(updated) Huge Drop in Traffic Related to DMCA...?
-
(update: How would I know if someone has filed a DMCA Takedown Request? There is no message on Webmaster Tools. The reason I ask is because a few months back my client's old SEO threatened him with copyright infringement, and I believe the date of the threatening letter coincides with our drop in traffic. Coincidence?)
We've been increasing traffic for a pest control client on a very consistent basis throughout the year. However, in October we noticed a drop but I honestly didn't dig too deeply into the issue. In November we saw another drop...a very large drop...in traffic. Since September, we've lost 50% of search traffic.
We've lost specifically branded search traffic, which baffles me. What are some reasons for losing branded search traffic? I've consulted the client and asked if there is anything happening within the business that I should know about, but things seem to pretty normal as far as he can tell.
We are also losing rankings dramatically. We've had two locations on Google Places pending for over a month, which I've consulted Google about but, of course, have received no response.
The strangest part is that SEOMoz is showing our errors on site have increased dramatically, when we have done nothing new or different over these past few months. It's been business as usual, and yet we are losing traffic, rankings, and errors have gone up.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! http://www.MagicPest.com
Thank you!
-
Yep, this definitely is an issue that we are painstakingly working through. The old SEO really did a number on their content. Thanks so much!
-
It has to be something related to their recent algo updates.
This little chunk of text might be your problem as it is showing up on most pages - http://screencast.com/t/3SakXPlpL.
1. This is duplicate content.
2. It also looks like keyword stuffing
3. More than the suggested amount of links
4. Google might be viewing it as an excessive and unnatural internal linking strategy
I can't guarantee this is the main cause of the problems, but it might be contributing to it. Google's just getting way more picky about this stuff
-
Thanks Streamline Metrics! Yes, the drop has been across all keywords. I've checked our branded rankings and they have remained the same as branded traffic has decreased. And yes, I did check Google Webmaster Tools and do not see anything fishy, although it does appear that Google is crawling less pages, though not sure why. It's got to be the recent Google updates.
-
Usually a drop in branded traffic can be attributed to a change in offline advertising, such as ending TV or radio commercials or flyers in those coupon magazines. But if the client says everything has remained the same, then I'm not 100% sure what to tell you without actually digging into the data. Did you notice a similar drop in non-branded keywords? Or only branded terms?
Have you claimed your site in Google Webmaster Tools? Have you gotten any messages from Google about possible penalties (usually from unnatural linkbuilding), site errors or even possible malware?
Also, there have been several Panda updates/refreshes the past few months, which may have had an impact on your site if you have several pages with low quality content.
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
-
Product meta tags are not updating in my Magneto website!
I need some help! For some reason, each time I update the product meta tags in my Magento website, it doesn't change on the current website? Could someone help me understand why that is?
Technical SEO | | One2OneDigital0 -
What would cause a sudden drop in indexed sitemap pages?
I have made no changes to my site for awhile and on 7/14 I had a 20% drop in indexed pages from the sitemap. However my total indexed pages has stayed the same. What would cause that?
Technical SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Web Page Dropped Out of Google?
One of our web pages seems to have completely dropped out of Google after featuring on page 1 for a number of years. It can't be a site wide issue as all other web pages are performing as normal. The page is http://www.contractormoney.com/income-protection/ and the key phrase it was performing well for was 'contractor income protection'. Any ideas??
Technical SEO | | Pete40 -
Website dropping in ranking
Hello My website is www.invitationsforless.ie and on google Ireland it was ranking no 6 for the keyword "wedding invitations" and I was doing quite well from this but it has now has moved down along the rankings to no 10 and I have gone from the first page on google to the second page which is very disappointing. I did recently change the blurb on my homepage - would this have effected it. Please help I don't know what to do Thanks Linda
Technical SEO | | invitationsforless0 -
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 can i do to stop my site from dropping in the rankings
Hi, we were number one in google for the keyword lifestyle magazine but now our magazine website www.in2town.co.uk is doing very bad in the rankings. One week ago we were around 8 then we went to 12 and now we are on the third page and i am not sure what is happening. We wanted and needed our home page to rank for the keywords of lifestyle magazine, lifestyle news but none of these keywords are doing very well with google can anyone please point me in the right direction so i can stop my site falling any further I am not sure if the home page is properly optimized but i have never had trouble with it before many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Organic traffic down after 301 internal linkstructure
Hi, i have a question. On a wordpress site i made a change redirecting (301) all traffic from /category/subject to /subject/ - I removed the /category/. Now i have a big drop in visitors from google. I waited for the traffic to return for some over one month now but with no luck. What can i do best. return to /category/ with 301 redirect or will this hurt me more. Thanks, Robin
Technical SEO | | link0040 -
Google Fresh Update
Here's a question, if you put the date in your url (often a wordpress format) would that be seen by Google now as 'fresh' content? - part of their new update.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0