My Rankings Keep Going Down - Needs some more ideas on why...
-
Hi Everyone,
I have been working on the website www.PetsSpark.com for a while now. I used to be on the first page for many of my keywords, now I am lucky if i am on the 2nd or 3rd. I stopped my SEO efforts for about 3 months while making changes to the website, its whithin these 3 months that I started dropping from the first page.
The biggest thing I notice is the "type" of website now ranking for my main keywords. Mostly Forums, Blogs, or Product Review websites.
Take for instance Dog Tear Stain Remover. I used to rank at about #5 for this keyword and now i rank at #20.
I'm not sure if my loss of ranking is a combination of things like who Google is letting rank now or if there is something wrong on my website, etc.
Can anyone give me a little insight?? Please....
I will also be happy to give more information about what has been going on if needed.
-
I would try to externalize a tremendous amount of your coding and comments within the code. If you can use internal links more effectively to direct your users to the interior pages within the site, also your content isn't organized in a themed website ( with silo structure reflective of the main topics).
I would most certainly, review your on page coding for crawlibility for the spiders. Update your sitemap and organize your content into themes that are cross linking based on the main relevant topic and of course your keywords.
I would also move your content up higher on the page, so it is clear that the text is answering the user query, not just retail website. Review your main competitors who have outranked you in the latest decline, my guess is that your rankings have dropped due to at least two updates from Google. Including the ever popular muffin top.
-
I do audits to help sites determine the reasons for their traffic drops. I'm not sure if it is ok to post a link to my audit information, so the best thing to do would be to contact me by private message and we can talk.
-
We are considering hiring an outside consultant to help on this issue. Is that what you do for a living?
-
This is probably good news then. It means that it is unlikely that an algorithm change is affecting your site. I can't say for certain without having a detailed look at your site and your competitors but it's possible that other sites are just outperforming you. Your niche is a competitive one!
It's interesting that you noticed that forums, blogs and review sites are outranking you. Google has been making changes to reward sites that add significant value when someone is searching for a product and not just using standard product descriptions. I didn't have a thorough look, but a quick search of text from your tear stains page shows me 29 other pages that are using the same description. In order to rank better you may need to create more unique stuff.
It is challenging for stores to rank well these days!
However, there could be other factors, but that is my best guess.
EDIT: I just went back and looked. I didn't realize your whole site was about tear stains. You do have additional information too. Sorry...I don't know the reason for your rankings drop. I wish I had more time to dig into this.
-
I took a look at my organic search visits since March. There is no defining day that the visits dropped. Just a slow progression of fewer and fewer visits from my targeted keywords.
-
Can you pinpoint the day of your traffic drop? Take a look at your organic search traffic. Does it drop on the same day as a Panda update?
-
I just had a quick look on ahrefs.com and your backlinks (well the ones ahrefs have clocked anyway) have dropped by aprox 15% over relatively short timescale (since 20th Jan aprox), but that doesnt really fit your 3 month timescale but thought would mention it just in case
I cant see G+ in your social properties so definately worth developing G+ pers page/authorship and link to your content (if not already) and of course G+ company page and link that to site too
Sorry prob not much help but my 2 cents worth from having very quick look
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
-
Why is this site ranking higher?
We've put a fair bit of effort into delivering value here: https://lewescountycars.co.uk/ But a search for "Lewes taxis" or "taxis Lewes" puts this site above us: https://www.lewestowntaxis.co.uk/ As you can you see, this is a tiny site that we outperform in most ways.... what can we do to rank above it that we haven't already done? Thanks in advance - Gerard.
Technical SEO | | Paul7301 -
Href lang issues - help needed!
Hi, I have an issue with Google indexing the US version of our website rather than the UK version on Google.co.uk. I have added hreflang tags to both sites (https://www.pacapod.com/ and https://us.pacapod.com/), have updated and submitted an XML sitemap for each website and checked that the country targeting in search console is set-up correctly but Google are still indexing the wrong website. I would be grateful for any assistance with this issue. Many thanks Eddie
Technical SEO | | mypetgiftbox0 -
Very different serp rankings for different countries
Hi! A client of mine has a global presence and we are therefore tracking serp rankings for multiple Google domains; google.com, google.ie, google.co.uk for example. One page is ranking quite well in Google.ie (position 11 right now) while at the same time ranking extremely bad in both Google.com and Google.co.uk (position 100+). How can that be?? I did do some optimization (for example Title and Desc) before the rankings in .com and .co.uk went really bad (they were higher before (pos 30-40)). But it is the same page Google indexes...but the results are very different. How can this be? What can be done? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | JHultqvist
Jesper1 -
Detailed ranking question for the pros
Hi Community, We've been struggling with the search engine ranking of our SEO optimised homepage for a number of months. I'm going to provide an overview of the page stats in hope that somebody might have a suggestion as to what the problem might be or where we should be focusing our efforts. I have also provided the stats of our main competitor as I have no idea why they are ranking so high based on the stats provided: URL in question: https://mysite.com On Page Grade for our targeted keyword: A Domain authority: 36 Page authority: 45 Root Doman Links: 57 Total Links: 634 SE Ranking: #17 Competitor URL in question: https://competitorsite.com On Page Grade for same targeted keyword: A Domain authority: 32 Page authority: 43 Root Doman Links: 28 Total Links: 919 SE Ranking: #1 Another strange this about our homepage is that a second tier page on our site is actually ranking higher in the search ranking for the Targeted Keyword (#9), even though this page has not been optimised and has an On Page Grade of F. Does anybody have any suggestions of what we might be overlooking or what the issue here might be? -JF
Technical SEO | | ERpro0 -
Are multiple sites needed to rank one website?
My SEO guy for a mortgage website says that we should have 30 websites, with about 250 pages each on each site plus 50 blogs in order to even think of ranking for mortgage keywords. Is that correct?
Technical SEO | | simermeet0 -
Keywords Ranking Dropped
Hi All, One of my website http://www.greenhomepest.com/ were ranking on Google first page for the keywords as mentioned below: pest control in Scottsdale
Technical SEO | | RuchiPardal
pest control in Mesa
pest control in Gilbert
pest control in Tempe
pest control in Peoria
pest control in Queen Creek
pest control in Glendale
pest control phoenix
pest control arizona
pest control az
pest control phoenix az
Pest Control in Chandler But some days before all keywords are disappeared from top 100.I tried to find out the reason but not succeed. Can you please help me to find out the exact reason behind this??0 -
Importance of keyword in the content to rank well
Well, I am very beginner seo. our website is www.theprinterdepo.com and our main keyword for the moment is refurbished printers, but there might be hundreds of more keywords. I was analyzing the SERPs and found that for our keyword, the first 2 websites that come up have very different content 1.http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=PRN They rank first, but I dont see a lot of text with the keyword in their text or links 2. http://www.valstarprinters.com/ They mention the keywords lots of times in the text, probably they are doing keyword stuffing? So this makes me thing, how the 1st one ranked there? just by link builiding?
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Viral page not ranking onGoogle
A user generated talk thread on our social networking site went viral yesterday and generated around 36000 extra visits. But, when we Google the key phrase in this thread our site is not even in the Top 50. Instead the pages are dominated by other (lesser) websites referring to the content and linking to the thread The page is indexed The on page SEO grade for the key phrase and variant according to SEOMoz is A Our home page has a PR of 7 and an SEO Domain Authority of 76 We are the original source of this content Other talk threads on different subjects in a similar category are ranking on page 1 of Google. What's happening?
Technical SEO | | CecilyP0