Since the 6th June there has been a serious drop in search impressions and clickthroughs in my GA + webmaster accounts.
-
Since the 6th June there has been a serious drop in organic search impressions and click throughs in my GA + webmaster accounts for my website. This leads me to believe my site has been punished for something?
Where would be the best place to start diagnosing the issue causing the drop in search traffic?
-
Very interesting! I'm not sure if this explains some of my problems or not but very interesting that it happened on around the same time as my search traffic declined.
I also run another site with a similar amount of traffic in a different industry that has been uneffected. I have dilligently tried to create good content and generally good link building practices for both sites but one has been punished and the other not.
One site is a hotel website with twice weekly blog posts and the other (with the problems) is more actively changing - a blog based on renewable energy/solar power/innovation/design etc with new posts every 2nd day.
I'll be continuing to build good content for both sites while scratching my head as to where I went wrong here + hope things will turn around...
-
Is there a reason why you're putting content on other sites instead of building up your own site? Original, quality content that earns incoming links will beat putting out spun text and questionable backlinks any day.
You might want to start your own thread here in Q&A with specific questions. If you can give a URL, that'd be even better, then we can all take a look at it and give you some advice.
-
read this from yesterday. It happened on June 5th.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-bigfoot-update-aka-dr-pete-goes-crazy
-
Hey, looking in the tools here is always a good way to start.
My situation is similar, but not quite the same...
I have the issue of not GROWING my traffic.. My ranks appear to be dropping, but not so much my traffic.
That fact alone^ is weird enough in itself.
I have built a few spun text links in the last month.. basically a week before the update... I have a strong feeling that is the problem.
I have been diversifying my anchor text though.
These days that seems like it could be the reason my rank is dropping a little (according to 2 years ago SEO mindset), but it could also be because of the types of backlinks I am using...
I have decided to just start pushing a bunch of content out there on a ton of different sites and start seeing which ones rank better.
I am feeling so scared and lost these days, I really wish there was a better solution that could work for everyone.
Meaning that I wish that small start ups could still compete a little bit with some of these huge companies..
By the way, it is important to note that we actually sell a product on our website, and are not out to just get traffic for Adsense clicks, etc.
Anybody have a helpful direction that can help for us??
-
No problem, are you in the type of business that has a peak and down season? If so it might just be a natural ebb and flow of your industry. Wish I could be more help. Let me think about it for a few and see what else I come up with. Good luck.
-
Thanks for the tips Joel!
There doesn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary in the backlinks - as in there don't seem to be any new ones? While a few keywords have shifted down but not dramatically. The site is still indexed by google (I haven't received an e-mail) and a google site: search returns urls from the domain. The page scores a speed of 91/100 (firebug). The organic search traffic coming into the site is now 1/10 of what it was last week... The investigation continues....
-
First I would audit the site using the tools here on seomoz. Check out the back links and see if there is anything out of the ordinary, then check your rankings for your main keywords and see how they've been impacted. Also you will want to see how long your site takes to load, visitors don't like waiting more than 10-15 seconds for a page to load. Also make sure your site hasn't been deindexed by google. did you receive a message from google saying there was an issue?
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
-
Cross-domain / subdomain tracking in GA?
Hi there, My client has a site website.com and a booking engine, booking.website.com They are currently tracking the main site and the booking subdomain as two separate properties in the same GA account. The issue is we can't see where users are originating on the subdomain property; it's all being counted as referral. My understanding is we need to set up subdomain tracking using Google Tag Manager in order for GA to pass the user data between the two subdomains. This is fine, except for this one line I am reading on Google's guide to cross-domain tracking: Subdomains If you have updated your tracking code to analytics.js, then no additional configuration is required to track subdomains. You can use cross domain tracking to collect data from a primary domain, like www.example.com, and a subdomain, like www.subdomain.example.com, in a single Analytics account property. That last line makes it sound like we should be using cross-domain tracking for this purpose. Are we correct in setting up subdomain tracking and NOT cross-domain tracking to be able to track users across subdomains on the same domain?
Reporting & Analytics | | FPD_NYC0 -
Conflicting average position data from Google Search Console?
I'm looking at Google Search Console data in Google Analytics, specifically Average Position as given in the Landing Page report, and the same metric broken out by mobile and desktop in the Devices report. In the Landing Page report, I see an aggregated average position that's much higher/worse than an actual average of what is reported for mobile, desktop and tablet traffic under the Device reporting. For example: Mobile: 5 Desktop: 5 Tablet: 5 So the average still should be roughly 5, right? Why would the Landing Page then show an aggregate Average Position of 8? I wouldn't expect to see a precisely same average given that different device types have different proportions that could render differently when the buckets are combined, but this is a huge swing. In fact, the aggregate Average Position as given in the top level Devices report is closer to 5 than to the 8 shown in the Landing Pages report. (These aren't actual numbers, but are illustrative of what I'm seeing, by the way.) Unless I'm missing some vital difference in the way that Average Position is reporting for the Landing Page report versus the Device reports, it doesn't seem like this should be possible. What am I missing?
Reporting & Analytics | | BradsDeals0 -
Can't identify the real source of a goal because subdomains in GA
Hello, I have one domain for my website (www.domain.com) where I receive all the new traffic and a subdomain (billing.domain.com) for the billing system. Im tracking both in Analytics. I have a goal (new order) configured in the subdomain -billing system-. But when I want to track the source / medium of the goals (new orders) in billing.domain.com, always appears my main website (www.domain.com) as the referral. Now I added in Analytics: Admin > Property > Referral Exclusion List, the www.domain.com and domain.com. Do you think that now I can track the real referrer of the goals? Or should I do a more complex tracking setup with Tag Manager ( https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/6106951 ) to pass the session cookies from a subdomain to another one, just to identify the real source / medium of the visitor? Thank you 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | estebanseo0 -
Increase in 404 errors in Webmaster Tools
We have recently updated our website www.cooke.co.uk and twice webmaster tools have reported an increase in 404 errors. However, these errors are not for normal pages, they are things like http://www.cooke.co.uk/?post_type=crown_enquiry&p=1045 I have used the redirection tool in WordPress to redirect all these links to the homepage but does anyone know why this is happening since it is the second time I had to do it. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | AAttias0 -
Question about setting up Google Webmaster on Network Solutions?
I'm trying to set myself up as a Webmaster on my company's site. We use Network Solutions. I am following Google's directions on how to do this. However, I am a bit wary. Here are the directions. Underlined is the part I am having trouble with: Log in to your account for howlatthemoon.com at www.networksolutions.com by clicking theManage Account icon. In the left navigation bar, open the nsWebAddress (Domains) menu by clicking the **+ **icon. Click Manage Domain Names. On the Domain Details page for the domain you're using, select the Designated DNS radio button (to the right of Change domain to point to) and click the Apply Changes button. If you've previously modified your advanced DNS settings, click Edit (to the right ofDomain currently points to). Under the Advanced DNS Manager heading, click Manage Advanced DNS Records. Under the Text (TXT Records) heading, click Add/Edit. In the Host field, enter @. Leave the TTL field set to the default value. In the Text field, copy and paste the following unique security token:
Reporting & Analytics | | howlusa
(security token removed for obvious reasons) Click Continue. Review your changes and click Save Changes. When you've done saving the TXT record, click the Verify button below on this page. There is already a host of @ (None). The text for it reads: v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all I called Network Solutions and the guy I was speaking with told me to delete it and replace it with my Google Webmasters code. However, I think this is setting up our email. Do I just add the Webmasters in and have two hosts of @ (None)? Thanks!0 -
How are 301s reported in GA?
Does anyone have any insight on exactly how on-site 301s are reported in Google Analytics? My direct traffic seems to climb at the same rate as my organic with absolutely no off-line promotion. I have a suspicion that the 301s that I have built to re-coupe traffic being sent to old pages are being reported as direct. Any validity to this?
Reporting & Analytics | | NextGenEDU0 -
GA - how returning visitors are counted ?
If a visitor comes to my site from 3 different traffic sources within a session, does GA report shows 1 visit and 2 returning visitors ? Previously ( before Google made changes in session ) it used to show 1 visit and zero returning visitors. right ?
Reporting & Analytics | | seoug_20050 -
Custom GA tracking and link value
Hi I'm working on a real estate agents web site which has a lots of links coming from paid listings in real estate linstings sites (this in France so I'm not sure examples will mean anything but basically the agents have 900 house listings in each site and each listing has a backlink) In analytics these are classified as referals and that's fine for the moment But because sites provide different types of links, we are considering tagging all paid links with analytics utm codes. Mainly to learn which ads are actually providing qualified traffic (providing contacts). I'm guessing that currently these links, there are thousands, bring seo value to my client's web site and are not considered as paid links. Will adding the analytics codes to these links cause a loss of their value by clearly indicating to Google that we paid for them? What's the current thinking on this? I'm tempted not to be worried about being honest about the origin of these links but I'm worried that there is a real danger of loosing current ranking Any arguments FOR tagging paid links ? Thanks for you help Neil
Reporting & Analytics | | NeilInFrance0