Identifying why my site has a penalty
-
Hi,
My site has been hit with a google penalty of some sort, but it doesn't coincide with a penguin or panda update. I have attached a graph of my visits that demonstrates this.
I have been working on my SEO since the latter part of last year and have been seeing good results, then all of a sudden my search referrals dropped by 70%.
Can anyone advise on what it could be?
Thanks!
Will
-
Great. Just audit it, fix problems, audit again, write more great content and give it time. Even if you fix the problem (assuming it was an onsite problem) it may take some time for Google to show the love agian.
-
Oh okay! That makes sense. Found a few issues with my php rules that automatically write links on a few of my contents pages.
I've learned some valuable tips here, such a fantastic help. I'm going to get the new site up in a week or two and we'll see if things change.
I'll keep you updated!
-
Ok so. If a bit of content resides at /bikes/mountain-bikes/ and the menulink I use is /bikes/mountain-bikes/ I'll get a status code 200. There is no added delay, no page rank lost, 200 == OK. The menu link points directly to the destination content.
Now lets say you've decided to change the location of that content to /bikes/mountain-bikes/index.html.
You do the 301 redirects on from the old url to the new one, THEN you need to update your links to reflect the new location so you're not just pointing at 301 redirects.
-
Thanks for the table of links. I'll see to it.
I'll work on the code on the new version of the site, seems pointless to do it now.
I've installed the plugin. How do I change the status code of a page? I don't really understand how it can be anything but 200, as if i'm viewing it it's obviously there! I thought 301's pushed the user to the 200 version of the page and only existed temporarily in the browser? Obviously I'm wrong, perhaps you could explain it for me?
Cheers for the screaming frog tool, looks great.
-
Did you change them. The scan I just did doesn't show them.... Maybe your host was getting funky or something lol.
Get this and click the links on your site. You want to link to status code 200, not 301
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/server-status-code-inspec/bmngiaijlojlejaiijgedgejgcdnjnpk
I wouldn't de-index them, I havent found a legitimate reason to de-index anything since 2005, but im a programmer and normally don't need to patch things. You could probably quickly fix them just by adding some content/images.
im going to private msg you another spreadsheet. this should show you source+destination of your 404's and 301's.
btw, the spider im using is Screaming Frog, its the best I've found.
-
Just checked the 418's and they do seem to be already re-directed with 301's, or are actually in place. What would be the protocol here?
-
Got your message, thank you. What tool did you completed the crawl with? I'm sort of disappointed this stuff didn't come up in my seomoz weekly scans.
A few questions;
- How do i know where the 301's are being sent from? So in a this chain of events...
Link on a page on my site > routed via a 301 > landing on the desired page
... how do I find the first step in the process? the table you sent me seems to point out only the middle step.
- Yes the 'about us' and 'contact us' pages are weak. I'm building a new version of the site as we speak and will take care of it then. In the mean time, if i no-index them is that as good as getting rid of them?
I will now sort the 404's and 418's. Without wanting to sound like a broken record; thanks again! Do let me know if there is anything I can do in return once we've got to the bottom of this.
Will
-
private messaged you a google doc of the crawl. Looks like pages that no longer exist, they need 301's.
-
Wow, thanks for all this. It's late now in the UK so I'll check it out tomorrow.
Cheers
p.s. Where are my 418's coming from!?!
-
My crawl finished. You also have a bunch of status 418 "I'm a teapot" status codes. IDK what this is so I looked it up.
Per wikipedia:
418 I'm a teapot (RFC 2324)This code was defined in 1998 as one of the traditional IETF April Fools' jokes, in RFC 2324, Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol, and is not expected to be implemented by actual HTTP servers.
-
-
You'd think so, but 1) we cant fully trust everything Google says and 2) it could have been something that the algorithm progressively finds and penalizes.
Its possible that this is not related to links or content.
Take care of your RCS and make it awesome (real company shtuff)
About us (under construction content, not good)
Contact us (weak and thin, include social
FAQ
Terms and Conditions (404 error on your site!). I once broke all my footer links on a blog that was getting 5k/day and it slammed me down to 600/day nearly instantaneously. Ive seen other sites with 404 errors survive and even Cutts has downplayed the issue of 404 errors, but I believe any 404 can be indicative of a bad user experience. Scan your site for 404s and fix them all.
Also, many of your internal links appear to be pointing to 301 redirects. Update your links to point to the status 200 status code (directly to the destination, not through 301)
In just a quick overview, the above are my notes. This isnt a detailed audit, but you should scan your site for 404 errors and fix them, get your RCS stuff in order and conduct a full site review looking for anything that may be frowned upon by google.
-
Thanks devknob,
In answer to your questions;
-
it is across all organic traffic and all keywords to my entire site
-
the content on my site is fairly squeaky clean. I've been using the seomoz pro-tool to keep it in check. I use yoast seo for wordpress to handle my canonicals and employ no dodgy js hiding techniques. I did not remove content.
-
I haven't been buying links. I do have 20,000+ sitewide links coming from bikingbis.com and 12,000 sitewide links coming from citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/. The ones from bikingbis have been removed and have requested removal of the other. Anchor text is varied and is mainly branded keywords
My question is though, if it's a bad backlink problem, wouldn't it coincide with a panda or penguin update?
Thanks again
Will
-
-
Check your analytics
- Is it a specific group of keywords?
- Is it organic traffic at all?
- Is it traffic to specific page or pages?
Check your website.
- Are your link canonicals setup CORRECTLY?
- Do you have content that is hidden via css/javascript and has no mechanism for unhiding?
- Have you changed alot of links recently and not performed 301 redirects?
- Do you have good content, title tags and meta descriptions?
- Did you remove content
Check your links
- Have you been buying links? Check your backlink profile using opensite explorer. Is there any unusual activity here?
- Is your anchor text varied?
Have you gotten a notice in Google Webmasters tools?
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
-
Should I delete older posts on my site that are lower quality?
Hey guys! Thanks in advance for thinking through this with me. You're appreciated! I have 350 pieces of Cornerstone Content that has been a large focus of mine over the last couple years. They're incredibly important to my business. That said, less experienced me did what I thought was best by hiring a freelance writer to create extra content to interlink them and add relevancy to the overall site. Looking back through everything, I am starting to realize that this extra content, which now makes up 1/3 my site, is at about 65%-70% quality AND only gets a total of about 250 visitors per month combined -- for all 384 articles. Rather than spending the next 9 months and investing in a higher quality content creator to revamp them, I am seeing the next best option to remove them. From a pros perspective, do you guys think removing these 384 lower quality articles is my best option and focusing my efforts on a better UX, faster site, and continual upgrading of the 350 pieces of Cornerstone Content? I'm honestly at a point where I am ready to cut my losses, admit my mistakes, and swear to publish nothing but gold moving forward. I'd love to hear how you would approach this situation! Thanks 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ryj0 -
Whitehat site suffering from drastic & negative Keyword/Phrase Shifts out of the blue!
I am the developer for a fairly active website in the education sector that offers around 30 courses and has quite an actively published blog a few times a week and social profiles. The blog doesn't have comments enabled and the type of visitor that visits is usually looking for lessons or a course. Over the past year we have had an active input in terms of development to keep the site up to date, fast and following modern best practises. IE SSL certificates, quality content, relevant and high powered backlinks ect... Around a month ago we got hit by quite a large drop in our ranked keywords / phrases which shocked us somewhat.. we attributed it to googles algorithm change dirtying the waters as it did settle up a couple of weeks later. However this week we have been smashed again by another large change dropping almost 100 keywords some very large positions. My question is quite simple(I wish)... What gives? I don't expect to see drops this large from not doing anything negative and I'm unsure it's an algorithm change as my other clients on Moz don't seem to have suffered either so it's either isolated to this target area or it's an issue with something occurring to or on the site? QfkSttI T42oGqA
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | snowflake740 -
The use of a ghost site for SEO purposes
Hi Guys, Have just taken on a new client (.co.uk domain) and during our research have identified they also have a .com domain which is a replica of the existing site but all links lead to the .co.uk domain. As a result of this, the .com replica is pushing 5,000,000+ links to the .co.uk site. After speaking to the client, it appears they were approached by a company who said that they could get the .com site ranking for local search queries and then push all that traffic to .co.uk. From analytics we can see that very little referrer traffic is coming from the .com. It sounds remarkably dodgy to us - surely the duplicate site is an issue anyway for obvious reasons, these links could also be deemed as being created for SEO gain? Does anyone have any experience of this as a tactic? Thanks, Dan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOBirmingham810 -
Preventing CNAME Site Duplications
Hello fellow mozzers! Let me see if I can explain this properly. First, our server admin is out of contact at the moment,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David-Kley
so we are having to take this project on somewhat blind. (forgive the ignorance of terms). We have a client that needs a cname record setup, as they need a sales.DOMAIN.com to go to a different
provider of data. They have a "store" platform that is hosted elsewhere and they require a cname to be
sent to a custom subdomain they set up on their end. My question is, how do we prevent the cname from being indexed along with the main domain? If we
process a redirect for the subdomain, then the site will not be able to go out and grab the other providers
info and display it. Currently, if you type in the sales.DOMAIN.com it shows the main site's homepage.
That cannot be allow to take place as we all know, having more than one domain with
exact same content = very bad for seo. I'd rather not rely on Google to figure it out. Should we just have the cname host (where its pointing at) add a robots rule and have it set to not index
the cname? The store does not need to be indexed, as the items are changed almost daily. Lastly, is an A record required for this type of situation in any way? Forgive my ignorance of subdomains, cname records and related terms. Our server admin being
unavailable is not helping this project move along any. Any advice on the best way to handle
this would be very helpful!0 -
Obscene anchor text linking to non-existent pages on my site
My website seems to be rapidly accumulating links from what seem to be reputable websites and which are going to non-existent pages on my website. The anchor text of many of these links is obscene. Here is the URL of one of the pages that is linking to me. I contacted the originating site a couple of weeks ago and they are looking into it but I've not heard back. I'm guessing the originating sites have been hacked. Should I be concerned? Why are they linking to pages on my site that don't exist? http://www.radicalartistsagency.com/htmlarea/language/0content_abo_utus.html Looking at the page source of this page reveals the hidden links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MartinDS0 -
Is one of my competitors trying to get my site penalized?
Hi guys, I have been ranking #2 for a popular search term for several months now, and today I noticed a drop to #5, so I went to check my backlink profile, and I'm seeing thousands of no-follow exact keyword matched backlinks, all from spammy looking websites. I looked at some of the links and they do link to me, but I didn't generate these links, and I have never paid anybody externally to build links for me. What is the best course of action for me here? link disavow tool?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | davegill0 -
Non Manual penalties, should I trash my site?
My URL is: www.adserve.com.au I get no traffic from google and I am convinced that I have penalties from the links that point to my page. I have written to google previously and they told me that there are no manual penalties on the site. I give up... I am shelving my ENTIRE brand and starting again with a new site, http://www.trusignage.com, I do not want to do this but... If I do a search for
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AdAdam
"Using and implementing the AdServe digital menu board system couldn’t be easier! Just get any screen installed by a tradesman or electrician, plug the digital menu board device" two pages from within my site come up but my homepage does not, it comes up when you click on "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 2 already displayed" A search for
"The AdServe system comprises of only one tiny component that can plug directly into the HDMI port of a screen. Traditional digital signage systems require drilling into walls, running cables, a bunch of valuable space and the installation of several pieces of costly"
Brings up another 2 pages from my site, when clicking on "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 2 already displayed."
My homepage does not even come up... but the homepage of my new site http://www.trusignage.com comes up. My new site is at http://www.trusignage.com there is only 2 pages of duplicate content, the about us and the buy now page.
Is google going to penalise my new site? I WILL NOT DO ANY SEO, only on page......... I wont hire any SEO firm at all. My old site has a few great links to it
http://www.sixteen-nine.net/2013/06/24/android-digital-signage-closer-adserve/
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/adserve-digital-signage
I also have many of my REAL youtube videos that link to my site, maybe about 15
If I 301 redirect my penalised site to my new one am I just poisoning my new site as well? I could get the links changed instead. I will have to keep my old site www.adserve.com.au as I have customers who go to that site to lookup my contact details for support etc. will google see the same phone number and address etc and think I am trying to fill google up with duplicate websites? I would really prefer to keep www.adserve.com.au for Australian clients and usewww.trusignage.com for international clients, if the site layout is the same but all of the site passes copyscape then will I get hurt by duplicate content?
Google is ruining me.. I have no money to spend on adwords right now. I have a new highly inovative software product that has taken almost 2 years to develop and I think I deserve more than 4 visits per month. My actual business has been around for 7 years.
I invented SaaS digital signage in 2007 http://youtu.be/-YpyjLALoBU find me some web based digital signage system that was around prior to 2010?
This is me and my product http://youtu.be/ClXSiIA5DRY
Why should my site be treated as trash by google? I have in the past employed a SEO firm and if I search for "If you are looking for the top provider of digital signage in Australia, visit today" I find 70 absolute crap links to my site. I have disvowed them, there must be more links somewhere but I have no money or time to chase down site owners to remove them when I do not even know if I can get them all and have no guarantee that this will even help.. So bottom line, do I need to junk my www.adserve.com.au site? There is no getting away from what some SEO company has spammed in the past?
And again, using a tool to hunt down these spam links and try to get them removed will tie up my own time that needs to be spent on developing my software and I have no cash to pay people to do this for me. [edited by staff because line breaks weren't showing]0 -
Penalty for all new sites on a domain?
Hi @all, a friend has an interesting problem. He got a manuel link penalty in the end of 2011...it is an old domain with domainpop >5000 but with a lot bad links (wigdet and banners and other seo domains, but nothing like scrapebox etc)...he lost most of the traffic a few days after the notification in WMT (unnatural links) and an other time after the first pinguin update in april´12. In the end of 2012 after deleting (or nofollowing) and disavow a lot of links google lifted the manuel penalty (WMT notification). But nothing happened after lifting, the rankings didn´t improve (after 4 months already!). Almost all money keywords aren´t in the top 100, no traffic increases and he has good content on this domain. We built a hand of new trust links to test some sites but nothing improved. We did in february a test and build a completely new site on this domain, it´s in the menu and got some internal links from content...We did it, because some sites which weren´t optimized before the penalty (no external backlinks) are still ranking on the first google site for small keywords. After a few days the new site started to rank with our keyword between 40-45. That was ok and as we expected. This site was ranking constantly there for almost 6 weeks and now its gone since ten days. We didn´t change anything. It´s the same phenomena like the old sites on this domain...the site doesnt even rank for the title! Could it still be an manuel penalty for the hole domain or what kind of reasons are possible? Looking forward for your ideas and hope you unterstand the problem! 😉 Thanks!!!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheLastSeo0