Huge drop for main branded keyword
-
The past week the main branded keyword for a site i am working on has dropped from the top three on Google US to page 7! It is still ranking in the top three on Google in other areas. I recently redirected /index.php to / using .htaccess. Could this have caused a problem?
If not, what else could have caused such a huge drop?
-
Can an EMD update remove SERPS for all keywords, or just the exact matches? We recently lost all our foreign language domain serps, roughly on the 4/5th
-
Quite a lot of traffic lands on the listings pages so im reluctant to set them to noindex. There are only approx. 4,000 listings pages. I'm trying to find where these other pages that are being indexed are coming from.
-
If most of your organic search traffic lands on your homepage, you might want to consider setting all the listing pages to noindex. That'll get the duplicate content out of Google's index.
-
The duplicate content is a problem as a lot of teh listings are pulled in via XML from agent sites. I've been trying to find a way to make it all more unique without editing each listing manually.
-
Thanks for this.
What is the best way to find where all of these links are coming from? The only place i can see is the search results page. I have set this 'noindex, follow'. Should i set it to 'noindex, nofollow"?
-
Good point. All those sub-pages (listing pages) have content that is duplicated across multiple other sites, too.
-
I don't think anyone has mentioned this but your number of internal links is borderline nuts. I found about 190,000 internal pages.
If you remove those internal links and Google this:
"www.phuketproperty.com" -site:www.phuketproperty.com
You'll see that your site has 13,000-ish backlinks. Take a look at the highest ranked ones. They're mostly all cheap/low quality inbound links. You don't have a huge backlink profile based on the tremendous size of your site.
To put it in perspective
www.microsoft.com has 688,000 internal links and 28 million incoming links.
www.century21.com has 11 million internal links and almost 50 million incoming links.
www.phuket.com has 5530 internal links and 287,000 incoming links.
Internal links are not usually 10x incoming links. That could be part of it. You have 13,000 not-quality inbound links. And 200k indexed pages.
-
Thanks for your help. It looks like I'll just have to keep doing what i am doing and hope it bounces back quite quickly.
-
Generally speaking, you want to remove bad links while building good, new ones.
-
Before i took over the site the owners had taken on the service of some link building company. The links the company added where just added in to any wiki type site they could find. it seems that they only used four different types of key words when they were doing it. I have managed to remove over 600 of these links and the site was just starting to rank well for a variety of keywords, then all of a sudden this week the site has dropped back for its main keyword.
Do you think the best strategy is to keep removing the bad links? Apparently the site ranked better before these links were built.
-
I was thinking the same thing, you got hit with the EMD update recently especially if it happened this week.
-
Sounds like you got hit by the EMD update: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2214115/Google-Warns-of-Upcoming-Exact-Match-Domain-Algorithm-Change
-
I doubt a 301 redirect from index.php to / would have done that.
An EMD issue could be the reason, as could an automated penalty (Penguin, Panda, anchor text over-optimization, etc.). If we had your URL and keyword, it would be easier to make specific suggestions.
-
Hi
Can you provide me your keyword which dropped and URL of your site?
I think if index.php contains backlinks and you have 301 redirected then some % of link-juice may be loss but it does not have huge affect as you said. Have you contain EMD?? After EMD algorithm updates by Google it may be possible your domain was affected by this update.
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
-
Homepage not ranking main keywords - structure error?
Dear, Moz community We have an issue. We have a classified advertisement website. Our website is built like this**homepage (**Optimized for main keyword, has latest listings from all categories ) - category 1 (we did not want to add alteration of the keyword we want to rank homepage, as we thought this would "compete" with homepage) - category 2 - category 3 - **category **4 The listing URLs look like this www.example.com/categoryname/listingname Now the issue is that the homepage is not ranking at all for the main keywords. When we used URL structure like this "example.com/main-keyword-listing-id" homepage was ranking (other sites). Now with new site we used the best practice and added url's as described above (/categoryname/listingid).This caused our homepage not to rank at all for the main keywords.What did we do wrong? We want our homepage to rank for the main keyword and categories for theirs. Should we 1. Change the category 1 name to main keyword (maybe some long tail) so we have the main keyword in URLs? So at least one of the main categories has the main keyword in the listing URLs2. Should we change the category listing urls all back to /main-keyword-listing-id? We thought that this was a bit spammy, so that´s why we used categories. _This means that all listings have same URL name and not best for ranking cateogries_3. Just link back to homepage internally with the main keyword and google should catch that? _Currently in menu you go to homepage clicking HOME but we can add for example our main keyword there - Latest car advertisements _I would be happy of any feedback.
Technical SEO | | advertisingtech0 -
Huge uptick in 404s on new website
I just launched a new website, and I see that the 404s shot up hugely in Google Webmaster Tools right during the launch. We went from Drupal to WordPress, but I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on whether these 404s represent a crisis, or potentially something harmless? There has been no noticeable SEO downtick in terms of keywords or queries during the same period... Thanks for any thoughts. Screenshot-2015-05-19-13.58.55.png
Technical SEO | | yoursearchteam0 -
Curious Keyword Tags Question...
In 2012, we got hit with something... I have always assumed Panda... We have hundreds of thousands of products on our site. Prior to the traffic drop, our old site design listed a small number of keywords tags on the product pages. About 10 or so... After the site re-design, we allowed all of the keyword tags to appear on these product pages and also linked them to our search results pages. I know that one thing this did is cause a lot of these Search Results pages to be indexed. But our traffic has been constantly declining since then... I wonder what would happen if I just went back to the old with a smaller number of keywords listed and not linked? Any thoughts? Thanks! Craig
Technical SEO | | TheCraig0 -
Single Keyword Penalty?
Hi guys, I recently taken over SEO for strikebowling.com.au and I'm stumped to what has happened with the keyword 'Bowling' for the home page. Historically they have been ranking 5-6 for the year and they do come up in the local results. Start of September, bang they drop out of the top 100 for Bowling. No other words seem to be effected. However the keyword 'Bowling Alley' did improve around the same time for an internal page. What could have happened? A single keyword penalty? No messages in Webmaster tools No dodgy link building Look forward to some theories. Regards, Corey
Technical SEO | | LoudClear0 -
35% Drop In Traffic Since March 23 2012
Hi, I am aware ofth e penguin and panda updates and have been monitoring my traffic for the last few months. I did notice that for some reason, from about 22nd / 23rd March we had a drop in traffic by about 50%, it stabilised in a few days but since then from april to present has been hovering around 35% drop in traffic. what perplexes me is hat I also monitored our rankings and that was fine, pretty much the same, yet traffic is down. I have noticed our longer tail keywords have lost traffic by as much as 60-900% I would really appreciate some input, do you think this could be down to panda pulling pages out. how can i find track pages indexesd for my site over time to see if this is where he problem is. I havea lso noticed that in webamster tools, a domain preferance is not set, it is set to default "do not set a preferred domain", would this not cause a dup content issue, what should it be set to, post panda? Any help would be greatly appreciated as this is really hurting our business. thanks you in advance
Technical SEO | | LiquidTech0 -
Use target keyword on several page titles or homepage only?
If I want my homepage to rank for a keyword (ie "red widgets"), does it support or dilute the homepage's rank if I use the keyword on other pages? I can see it working either way: The search engine looks at your site, sees that the target keyword is used throughout the site, and ranks the site higher as a result. Using the keyword on several pages makes it so none of them stand out, and ultimately it's harder to rank highly. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Kyle_M0 -
Order of keyword usage in URL
Hi, I have been wondering for a few weeks if the order of keyword usage for a long tail keyword made a difference. Today I ran an on-page report here for a new page which is a review of a product. The report warned about the keyword usage in URL which made me question my knowledge about this. let's say the page is titled Razer Mouse Review my URL is www.example.com/review/razer-mouse I thought it was a bad idea to repeat the same word in a URL, that's why I categorized all my reviews under review directory and avoided using the word "review" more than once. Should I modify this url and make it www.example.com/review/razer-mouse-review Note: I see the report listed this under "moderate importance factors" and still gave the page A grade. any ideas appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Gamer070 -
Google India Rankings Drop Suddenly
Keyword: indian wedding planner page:www.hukamievent.com/indian-wedding-planner.php It didn't drop, it just disappeared. No, I didn't do anything to be penalized at all and I am still in there index. I know this question has been asked many times here, while I apply all the suggestions given to other people with similar problem, here's a quick question I need to ask, I made following changes recently, could either of these be the reason for ranking decline? In google webmasters' tools, I had changed geographic target from - india, to- nothing, few weeks ago. could this be the reason. Around 2 weeks ago I paid someone to submit articles to 500 article directories, same article spun many times, he did the job in around 6 days and got back to me with a list of around 150 submissions with as many backlinks, all with same anchor text, "indian wedding planner", one of my targeted keywords. Before the submissions I was on page 9, yes that was nine, and just after the submission I was at page 2 position 1, within a matter few days. I saw my the targeted page improve in ranking and jump on to page one position 10, for a short while, before it disappeared. is this something they call "google dance"? My website is fluctuating on google SERP for many other keywords too, in most cases, my ranking fell. P.S.:With the same keyword,"indian wedding planner" my rankings in google US improved, I am on position 6 page 1. please enlighten fellow mozzers!
Technical SEO | | virtualhandshake0
