50% of my keywords just had a significant drop for no reason no changes?
-
I just looked at a report for one of my sites in moz pro and
35/75 keywords just dropped on google, I didn't make any changes recently
Ranking Changes
-
12
Improved
-
35
Declined
Many dropping 5 - 22 places!
Any ideas on whats up, thank fully it didn't effect traffic, its pretty low anyways, but it has stayed the same... But still dropped to page 5 for lots of stuff. Strange. Did google just update or something?
Thanks for any ideas.
-
-
Hello Willem,
Yes, in my opinion you should submit languages. I'm not sure but think that main site on .com should be set as basic NL site.
For each sub-site (language ver) sitemap in particular language is needed, I have no idea how your sitemaps are created. If on automatic way (plugin or other way) it seems to be a bit complicated, but it's better to have sitemap than not to have, it is worth your effort.
Use meta tags "alternative" in section on each site.
And ... ask other people, maybe there is something new. Theres a lot of stuff in the GWT blog and forum...
Marek
-
I do have 3 different sub directories on the main domain. /NL, /DE and /EN, one for each language.
So I should add a GWT 'site' for each language and set a target geographic location to the righ region and delete the hometextileshop.com GWT 'site'(that is the main domain for 3 languages)
That would mean remove the sitemap too since it has 3 languages in it too.
As for the sitemap: would it be better in my case to remove the sitemap all to gether and let the bots just crawl the site and index?
Or should I have the sitemap module reprogrammed to use the "alternative" tag.
And how would the sitemap be applied if I had 3 GWT sites (one for each language)
For each language a sitemap with the target language and the other 2 as 'alternative', or just one sitemap for all 3 GWT-sites with 1 main language and the other languages as "alternative'?
-
HI Willem,
I'm not a prestashop specialist but i know that on one licence you ca do something like that shop-en shop-cs - it is from Polish prestashop forum ... forum.prestashop.pl
My " use rel="alternative" for language versions" refers to the situation when you have language versions and you want to prevent from duplicated content.
When it comes your situation - rankings, in my opinion it is better to have 3 different subdomains or subfolders for different languages.
As I understand your site uses language switcher... and a versions are in main domain subfolders. For GWT doesn't matter which method you use - subdomain or folder.
Key thing is that you should submit to GWT 3 different language versions (subfolders) and do a verification with different GWT meta tag (if you use this method for GWT verification) or code or with three diff GA accounts.
So 3 lang ver -> 3 GWT "sites" -> 3 verifications by GWT
And last but not least ... you still should use "alternative" tag to ensure crawl-bots that it is different site version not duplicated content. remember that not only text can be duplicated content... images or other stuff too
It should work...
Cheers,
Marek
-
Hi Marek,
Your comment on the rel="alternative" got me thinking.
I run a prestashop in 3 languages and use a sitemap module, and it doesn't use the alternative tag
( www.hometextileshop.com/sitemap.xml)
I always had trouble to rank in more than one language, the standard language in the shop seems to affect the language priority and since I use a multi langual sitemap I see english sites rank on dutch keywords (although the standard language is dutch), the dutch keyword is not even on these sites.
Somehow the multi language part of the site brings trouble and search engines seen to have trouble with it althoug each site is differtent in each language. (one url per language, own title and description and (translated) content)
Any suggestions?
-
Hi Syndicate,
As you wrote - you did change nothing. It is possible that one keyword still has a good support for content, links etc... but other not.
Your competition probably did changes. Few tips:
-
you should analyze bounce rate in correlation with time spent on page
-
for pages with low bounce rate and short time spent and low traffic is better do them noidex and nofollow - they decreases site quality
-
implement microformats,
- big impact has rel="author", "author" links should provide to author's site not to publisher site
-
social media are the key to modern SEO position
-
G+1 is not a social media but it helps a lot
-
employ responsive site content (mobile) more than 20% of the internet traffic is on mobile devices (usage of CSS3 and HTML5 is a need)
-
use rel="alternative" for language versions
-
use Google Map Maker
-
and many many more, I advice you to read mentioned conference materials
You have to change your site - it is a must.
Just imagine that you start on Ford Model T in Formula 1 ...
The distance between Ford T and McLaren MP4-27 (2012) is the same like between internet five years ago and now.
Marek
-
-
Anything is possible but I have a site that I haven't touched ANYTHING for about 5 years now and it still holds #1 for its main keywords. So not sure but seems not all sites are punished for old content, that content is nearly 10 years old but it still ranks #1 and top 5 for most all of its original keywords. Makes it real hard to figure things out!
-
Hi Bron,
Maybe it was because you did nothing, remember the words "Change or die" said in 4th century by Claudian Claudianus and also in recent times by marketing guru John Porter from Harvard.
In 2011 google did 525 changes in algorithm. In 2012 they are still doing changes. Google new trend is to promote sites friendly for users not for robots. Backlinks are still have have impact but not as big as in the past. Now we're stepping in new world ... semantic search. Now for Google good article is article between 1000 - 2000 words with good quality and with minimum once a week publication on your site/blog. There are also lots of other changes and news ... you should take a look on SMX conference materials.
...so maybe you have to change something, do a site revision and next do changes...
Take care,
Marek
-
Yes something happened, not sure what. I have 3 competitors in my report.
Most of them dropped by only by a normal amount of 1 point not 25. None had more then 1 or 2 points in changes while the vast majority of mine were off the page.
I didn't do any linkbuilding, all I have done in the past month or so, it do some minor content changes to only the homepage. Really strange, maybe some of the links changed offsite or something. I cannot figure out what happened.
-
I noticed the same thing on my websites. (all of them)
What stood out was that alle the keywords that have more competition and had more linkbuilding over the past year dropped more than keywords with no linkbuilding on it.
Around met I heard more people telling me that their sales in their shop have dropped since middle of this week.
The key question is what to do about this? How to get ranking up again.
If there was a google update it did not seem to effect my competition. The people mentioned above all have websites around the same size as mine. Maybe that's got something to do with it (guess)
Please ask any question that arises, I'll be glad to answer if that leads to a solution to this.
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
-
Have you ever changed the logo anchor text from "logo" to "keyword"? How Google considers?
Hi all, We know that generally logo with the website homepage link is the first link crawled by Google and other search engines. Can we change the anchor text from "logo" to "keyword"? Have any one tried or seen others doing? How Google considers it? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Search Visibilty Score dropped by 50%!
Howdy MOZ community, I have been practicing all the "right" techniques on my website, The website in question was doing pretty well ranking among top 5 on SERP's for over 30 keywords, bounce rate of 65% which has been steady since last year, Since 2 weeks ago I have noticed a MAJOR DROP on more than 80% of my rankings, The website in question has also lost 50% in search visibility score, I have checked my Google webmaster tools and there are no alerts regarding bad links ETC, What could be the reason? I hope I can get this sorted out before my employees quit on me because we have lost business by 70%. Please help!
Algorithm Updates | | DustChasersToronto0 -
How to Change Geo Target Location of Country Specific Domain
Hi - I have a country specific domain (www.updater.in), used it for writing blog articles Now when i go to site settings in Webmaster - the Geo target by default is coming for India, and no option of changing geographic target. Is there any way to let Search Engines know (despite .in domain) that site Geo Location is not country specific, but is meant for users from all across !!
Algorithm Updates | | Modi0 -
Ranking drops over weekend
Hi all, Has anyone noticed any ranking changes over the weekend? I've noticed an almost uniform drop of a few positions across almost all of my chosen phrases. Nothing major has occurred on our site, no messages in webmaster tools. An analysis of our competitors positions (which we track the top 10) doesn't reveal any clues. Cheers Aran
Algorithm Updates | | Aran_Smithson1 -
Did Google Just Punish Organic For Showing Up In Local?
Google pushed the local search results in a prominent spot on a ton of search results. That means (for me) that all first page rankings (including a lot of 1st place rankings) have completely disappeared. Subfolders still rank and homepage still ranks where local search is not included. This is weird. Is this a glitch or is there something we can do about this?
Algorithm Updates | | Discountvc0 -
Traffic drop :(
Hello MOzzers, hope you are all well. Here is my question. Site : http://www.gunshotdigital.com Issue: Traffic In the past 3 days we have close to 300 Unique visitors, but today we just have 5. Totally confused as to why this might be. I know Matt Cutts hinted at algo change in 2 months. Our rankings are still steady. So could anyone help? 🙂 Thank you Mozzers, we love you and are flattered to be part of this formidable community. Vijay
Algorithm Updates | | vijayvasu0 -
Reason for massive dropp in targeted keywords?
Our site at www.total-displays.com has ranked well for a variety of keywords over a long period of time. After the change on Jan 18th we have seen a dramatic drop in organic rank across a variety of keywords. Our site has very good unique content and has a large number of pages (it's a Magento site). Advice we have taken is that the site will bounce back after a few weeks but this does not seem to be happening. Any advice please? Thanks Nick
Algorithm Updates | | Total_Displays0 -
Are you seeing changes in your sites today? Panda 2.2?
I've heard rumblings of some Panda sites recovering in the last few days and wondered if the talked about Panda 2.2 has been rolled out. My own site (which actually had a significant boost after Panda) has seen a significant increase in traffic today (started about noon EST yesterday) and a nice increase in Adsense revenue as well. How are your sites doing?
Algorithm Updates | | MarieHaynes1