it doesn't seem to be the problem?
@ Todd:
No, I don't have it... would it help revert thigs at this point?...
@ ALL: I think it has to do with a change I have done on the site. Nothing external. If one reverts back to the same site that he had before rankings fell, does Google usually get it back up? If so are we talking days/week/months? Thanks so much for your support, I feel blind without it.
-
-
Aha! There is no correlation of adding a GA of a burnt site and rankings… there is no way I can believe that your GA account that has been previously used for a website that was burnt by the search engines can kill the rankings in SERPs…
This must be something different!
- Unless you are not using too many H1 on each pages its great!
- Changing title can hurt the rankings if they are not keyword focused!
- Adword campaign can never kill the site rankings if you are not changing anything in the website for this purpose… usually for adwards if you add/include more pages, its good practice to exclude those pages from indexing!
- Adding a Hello Bar not really!
Check your page time speed and may be due to (improperly) adding of codes page time load might went up and effect the ranking negatively.
H1s and Titles can hurt if they are not keyword focused but other then this adding GA or Hello bar can’t hurt Google Rankings in anyway…
-
Do you have a google webmasters account for this site. It allows you to check your vitals of your site.
-
When did you lose your rankings? You may have lost your rankings in the myriad algo updates, panda releases, etc. in the last month or so.
All of the changes you mentioned above should not have had a negative impact.
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
-
Search Volume, Organic Rankings and Adwords
Hi, I hope you can help. And if this has been answered before, I apologise. Just spent two hours searching but couldnt find much at all. So I have this website, and it ranks in the top 10 for around 150 keywords. Its fairly niche market for targeting the UK market, but subject is for a local area, its got a good optimised site, no link issues, works well, good UI etc. Problem I have is this. It used to get a fair amount of organic traffic a few years ago to generate around 30 leads a day, and back then that was from just one keyword. Today, we may get one a lead a day from organic even though we rank for a lot more keywords and our exposure all round is good. However, we also pay for adwords to make up for the lost leads, the same keywords we are ranking for organically! So we bid on adwords and get our 30 leads with the same keywords and monthly search volume as we have organically, yet we dont get any leads for those keywords organically. So Adwords produces leads, organic doesn't, but they are the same keywords and rank next to each other. How does that work? So my question is, why do our organic keywords that rank just under the adwords that we bid for, with the same monthly searches, only give us 1 lead a day (when they used to give us 30) and adwords now give us 30 leads a day? Thanks James
Paid Search Marketing | | jaimo6930 -
PPC seems to have had a seriously negative impact on organic rankings?!?
We've been targeting a keyword on behalf of a client for the last few months. The page had good content and had been steadily climbing the rankings. It reached a position of #12 and then suddenly dropped off. Within 2 weeks it was out of the top 50 and is now around the 10th or 11th page (useless). This drop off matched exactly with the cleint switching on a low level PPC campaign, driving traffic from this specific keyword. The stats on this have shown a really high bounce rate (so we'll need to ask some other questions about content) - but could this be the reason that organic stats have taken a hammering? If Google associated people landing n that page from that keyword (even though its paid) as not finding relevant content, I'm assuming this could have a negative impact on the organic rank? Any Thoughts Welcome....!!!
Paid Search Marketing | | Purestone0 -
Anyone Think AdWords Campaigns Hurt Organic CTRs, Decreasing Organic Rankings?
Hi All, It seems like just about everyone agrees that AdWords campaigns and SEO campaigns bring additional value when used in conjunction (increasing Impressions, Clicks, Conversions, etc.), but has anyone considered AdWords performance harming organic rankings by decreasing engagement metrics? I've been searching for studies, blog posts, investigations, etc. this morning and haven't been able to find anyone discussing this specific idea. Personally, I think decreased engagement for organic results would be relatively evenly distributed among those results, making engagement drops relative and thus nullifying their impact on rankings. Any other ideas out there? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | mac22330 -
Enhanced Sitelinks for Large Ecommerce Sites
We're about to set up enhanced sitelinks for our main site but I'm not sure about the best way to do this given the duplicate URL rule. Ex. we have a campaign for X category of products. X category has 13 subcategories and each subcategory has 4 ad groups. So in total, campaign X category has 52 ad groups in it. We planned to do a sitelink for every ad group, so 52 for this X category of products. But the duplicate URL rule makes this difficult considering how many will be in a single campaign. Making them links to related subcategories isn't possible as we'd run into duplicates really fast. Same with About Us, Contact Us, etc. What's the best way of approaching this?
Paid Search Marketing | | Kingof50 -
I want to try some Google PPC ads on other sites but don't know what i'm doing.
We have seen a massive drop in traffic this year and i am contemplation using banner ads to try to increase sales and also to help with marketing. the problem is i know nothing about doing this. I have used it in the past but to limited success and i was just stabbing in the dark. I have a few questions. Am i better to target keywords related to the product or to the people who may buy my products? Is it better for direct sales or brand awareness? What kind of ROI can i expect if i get it working well? Is it better to pay for the big keywords or pic all the low hanging fruit? Does it work? Should i employ an expert, are they worth it? Any insights into the world of PPc would be a massive help.
Paid Search Marketing | | mark_baird1 -
Bought domains to some of my best keywords. What should I do?
So I work in a very niche industry and compete very well with Google PPC. I was recently able to acquire domains of keywords that drive almost 40% of all our paid traffic and quite a bit of organic traffic as well. The problem is that these keyword domains carry no authority (obviously because i just bought them). Would i be best served to just do redirects with these names to my current site(s)? Or i was also thinking about setting up independent blog sites that would link back to my main site. I' was also thinking of changing the domains of my paid google ads to align with the recently acquired links.... Thanks in advance for your help!
Paid Search Marketing | | ckonicek0 -
Your thoughts on Pay-Per-Rank (Performance based) SEO firms
I am seeing several Pay-Per-Rank (performance based) SEO firms popping up lately. The model is interesting. They only take on the work that they know they can achieve good results. Most seem advertise white hat SEO. Overall thougts? Anyone have any experience with these firms? Any recommendations?
Paid Search Marketing | | paddlej0 -
Does an AdWord campaign affect your rankings?
Say for instance you are in the business of "lawn mower repair," and you are ranking for that keyword. If you were doing an AdWord campaign on that keyword, would that also affect your organic rankings in the SERPs for that keyword?
Paid Search Marketing | | Bill4Time0