Hit hard by EMD update, used to be #1 now not in top 50, what can I do?
-
We have what I think is a pretty good site, unique articles a few widgets, lots of reviews, decent enough bounce rates and user times (60% and 2:15) based on drupal. Previous updates haven't touched us and an almost identical duplicate (same site compltely different content) of the site targetting a different but related EMD is unaffected which provides a control.
I have seen some discussion on it having to do with link profiles. We did pay some backlinkers to link to us, much more on the site that has dropped, and quite a few for a partial match keyword. I'm supposing this is a lot of the issue. If we try and delete these backlinks will it make the situation better or worse?
I have also notice some duplicate content warnings in seomoz that weren't there previously.
Any ideas?
-
In regards to diluting your link profile with new and better links is indeed possible as mentioned by Karl. However, this will be a massive job that will take ages to do.
Consider the following: a good standard of having either brand-name or exact match anchor text is about 30% of your overall link profile (I wish I had that article to show you, forgot where it was). Now currently, you have 76 out of 77 links with the exact anchor text of "whey protein". In order to get those links into the 30% of your overall anchor texts in your link profile, you would need to create A LOT of new high-quality links.
My best advice is to either change as many anchor text as you can, or just get rid of the backlink if it's on a low-quality page.
-
In regards to your ranking being incorrect on SEOmoz, it has happened to me before.
The best way to check what your current ranking are, is to use either incognito mode on Chrome (Ctrl+Shift+N) or "private browing" on firefox. By using either one, it ignores whether you are logged into gmail or not, as well as cache and a bunch of other things.
Otherwise you could also use Rank Tracker by SEO Powersuite, but even then I prefer to just manually check my rankings myself.
-
Yip, I'd be looking at your anchor text for sure. too much keyword rich anchor text mixed with an EMD is a bad sign to Google. Diluting it with high quality links with varied anchor text (not always with keywords of course) is an option if you can't change the anchor text yourself. Of course quality linkbuilding isn't something that just happens overnight. You really need to work on a linkbuilding strategy that builds natural links.
I agree with you that the site content is not thin, it's quite a useful site. But beware of spam signals like repetitive exact-match anchor text for your internal cross-linking.
I haven't delved too deep, but I noticed on the article "Protein powder and weight loss" you had cross linking with the anchor text "weight loss" 8 times. And I've seen "whey protein isolate" linking many times in articles.
This could be seen as a low-quality signal by Google. You should keep it down to a couple per page, and maybe change up the anchor text a bit. Such as interchanging "Whey Protein Isolate" with "WPI" or "Whey Protein Isolate (WPI)" or interchanging "weight loss" with "losing weight" or "fat loss" etc.
-
If it's going to be hard to delete or change this anchor text, is diluting it with new better, nice safe links going to help? Or is changing this literally the thing that needs to happen now?
-
thank you very much, those are my thoughts as well. I'm also a little confused here as seomoz is saying we're not in the top 50 but we've "only" lost 66% of our traffic and comparing before and after the same keywords are getting traffic, just less, consistent with dropping rank a bit, but not being wiped out like seomoz is saying. I also rang someone who had never searched our site before just now to ask whether we were on the front page at all and we were.. maybe google is jumping us around intraday?
-
Hi btrr69, by looking at your OSE data every single backlink you have (except 1), has the anchor text of "whey protein". There are a total of 76 links containing that anchor text. I am getting the feeling that you might actually be punished by Penguin.
Anchor text should be super diversified, with only about 30% of total links containing either your brand name or chosen keywords.
If I were you, I would change as many anchor texts on those links as quick as possible.
-
Hello Karl, thanks, here is a link to some data: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v201/jamtart/pp.jpg - i'll try and keep it off this thread.
Traffic dropped on Sept 29 the day of the update. The dupe content warnings are from Drupal nodes with no content on them and predates this. There is also a Drupal metatag being placed on each page which is being read as duplicate.
I wouldn't call it a thin site at all, we had facebook likes every other day (although seomoz isn't picking this up).. no ads or adwords, no products for sale, just a largish product review site.
-
Hey btrr69...If you put up a link to your site it will be easier for us to analyse the specifics and give a more helpful answer. There are a lot of factors at play, and Google also released another Panda update around the same time as the EMD update which may have affected you. Without seeing your site it's hard to answer accurately.
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
-
Top Landing Page has disappeared from Google Search Console but still shows at the top of Google
Hi, One of the top landing pages in my website has disappeared from GSC Search Analytics results. But I do get a good traffic from that page until now. What might be the reason for GSC to stop showing it on the results?
Technical SEO | | eduapps0 -
Should I use the Google disavow tool?
Hi I'm a bit new to SEO and am looking for some guidance. Although there is no indication in Webmaster tools that my site is being penalised for bad links, I have noticed that I have over 200 spam links for "Pay Day Loans" pointing to my site. (This was due to a hack on my site several years ago). So my question is two fold. Firstly, is it normal to have spammy links pointing to your site and secondly, should I bother to do anything about it? I did some research into the Disavow tool in Webmaster tools wonder I should use it to block all these links. Thanks
Technical SEO | | hotchilidamo0 -
Having javascript in the top of the source code
Dear Moz-community, In our company, we are torn about the influence of having a ton of javascript on the top of our source code - while our Tech guys are downplaying it's influence, us marketeers aren't quite sure. The link is here: view-source:http://www.bettingexpert.com/tips/football/italy/serie-a It is the javascript that is loaded right after the Would this be a problem with Google? Thank you very much,
Technical SEO | | BetterCollective
William0 -
How can I stop google indexing an image
I have put a map of cornwall on my site on the Corwnall Page, and for some reason Google.de has picked it up and shows it up in the top 4 images for a search for cornwall? The result is I am getting about 80% of the traffic coming to my site for the search Cornwall (I get about 50 unique visits per day, over 40 a day are landing on the Cornwall page. Is this a problem for my normal SEO as a Close up Magician? Will google start to think my site is about Cornwall? Should I noindex the image (I say that like I know how! - How do I noindex that image? ) Or is any traffic to a site good traffic, I imagine they will be clicking on the link landing on the page and then leaving, which I suspect is not good for google reputation. Any thoughts anyone Thanks Roger http://www.rogerlapin.co.uk Where they land http://www.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http://www.rogerlapin.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/map-of-cornwall.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.rogerlapin.co.uk/magician-cornwall-magicians-hire-cornwall&h=904&w=1000&sz=167&tbnid=9GFlDv3BTz4ikM:&tbnh=99&tbnw=110&zoom=1&usg=__-b4bUYWREU_wAy2M04LrsrkzZpw=&docid=AUFmzso0arbGDM&sa=X&ei=HLZ2UpGYDMrY0QWXp4D4Dg&ved=0CEgQ9QEwAw&dur=2958
Technical SEO | | rnperki0 -
Penguin 2.1 update, ranking dropped.
Hi, My website was hit by Google's new update like never before, first my ranking dropped back in May when Google rolled out with their second Penguin update, back then i was outsourcing my SEO since most of the time i was working on optimizing my local maps. As soon as noticed my traffic dropped i start doing SEO my self, I removed over optimized keywords on website ( title, meta description) then i analyzed my link profile and found that i had a lot of commercial anchor text linking from spammy websites, mostly blog comments. Its been over 4 months since I used Google's disavow tools in hoping that will help me get my raking back, but i still see these spammy links in my profile, 90% of them are nofollow anyways , so i'm not sure if disavow tool helped me at all. With this Penguin 2.1 update my website ended up on page 4-10 for 90% of my keywords http://screencast.com/t/3bcw8LUxpj Im not sure what would be the best way out this, should i buy a new domain and start fresh?Please let me know if you want to take a look on my link profile and give your opinion. Looking forward to your help!
Technical SEO | | mezozcorp0 -
What hosting companies do you use & do you use dedicated servers
I am hoping the community of semoz will help me in deciding what hosting company i should use as there are hundreds of them. I have asked previously about dedicated servers but was shocked to have only received one responce. Recently i have been having nothing but problems with my hosting company so now i am trying to find a UK hosting company that can offer a dedicated server. I would be grateful if people could let me know what companies they use for their sites and if they use managed hosting companies.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Can anyone recommend an SEO friendly Joomla extension to use for SEO on an existing website?
Can anyone recommend an SEO friendly Joomla extension to use for SEO on an existing website? I have downloaded sh404sef but I don't want to change my URL's and make them longer than they are at the moment. Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | Karen_Dauncey0 -
Optimizing a website which uses JavaScript and jQuery
Just a quick question (or 2) If I have divs which are hidden on my page, but are displayed when a user clicks on a p tag and the hidden div is displayed using jquery a user clicks on an a tag and the hidden div is displayed using jquery with the href being cancelled in both examples, will the hidden content be optimized, or will the fact it is initially hidden make it harder to optimize? Thanks for any answers!
Technical SEO | | PhatJP0