Is it my back link profile that is affecting my rankings ?
-
my website www.funktiongolf.co.uk had been ranking well until January and i'm nearly sure its due to low quality links and poor back-link profile i.e over-optimized money keywords
can someone guide me?
thanks for anyone that replies. I really do appreciate the
help. -
What I'm seeing is the overwhelming primacy of relevance. I've seen sites with links from a mere 10-12 websites get top 4/5 positions (beating sites with 50 times as many links) -- because those few links are deemed highly relevant.
A key metric appears (from what I've seen) the referring sites/pages having part or all of the referring keyword (or a variation of it) in their url.
-
Your rankings may have dropped because of the Panda update in January.
Did you start to lose traffic around the 17th January?
The Panda update is based on page content so your backlinks may not be the problem.
-
I think you're right - your link profile is definitely not up to where you'd like to see it.
The thing is, you own control of almost all your links. They are directory submissions, minisites, etc. You aren't getting a lot of natural links, social linking or anyone talking about you. You need to generate that "word of mouse" that will get links to you that are out of your control.
-
Do you have Google Webmaster Tools installed? Generally you will receive a warning from Google before your site is penalized, unless you are talking about just specific keywords. If you can pinpoint the exact dates of the drops, you should be able to see if they coincide with Penguin updates or not.
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
-
Thoughts on User Behavior Data as a Ranking Signal
Hi Community! We have been having an ongoing internal discussion on user behavior data as a ranking signal. We found this Moz article discussing the topic and it leaves us asking questions such as: What onsite user behavior metrics are being used (if any)? How exactly is Google collecting this information - Chrome? Google Analytics (which they have already claimed GA is not used for ranking purposes)? With privacy policies in place, how exactly is Google able to utilize this information? The article discusses Google patents for collecting this information (The Monitoring Engine), Chrome's MetricsService which is "a system in charge of the acquisition and transmission of user log data", as well as the Reasonable Surfer model. Some highlights from the article include: "Google has designed and patented a system in charge of collecting and processing of user behaviour data. They call it "the monitoring engine" "Google's client behavior data processor can retrieve client-side behavior data associated with a web page. This client-side behavior data can then be used to help formulate a ranking score for the article." The monitoring engine can: Distinguish whether the user is actually viewing an article, such as a web page, or whether the web page has merely been left active on the client device while the user is away from the client. Monitor a plurality of articles associated with one or more applications and create client-side behavior data associated with each article individually. Determine client-side behavior data for multiple user articles and ensure that the client-side behavior data associated with an article can be identified with that particular article. Transmit the client-side behavior data, together with identifying information that associates the data with a particular article to which it relates, to the data store for storage in a manner that preserves associations between the article and the client behaviors. MetricsService: "Chrome's MetricsService is a system in charge of the acquisition and transmission of user log data. Transmitted histograms contain very detailed records of user activities, including opened/closed tabs, fetched URLs, maximized windows, et cetera." “Reasonable surfer” is the random surfer's successor. The PageRank dampening factor reflects the original assumption that after each followed link, our imaginary surfer is less likely to click on another random link, resulting in an eventual abandonment of the surfing path. Most search engines today work with a more refined model encompassing a wider variety of influencing factors. In addition to perceived importance from on-page signals, a search engine may judge link popularity by observing common user choices. A link on which users click more within a page can carry more weight than the one with less clicks. Google in particular mentions user click behaviour monitoring in the context of balancing out traditional, more manipulative signals (e.g. links). I do not expect a concrete answer here, I know there is a lot of uncertainty on the topic but I am very interested to hear your thoughts. Thank you!
Search Behavior | | Joe_Stoffel2 -
Personalised Geo-targeted results - How does Google pass link juice?
Hello, Many websites now serve specific home page offers based on the location of the customer, my question is, how does link juice flow around a site when the links (this case from the homepage) are served up based on a visitors location? Internal links from your homepage are valuable for ranking that product well in the SERPs so how does Google deal with this? So, for example, a car hire website based in the UK. If you arrive on the care hire website sat in Manchester (Northern UK city), on the homepage the website serves offers of car hire deals in Manchester, Leeds, London and international destinations. If you arrived on this website from London (Southern UK City), you would not see the Manchester link at all but London, and other cities in the South. In this case, when Google crawls the car hire website, it will see internal links but a)which version and b) is there any way of sharing this link value around? Basically, we want to understand if Manchester in this case will get the benefit of an internal homepage link from Google even though we only show Manchester to people FROM Manchester, OR, do Google only give juice based on one version of the website, a generic UK version? Or to put it another way, is there any way of cashing in on both geo-targetting the customer based on their location AND getting link juice from those geo-specific home page links? Perhaps there is some code or way of telling Google that people from Manchester (a certain % of our visitors) will see a homepage internal link for Manchester that will pass some small % link value?
Search Behavior | | xoffie0 -
Do sever errors affect SERPS
hoping someone can help VPS has been causing me 10 days of server errors (im now moving off it) as my wordpress site has kept running out of memory. At the same time my traffic had dropped. Could google and bing be penalising me for number of errors, dropping me in SERPS and resulting in web traffic?
Search Behavior | | mutant20080 -
Does the title attribute affect CTR?
I've been trying to find some research or studies regarding the title attribute on links and if it affects CTR or perhaps another benefit to using it. I know that it's not a factor in search engines and there's some problems with the compatibility of it in various devices and browsers, but looking for any stats that show using could affect your CTR. Would love some actual studies versus opinions, but haven't found any.
Search Behavior | | benmarshall1 -
Blocking links from being crawled
For my blog, should I block category, "read more" and author links from being crawled by search engine robots? Is it good for SEO? Thanks
Search Behavior | | uesat0 -
Will creating sub folders for foreign versions of the website, remove rank juice from the main site?
Hi, We plan to create sub-folders for our german, spanish and italian language versions. If we do will this pass rank juice to the new sites, but at the same time badly effect our main site, regards link juice/serp? Or is this not such a huge factor in people's experience? Many thanks. James.
Search Behavior | | Quime1 -
How is this Dr. Getting a Ranking on a National Site in a Local Listing?
Please follow the link for a visual. Any help would be appreciated. The query I used was "phoenix plastic surgeons". I have never seen a large national site like PlasticSurgery.org Rank in local for a specific Dr. Thoughts? Thanks! 7O1oK
Search Behavior | | Red_Spot_Interactive0 -
Interesting keyword ranking issue
Hello Everybody, Thanks for taking the time to read this post. Without further ado, I'll jump straight to it: http://www.dataclinic.co.uk is the web site of a UK based data recovery company. Historically the site has always ranked well for popular data recovery keywords in the UK, with page 1 rankings for most things data recovery related. However, lately things seem to have changed for our most important phrase "data recovery". We noticed several months ago that Google had started to favour the page http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery.htm instead of http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/ when a search for "data recovery" (and similar) was performed. This didn't concern us that much as our rankings remained good. However now, neither of these pages seems to be ranking well when a search for "data recovery" is performed (I gave up at Page 5 - who looks past there when searching?). I would appreciate your input on this please - especially about the following points: 1. Why have these two pages now seemingly disappeared from SERPS when a search for "data recovery" is performed ? 2. Why has Google chosen http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery.htm rather than http://www.dataclinic.co.uk ? 3. Is this just something to do with UK results ? 4. Other sites I would expect NOT to see in the top results have started appearing - despite their link profiles etc remaining poor - perhaps Google is doing a bit of reorganisation with SERPS related to data recovery at the moment ? 5. And perhaps, most importantly - do you think we need to do anything about our current lack of visibility ?? As I mentioned, we've always ranked well, so these results are puzzling... Should search results revert "back to normal" in a day or so, or am I missing something and need to take action ?? Thanks for any input on this - we would be very grateful indeed for you help ! Kind Regards, Sue
Search Behavior | | 3Amigos0