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
-
Are bloggs published on blog platforms and on our own site be considered duplicate content?
Hi, SEO wizards! My company has a company blog on Medium (https://blog.scratchmm.com/). Recently, we decided to move it to our own site to drive more traffic to our domain (https://scratchmm.com/blog/). We re-published all Medium blogs to our own website. If we keep the Medium blog posts, will this be considered duplicate content and will our website rankings we affected in any way? Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
Linking Authentic Sites Together - Semi-PBN?
Recently I've had a lot of ideas of sites to build that all would have some sort of relevance to each other, all that would be relevant to my current business. For example, say you have sites for: bars/clubs, music festivals, cinemas, etc, one site for each. While these aren't all directly related to each other, they all kind of fall within a category of entertainment and having fun. Now, I'm not thinking about this as if I were to build a Private Blog Network, but instead each site would actually be valuable to visitors, be content rich, have regular updates and thriving social media etc, as if each were its own individual business. What would be your opinion on actually linking these together at some point down the line? I must stress that these would not be like typical PBN sites where the themes are the same, content is spun or badly written, no human touches or actual value, anything spammy etc, these would actually be authentic quality sites that you would reasonably expect to have a thriving community. Personally, after changing my ways from blackhat to weary-of-linkbuilding whitehat when Penguin 1 was released, I'm aware of what a bad linkbuilding strategy can do and would rather steer clear, however when I compare the plan of these authentic sites I have in my head to the obvious, low quality PBNs that I find competitors use to rank well all the time, I'm coming around to the idea that they may not pose a threat with the way I intend to implement them. Can I get some thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Leads.Bz2 -
Many sites added some excerpts of my Blog post and linking back ? Most of them are Spamy site !
Many sites added some excerpts of my Blog post and linking back ? Most of them are Spamy site ! Some are great blogs, but some blogs just copy some excerpts and link back to them - which i never approve. Will it affect my blog. i ask them to remove it. no use. !
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Esaky0 -
Build Backlinks on this site? - Advice Please
Hello, I am trying to build some backlinks to my E-Commerce site and was wondering how you all view sites like this: http://www.bookmark4you.com/ If I were to put a listing for my company/site on that site, would that be considered a good backlink or a bad backlink (in terms of Google's guidelines)... There are a bunch of sites like these, online directory or bookmark sites, and i was wondering what the general opinion is on using them for backlinking purposes. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. THANKS!!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Prime850 -
Why is our site being penalized?
The rankings for our transcription site (gmr transcription) fell around Jul 19. Its been an uphill task to get the rankings back particularly for the keyword 'transcription services'. As per our opinion except for one competitor the rankings of the other top 4 makes no sense to us. We have tested our site and there seems to be no reason for it to be penalized. After a month of trial I am reaching out to the community for advise.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Sangeeta0 -
Am I Being Penalized For Having My Whole Site In A Subfolder Named With A Keyword?
I inherited a client. For some reason, their previous webmaster set up the site so everything is in a subfolder /law/. It's an attorney website. All the urls have the primary domain name /law/ and then assigned url. I can't image this is helping but could the site be penalized for this by Google or Bing? It's set up like this: www.attorneysite.com**/law/**therestoftheurl /law/ is included in EVERY PAGE... even the homepage.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DeltonChilds0 -
Is someone trying to sabotage my site?
I think I may have a problem with someone trying to get me in trouble for paid links. If you look at the following websites, scroll to the bottom and look at the featured links area. There is a link to my website with my keyword on all of them. mercurynews.com contracostatimes.com twincities.com insidebayarea.com marinij.com Now I see a lot of the same links here which leads me to believe these sites are all owned by the same group. Also, 4 of the 5 are Bay Area news sites. The question I have is, are these links hurting me? I did not buy these and did nothing to put them there. I asked the previous owner of the domain who I am in touch with. He is the only other person to own it and he never purchased those links. My guess is a competitor is targeting me perhaps? Just wondering on everyone's take on this. I really can't afford to be getting hit by these potentially penalizing links right now, not when the busy season is starting up. Should I try to get them removed? Does anyone have experience with this or know how it might have happened?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DanDeceuster0 -
Anchor text penalty doesn't work?!
How do you think, does the anchortext penalty exactly work? Keyword domains obviously can't over-optimize for their main keyword (for example notebook.com for the keyword notebook). And a lot of non-keyword-domains do optimize especially in the beginning for their main keyword to get a good ranking in google (and it always works). Is there any particular point (number of links) I can reach, optimizing for one keyword, after what i'm gonna get a penalty?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheLastSeo0