After optimising for SEO my ranking went down...
-
Hello,
My website was ranking for over 100 keywords but was not really optimised properly.
For example, the page title was much too long, it was segmented like this:
"keyword - Category - domain "
I followed recommandations in SEOMOZ and I removed the domain and category from the long page titles to only leave the keyword and updated the H1 to reflect also the keyword.
We dropped in ranking since even though we did not change anything, only made things more SEO optimised.
I don't understand how it made us drop in ranking??
David
-
Thank you Mike,
Very appreaciated
-
Hi David.
Okay, unfortunately this is around the time of some major Google tweaks, making it possibly harder to figure our what went wrong, as we need to try to rule out Penguin/Panda issues (feel free to take a screengrab or csv download from GA with a chart, so I can cross-check against Google's updates, and see if any of the big drop-off dates tally with major algo changes for you, as this could help rule Pegnuin in/out).
I have had a quick look at your site, and done a couple of quick Google queries, and found the following (I am NOT saying this is the cause, but this is something that should definitely be looked into).
-
LOTS (circa 1,900) of pages indexed in Google, with pretty much duplicates of your homepage title tag (I will private message you a link, rather than publishing here)
-
Possible canonicalisation issues (need to check).
David, I have triggered a crawl test of your domain, and will cast me eye over the findings when it is finished, and let you know if I see anything that may be useful.
I am leaving the office soon (especially as it is sunny! VERY rare for Bristol!), but I will check to see if the results of the crawl test are ready tomorrow, and fire you a reply once I know.
Cheers David,
Mike.
-
-
Mike,
Thank you for your comment.
The changes were made during March 2012, since then I have been checking the SEOMOZ ranking tool and have been pulling my hair out of my head.
From April to June we lost about 40% of traffic.
Each month we had much more declined keywords than improved ones.
The drop off started immediately after the updates were made.
Here are the monthly visits for non branded keywords:
Feb: 542
March: 510
April: 436
May:426
June: 288
Cheers
-
Hmmmm, and, was this change made in isolation, or were other on-page changes also made?
When you say the rankings have been going down for around 4 months, do you know what sort of date the decline started? - I ask as it may be wise to broaded the net a little in looking at the cause of this.
I am not saying the title tag changes didn't cause it, just that it would be wise to not restrict ones research... for example, did the decline start around the time of any major Google updates? (Panda/Penguin refreshes, etc).
Also, do you know how long the gap was between changing the title tags, and the drop-off becoming apparent?
So really, 3 questions:
-
Do you remember the date you made the changes
-
Do you remember how long until the drop-off was seen
-
What date did your traffic start to go down (checking Google Analytics data could show you this, switching to a 6 month view).
Sorry to answer with more questions, but I wouldn't want to put forward an opinion of what could have caused this without all the facts!
Thanks,
Mike.
-
-
Here is an example:
The title:
|
"Data centre & server room energy audits - Energy efficient design of data centres & computer rooms"
was renaimed "Data centre & server room energy audits - Energy saving computer rooms"
|
and
|
|
"Data centre Consultancy and independent advice - Data centre solutions : [Our Company Name]" was renaimed
| "Building a data centre - independent advice" |
etc. to a total of 76 page titles.
Then the pages started dropping in Google.
|
|
-
Good question.
I did not change the URL structure, I do plan on doing it as the URLs are not SEO friendly.
I will send an example.
-
Just to check the obvious, you didn't change any URL structure (of the pages) did you?
How much optimisation did you carry out on the pages, please show an example, as it is possible to 'over optimise', especially these days.
Thanks,
Mike.
-
It has been decreasing for the past 4 months consistently. I will put together some sample and post them. Thanks
-
For how long you are experiencing this drop? I mean the time frame. Some times the rankings tends to drop if there are some minor or major meta details or site update, its natural. If the meta details that you have updated perfectly suits your site/ business and the link profile of your site is good then it will not take much time to re gain the old rankings. It will be better if you provide a sample of your past and present title meta details.
Thanks,
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
-
We are ranking for unexpected industry keywords; not for the main keywords. What might be wrong?
Hi all, Our company falls into a SaaS industry LIKE seo. We used to rank for our industry keywords just like seo, seo software, etc... We have fallen out of rankings for these obvious top keywords with high search volume, but ranking for these 2 keywords like seo homepage and seo website. I think we have some strong ranking authority at Google by ranking for our industry keywords "homepage" and "website" which represents a very relevant site to the industry. But not sure why we are not ranking for top keywords. Any thoughts on this?
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Website have Caching/Indexing / Ranking Issue
Hi, My Website (https://www.v3cars.com) is not cached or indexed on regular basic from last 15 days. before this it was cached or indexed on regular basic. We are uploading fresh content on daily basic. Currently my new content is not ranked anywhere in Google even after cached or indexed. Please help and suggest. Sandeep - Love to Cars
Algorithm Updates | | onlinesandeep0 -
Sizable decrease in amount of pages indexed, however no drop in clicks, impressions, or ranking.
Hi everyone, I've run into a worrying phenomenon in GSC and im wondering if anyone has come across something similar. Since August, I have seen a steady decline in the number of pages that are indexed from my site, from 1.3 million down to about 800,000 in two months. Interestingly, my clicks/impressions continue to increase gradually (on the same pace they have been for months) and I see no other negative side affects resulting from this drop in coverage. In total I have 1.2 million urls that fall into one of three categories, "Crawled - currently not indexed", "Crawl anomaly", and "Discovered - currently not indexed" Some other notes - all of my valid, error, and excluded pages are https://www. , so I don't believe there is an issue with different versions of the same site being submitted. Also, my rankings have not changed so I tentatively believe that this is unrelated to the Medic Update. If anyone else has experienced this or has any insight to the problem I would love to know. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | Jason-Reid0 -
SEO - Google Local Listing & Same Day Delivery
Hi We are looking to offer same day delivery if you're in a 20 mile radius to us. I'm trying to do some research on how to optimise this for Google organic listings. Would this be the same as optimising for a local business listing? I'm not sure where to start. Thanks! Becky
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Need Advice - Google Still Not Ranking
Hi Team - I really need some expert level advice on an issue I'm seeing with our site in Google. Here's the current status. We launched our website and app on the last week of November in 2014 (soft launch): http://goo.gl/Wnrqrq When we launched we were not showing up for any targeted keywords, long tailed included, even the title of our site in quotes. We ranked for our name only, and even that wasn't #1. Over time we were able to build up some rankings, although they were very low (120 - 140). Yesterday, we're back to not ranking for any keywords. Here's the history: While developing our app, and before I took over the site, the developer used a thin affiliate site to gather data and run a beta app over the course of 1 - 2 years. Upon taking on the site and moving to launch the new website/app I discovered what had been run under the domain. Since than the old site has been completely removed and rebuild, with all associated urls (.uk, .net, etc...) and subdomains shutdown. I've allowed all the old spammy pages (thousands of them to 404). We've disavowed the old domains (.net, .uk that were sending a ton of links to this), along with some links that seemed a little spammy that were pointing to our domain. There are no manual actions or messaged in Google Webmaster Tools. The new website uses (SSL) https for the entire site, it scores a 98 / 100 for a mobile usability (we beat our competitors on Google's PageSpeed Tool), it has been moved to a business level hosting service, 301's are correctly setup, added terms and conditions, have all our social profiles linked, linked WMT/Analytics/YouTube, started some Adwords, use rel="canonical", all the SEO 101 stuff ++. When I run the page through the moz tool for a specific keyword we score an A. When I did a crawl test everything came back looking good. We also pass using other tools. Google WMT, shows no html issues. We rank well on Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. However, for some reason Google will not rank the site, and since there is no manual action I have no course of action to submit a reconsideration request. From an advanced stance, should we bail on this domain, and move to the .co domain (that we own, but hasn't been used before)? If we 301 this domain over, since all our marketing is pointed to .com will this issue follow us? I see a lot of conflicting information on algorithmic issues following domains. Some say they do, some say they don't, some say they do since a lot of times people don't fix the issue. However, this is a brand new site, and we're following all of Google's rules. I suspect there is an algorithmic penalty (action) against the domain because of the old thin affiliate site that was used for the beta and data gathering app. Are we stuck till Google does an update? What's the deal with moving us up, than removing again? Thoughts, suggestions??? I purposely, did a short url to leave out the company name, please respect that, since I don't want our issues to popup on a web search. 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | get4it0 -
Why is site dropping in rank after we update it?
One of our sites - supereyes.com - appears to drop in rank after we update it. The client notified us of this today and I've verified that it did indeed drop in Google -- four spots since last week. He says this happens every time we make changes to the site, but then a week later it will go back up and is usually higher than where it was before. I have not verified this, but I'm very worried it may not rise again In the past week, we've posted a new blog entry to their site and we've changed some of the content -- specifically, added their locations to the header, added a contact page and put two testimonials in their sidebar. We've also had someone submitting their site to directories and local business sites like Angie's List and so forth. There are about 16 new backlinks established in the past 2-3 weeks. Also, I should note, traffic is higher than it's ever been, but the client doesn't look at traffic. They only look at their Google results. Can anyone offer any insight into what's going on here and if I need to be worried the site won't rise again in the rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | aloley0 -
Is anybody else seeing large scale rankings drops in Bing this week?
I track around 1000 keywords for this site, and my rankings in Bing dropped for about half of them on Wednesday. No major changes have been made to the site, rankings are maintaining or improving in Google for a majority of these same terms. The average drop seems to be around 9-12 places, which to me signals more than just standard fluctuation. Anyone else seeing anything strange with Bing this week? Or does anyone have any ideas? I looked for posts about an algorithm change but haven't found anything. Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | BrianCC0 -
Rankings drop, but only one term
Has anyone experienced a significant drop on just one term? I have about 10 terms that I am constantly monitoring and 9 out of 10 are unchanged or even improved, but 1 term was #1 and is now #11. Curious if anyone has experienced anything similar. I originally thought it was "Panda", but why wouldn't all my terms be affected??
Algorithm Updates | | MNKid150