Can someone please help me understand my sites recent loss of rankings?
-
My site has been top 3 for 'speed dating' on Google.co.uk since about 2003 and it went to below top 50 for a lot of it's main keywords shortly after 27 Oct 2012. I did a re-submission request and was told there was 'no manual spam action'.
I have a Page Authority of 53, a regular blog http://bit.ly/oKyi88, a KLOUT of 40, user reviews and quality content.
I did discover that another URL I using was set to a 302 instead of a 301 for some reason. I don't necessarily think this was an issue as Google should know which is the trusted URL and therefore which content to list. I removed this redirect completely about 3 weeks ago, but I've seen no improvement.
I'm looking at improving various things, but I'm still not sure why I've been hit and wonder if I'm missing something obvious? Any suggestions greatly appreciated.
-
Thanks for your comments Bryan.
It seems the Exact-Match Domains update on the 27 Sept exactly coincides with my drop. I'm not sure why I would be affected as my domain name is my brand not keyword.
The other update on this day was Panda #20 but I don't what to take from the details of that update. I would say it's more likely Panda #20 and not the EMD update. Do you know what this means? "Abandoning the 3.9.X naming scheme"
-
Hi Ben,
These are the recent algorithm changes made by Google: http://mozcast.com/events
If your site did not get punished for any of these and you have a natural looking link profile (Anchor text ratio & authoritative qualities) then most likely you are not doing enough link "EARNING" Google+ search #RCS for some ideas : )
Hope this helps!
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
-
Help me to understand why this page doesn't rank
Hello everyone. I am trying to understand why most of my website category pages don't show up in the in the first 50 organic results on Google, despite my high website DA and high PA of those pages. We used to rank high a few years ago, not clear why most of those pages have almost completely disappeared. So, just to take one as an example, please, help me to understand why this page doesn't shows up in the first 50 organic search results for the keyword "cello sheet music": http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/Cello.html I really can't explain why, unless we are under some sort of "penalization" or similar (a curse?!)... I have analyzed any possible metric, and can't find a logical explanation. Looking forward for your thoughts guys! All the best, Fab.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Is site page structure hurting its chances to rank?
I have a client that sells geotextiles and related products. None of his keywords gets a lot of traffic google as it is a very B2B niche specific industry. For instance, and these numbers are off the top of my head The phrase geotextiles may get 80 searches a month and we have a domain.com/geotextiles.php page Then there are woven and nonwoven geotextiles which may get 30 searches a month We too have a domain.com/nonwoven-geotextiles.php and etc It then goes even further and has things like slit film series non woven /woven and we have subpages from there. To me, I feel as if we need to merge all of these pages to just a singular geotextile page with headers for woven and nonwoven and product info for the sub branches of those two. I feel as if we are basically competing for the same phrase again and again and again for very small amounts of traffic. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Site rankings steadily decreasing - do I need to remove links?
Since mid-April, our ranking have been steadily declining. Our two main keywords are 'nuts and bolts' and 'bolts and nuts'. 'nuts and bolts' dropped from 7th to 46th in May and has recovered slightly to 28th, and 'bolts and nuts' moved from 7th to 16th, and is today 24th. Ranking on keywords we specialise in have fared better, but they're fairly niche. 'bsw bolts' has moved from 2nd to 4th, and 'imperial bolts' has moved from 1st to 4th. I think my link profile is the issue. I don't think we've been penalised by Penguin directly (I may be wrong, I don't think we'd be page 2 on such a competitive term as 'bolts and nuts' after Penguin if we had been penalised.), but I think what's happened is that sites that link to us have been penalised, resulting in a knock on effect. Does that sound right? Here's my link profile: <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.thomassmithfasteners.com</a> I've been slowly building relevant links with prospective customers and kept up a very basic social media profile - just the odd blog post and sharing on Facebook and Twitter. Do I need to delete all the directory links? We do have links from directories that don't look fantastic, more are shown in Webmaster Tools than are listed here. Some of the directories no longer seem to exist, I take it I don't need to do anything and Google will catch up in those cases. Should I attempt to remove (or disavow) all links with names like best-directory etc? Or should I just concentrate on building better links? I'm not sure where to start! Any advice is greatly appreciated. Best Regards, Stephen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stephenshone0 -
After Receiving a "Googlebot can't access your site" would this stop your site from being crawled?
Hi Everyone,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMA-DataSet
A few weeks ago now I received a "Googlebot can't access your site..... connection failure rate is 7.8%" message from the webmaster tools, I have since fixed the majority of these issues but iv noticed that all page except the main home page now have a page rank of N/A while the home page has a page rank of 5 still. Has this connectivity issues reduced the page ranks to N/A? or is it something else I'm missing? Thanks in advance.0 -
How can this site rank post panda/penguin?
I am doing link building for an adult dating comparison website. One of the main competitors though, having checked their backlink profile have anchor text that is not varied at all. In fact many, many links that are all the same. How can they possibly rank in the post panda/penguin era? In fact they're at number 2! The site is an adult site and it www.f hypen buddy.co.uk if anyone wants to runa backlink check on OSE. Any help greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
How a press release can help with Google serp?
Hi, After publishing a press release, if that press release is on top position on Google News for the keyword, how will it effect the SERP for that website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | purplar0 -
Think I may have found a problem with site. Can you confirm my suspicions?
So I've been wracking my brain about a problem. I had posted earlier about our degrading rank that we haven't been able to arrest. I thought we were doing everything right. Many years ago we had a program that would allow other stores in our niche use our site as a storefront if they couldn't deal with setting up their own site. They would have their own homepage with their own domain but all links from that page would go to our site to avoid duplicate content issues (before I knew about canonical meta tags or before they existed, I don't remember). I just realize that we had dozens of these domains pointing to our site without nofollow meta tags. Is it possible that this pattern looked like we were trying to game Google and have been penalized as some kind of link farm since Panda? I've added nofollow meta tags to these domains. If we were being penalized for this, should this fix the problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanTheScot0 -
Can't find my site on Bing, since ages
Hi Guys, Well, the problem seems normal but I guess it's not. I have tried many things, and nothing changed it, now I give it last try... ask so maybe you will help me. The problem is.. I can't find my site nowhere in Bing, I mean nowhere by not in first 20 pages for my keywords "beauty tips" and the site is: http://www.beauty-tips.net/. In my opinion it should be pretty high... maybe it's too high so I can't see it ;). I never had special problems with Bing, was easier to be there "somewhere" than in google, but with this one is totally opposite. Any ideas? Thanks for your time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Luke220