Can you help me figure out what happened to my website search results in Google?
-
On or about the 24th of April I noticed an abrupt decrease in traffic to my website:
http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.comSorry this might be long but I’m trying to be as thorough as possible.
I thought that I had been hacked, a virus, maybe penalized by Google I don’t know what ?
I submitted a reconsideration request to Google and they responded with the following:
Reconsideration request for http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/: No manual spam actions found
May 10, 2012
Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/,
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines. - - - - - -
We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team.
Google Search Quality TeamI have ran all kinds of web crawl tests, Google webmaster, talked with SEO “Experts” and still can not figure out what is happening. I decided to use a couple of SEOmoz tools to try to help me explain what is happening. I figured that if I could take a very specific and unique KeyPhrase and run it on a specific page that I might be able to better explain what is happening. Basically, We appear to be no longer searchable by key words or phrases on google?
Here is an example:
Key Phrase: Free Services to Help Improve Your Photos on Canvas
Website: http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/free-photo-canvas-retouching
Attached are some screen shots of the actual search results on Bing, Yahoo and Google along with the ranking tool results from SEOmoz and the on page grade for the key phrase.
Anybody got any Ideas? I am hurting; the internet and Google search is about 40% of by business.http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Bing-Free-Services.jpg
http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Yahoo-Free-Services.jpg
http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Google-Free-Services.jpg
http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/SEOmoz-Ranking.jpg
http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/SEOmoz-Report-Card.jpg
[" target="_blank">iframe>](<iframe class=) Bing-Free-Services.jpg Yahoo-Free-Services.jpg Google-Free-Services.jpg SEOmoz-Ranking.jpg SEOmoz-Report-Card.jpg
-
Thanks for your great advice! I think that the problem is in the set up of the url in the general settings page of Word Press It is: http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com
and should be http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/
I was able to repair the added "Why Get. . . " from the Title and I am looking at installing WordPress SEO by Yoast to control the rel canonical tags...
Any comments or recommendations on the WordPress SEO by Yoast?
I suspect that the timing was no coincidence, I would guess that
Google included a better algorithm that picked up on the canonical errors.Thanks again to all for the help!
-
All tjose suggestions are probably a factor, but the latest panda rev happened on or about april 24th. Coincidence?
-
Thanks,
I did see the second canonical. I have been on the
Word Press Forum and it looks like this a BIG problem! I don’t know why there
isn’t a notice or a fix yet but I’m working on it! I’m still upset big time
that a rep that I spoke with by phone from SEOmoz told me that the canonical was
correct and could not be the problem. I’ve gone full circle over a period of a
week trying to figure this out.I really do appreciate your help and advice.
Thanks again,
-
Ray, for the title tag you need some seo functionality or a plugin within your Wordpress theme. There may be something built in, or you can get Yoast (or similar)
i think, repeat think, this might help you with the canonical part too but if not you might have to edit the page from the editor function (sorry, not that knowledgable on wordpress)
There's actually two link rel canonicals on the page, 1 at the top and 1 on line 52. you only need one.
Good luck.
-
Thanks for the quick replies. Wow!
First, I suspected the rel Canonical issue and even called SEOmoz to talk to a rep and report that this might be a problem with the new Google algorithms. I was assured that this is not the case and in fact told that the rel Canonical in the page pointing back to itself was a good thing? Anyway . . .
How do I fix it? It is a word Press site, do I need to contact them?
Also I don’t have a clue where the extra text in the SEO Title came from how do I fix that?
Any Help would be greatly appreciated. I am just a novice at this!http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Source-Code.jpg
http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Home-Page-Title.jpg
-
Hi Ray, I can offer a little help...
First you have a Rel = Canonical issue.
Your domain is redirecting to root.com but your canonical tag is pointed to root.com/
This is wrong, you actually do not need a canonical tag if you're going to 301 the to root.com and if you do use a Canonical tag it should also point to root.com not root.com/
Second look at your title tag
2 Issues
1. Its repeating
2. Its way too longPhotos on Canvas | Photo to Canvas Prints | Get Your Photo CanvasWhy Get Your Photo on Canvas Prints From Us
Try something like..
Photos On To Canvas Prints | GetYourPhotosonCanvas.com
--Modify it as needed, but here I'm expecting to rank for these Keywords
Photos On Canvas
Photos To Canvas
Photos onto CanvasThose were just the quick things I noticed and I hope it helps.
-
Hi, this may be nothing, but is the link rel canonical for the homepage a recent addition? I've had a similar issue since i added this on a site.
Also, (prob not connected) but you might want to sort out Title Tag on homepage:
<title></span><span>Photos on Canvas | Photo to Canvas Prints | Get Your Photo CanvasWhy Get Your Photo on Canvas Prints From Us?</span><span></title>
Good luck trying to sort it.
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
-
Google Analytics Stopped Tracking Visits - NEED HELP!
Hi Moz Community, I have about 10 sites, static HTML sites and WordPress sites, which ALL stopped tracking Google Analytics on August 2nd. They go to a flat-line! Dead! No data! Has anyone else experienced this either currently or before? I have confirmed all code is correct as it's been tracking these sites for years. One site gets 5,000+ visits a month and they are sitting at only 1,500 now and will be a fun conversation to have with the client. If all code is correct, what should I do? How do I overcome this without having to re-create another account/tracking ID? Never dealt with something like this before and there is not much on the web or in other forums. Would appreciate any help or advice or tips! - Patrick
Reporting & Analytics | | WhiteboardCreations0 -
Google Cookies
Without Google Analytics, how would we be able to identify visitors who are from Google Organic? What's the cookie?
Reporting & Analytics | | AMHC0 -
Tracking Google places (7 pack listing) traffic in google analytics
Is there a way to see Google Places traffic (traffic from users clicking through the 7 pack listings) segmented in Google analytics ? Normally is it just lumped together with the organic traffic ? Can you see the search phrases used to find your site, or do they also show up under 'not provided' when from Google Places. Im aware i can see some limited data in the Google Places analytics, but these seem to be 2 days behind when ever i view them.
Reporting & Analytics | | Sam-P0 -
Google Analytics Code
We have a quick question about our Google Analytics code: We recently updated to a re-marketing Analytics code, and some of our traffic numbers seem to be off by a bit. I used the Google Tag Assistant Chrome Extension today, and noticed that it's finding our old Analytics code on our pages, but it's coming up as an error due to "no HTTP Response". I am attempting to remove this code from the website, but it is nowhere to be found in the HTML coding. Only the current one is there. So I'm wondering if this second Analytics code is effecting our traffic and reporting, even if the code is currently non-functional? and if it is, how could I go about removing it if it's not currently in our HTML? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | PlanetDISH0 -
Website optimizer troubles
First, we would love to use the new Google Experiements intergrated into analytics but its not rolled out to us. We tried to get it expideted roll out to us but no luck... So we are stuck with a soon to be discontinued Website optimzer. I can't get past the first step however, I get the follow error: "The original page and the conversion page URLs must share the same domain.", see attached. The convertoin page is on a subdomain. There is quite a bit of help online about this. You need to tweak the script code. There is nothing about how to get past this page though. It simply says its a on a different domain (which its not) and won't let me go any further... Thanks! Website%20Optimizer.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | optimalwebinc0 -
Is there a way to use Google Analytics event tracking for YouTube embedded videos on my website?
Hello! I am trying to track different types of interaction on the YouTube for videos which are embedded on a website to measure the interaction on these video from my organic traffic. Is there a good way to go about this with the code since these are coming from an iFrame on YouTube? Would appreciate any feedback or help on implementing the event tracking with YouTube videos. Many thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | CabbageTree0 -
Nofollow page is being reported as a landing page for organic search in Google Analytics
One of my client's websites includes a series of pages for an enrollment process. All of these pages are blocked by robots.txt. In Google Analytics these pages are showing data as landing pages for organic search traffic, and have been for quite some time. There was recently a surge of organic search traffic landing on one of these pages, coming from multiple search engines. The pages appear to be blocked and I'm not finding any of them in the search results for the keywords that are being reported in GA or by searching for the url. Does anyone have any insights into why this might be happening?
Reporting & Analytics | | rgibson1000 -
Search for signed in users
"As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, particularly for signed in users" What does this imply ? Does it mean that search is more customized for signed in users than those for non signed in users ?
Reporting & Analytics | | seoug_20052