Sudden 50% drop in SERP rankings
-
Hi,
Our website is well established and has been growing every month until around Jan. 6th 2013. All of sudden our search rankings on Google dropped dramatically (nearly 50%). We getting tens of thousands fewer visitors through search results than normal.
At the same time as the drop (almost to the day) we changed our forum software from Vbulletin3 to Vbulletin4. The forums are on a different subdomain, and our forum developer said there is no way the change would affect the main site. Is that true?
So far, we have not been able to figure out what caused the sudden change. Maybe a Google update?
-
Thanks for helping out!
Yes, this just started after the change. The forums never outranked the editorial site in the past. We would rather have the editorial site rank better.
As for the content scraper, the site is down but still shows in Google results. I tried to submit pages manually for removal, which works, but they copied thousands of pages.
-
I'm intrigued by what could be the cause of the drop in organic traffic to the main site, so I tried searching for some of your reviews, and 99% of the time, the forum thread ranked much higher than the review on the editorial site as you mentioned. Did this only start being the case after January 6th, 2013?
Also, I found this on your forum - http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/steam-vent/85061-audioholics-content-stolen-fake-website-mtxaudioseries-com.html. What are the latest developments?
-
Have you seen a change in organic traffic to the forums since the software upgrade? Perhaps the decrease in organic traffic to the main site is a result of the forums seeing an increase in rankings/traffic by overtaking the main site in the search results due to upgrading the software. Just a guess though since we don't have access to any of the analytics data.
-
So... did the forum traffic drop... or did the website traffic drop.... and if the website traffic dropped was it traffic from the forum that disappeared.
You have access to the analytics. Study your analytics to see what traffic dropped (referrer and landing pages), what did not drop (referrer and landing pages), and if engagement (average number of views per visitor) changed.
We can only guess from here.
Note that I used the word "study" instead of "look at". Spend some time with the analytics until you understand the changes in traffic patterns. You will not have a good answer to your question without this information.
Tell us the story.
-
The editorial site: audioholics.com
the forum: http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/forum.php
I think tracking date is correct since Alexa also shows a drop and now the forums are beating the editorial site in SEO for the first time. When we post a review we also post a related forum thread for that review. The thread is outranking our editorial site in Google.
thanks.
-
Can you share the URL(s)? If the drop occurred on the same day of the forum software upgrade, then that is more than likely to be the primary cause, but there's really no way to determine that without seeing the site.
There's also the possibility that the Google Analytics or other tracking codes were not installed on every single page of the new templates, which means your traffic may not have actually dropped but rather you are not capturing all of the data.
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
-
Massive drop in sales - how do I find out why?
I am working with my client managing/maintaining their online store.We have been making big improvements to onsite SEO, improved URL structures (complete with re-directs) etc, we use Yoast Premium to optimise pages for search and Yoast Local. We have a bounce rate of around 20%, however, suddenly in mid August, our revenues virtually vanished overnight. Moz is reporting a search visibility drop of 51%, while visitor levels remain fairly average, certainly no drops that can be compared with the sudden loss of conversions. I am at a loss and cannot fathom why our sales have dropped. Can anyone suggest where I might look? Many thanks Bob
Technical SEO | | SushiUK0 -
Is an international redirect hurting my ranking
We're a small international company that redirects users based on their language identifier.
Technical SEO | | _entreprenerd
I've now taken a big interest in and also how it affects ranking. When I look at my MOZ dashboard the fundedbyme.com domain has a higher ranking than fundedbyme.com/en/ for example. Our company wants to target other markets such as Spain and Germany, I am imposing penalties on myself by not having rel="canonical" in place and redirecting to the TLD?0 -
What should the combined domain rank of 2 sites?
We have just combined 2 sites by redirecting a site with a domain ranking of 35 to a site with a domain ranking of 27 (this is because the we want to use the address with a ranking of 27) After a week I now have 1 domain with a ranking of 26?? So my questions are; Should the ranking have increased already? What should I expect the ranking to increase to if at all? Is there something I could have done wrong when transferring? Thanks
Technical SEO | | benj450 -
Increase Search Ranking for CEO
Hi guys My company CEO is concerned that when her name is googled pictures of a glamour model appear in the image results area. The glamour model shares a second name with our CEO and this is why the model's images are appearing. I have been asked to rectify this situation. My CEO has a linked in page and twitter account which are underused but no personal page on our company website. I was thinking of buying the url for the CEO's name and optimizing a small site for her name with bio etc and links to twitter, lined in etc. Would this be the best strategy? Thanks Gavin
Technical SEO | | gavinr0 -
Ranking in more than one country
Hi, I have a website http://goo.gl/IrJz4 and currently it was ranking well in Google US serps. And now i want to rank well it india too. Does doing more links will bring the results or do i need to do any on page seo ? Please advice me.
Technical SEO | | Dexx220 -
Drop Down Menu - Link Juice Depletion
Hi, We have a site with 7 top level sections all of which contain a large number of subsections which may then contain further sub sections. To try and ensure the best user experience we have a top navigation with the 7 top level sections and when hovered a selection of the key sub sections. Although I like this format for the user as it makes it easier for them to find the most important sections / sub sections it does lead to a lot of links within every page on the site. In general each top section has a drop down with approx 10 - 15 subsections. This has therefore lead to SeoMoz's tools issuing its too many internal links warning. Then alongside this I am left wondering if I shouldn’t have to many links to my subsections and whether I would be better off being more selective of when I link to them. For instance I could choose the top 5 sub sections and place a link to them from our homepage and by doing so I would be passing a greater amount of link juice down the line. So I guess my dilemma is between ensuring the user has as easy a time traversing the site as possible whilst I try to keep a close watch on where, and how, our link juice is distributed. One solution I am considering is whether no-follow links could be utilised within the drop down menus? This way I could then have the desired user navigation and I would be in greater control of what pages link to which sub sections. Would that even work? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, Regards, Guy
Technical SEO | | guycampbell1 -
Nofollowing to boost internal page rankings.
I have a site with 200 links on the homepage, how much will it boost nofollowing the other links boost the 50 pages we care most about?
Technical SEO | | adamzski0 -
Lost ranking once optimised a page
Hello, we're a new member of SEOMOZ and love it but have a problem. Obviously the reason for joining is to learn more about SEO and hopefully get our website ranked a lot better than it currently is. However, one particular page we've chosen to optimise (based on your tips) has since lost ranking and we can no longer find it in the searches. Is there a reason for this? We've only made the on page changes you suggested and also added more external and internal links so I can't understand why it would no longer be listed in the searches? I look forward to your reply/feedback. Many thanks Peter
Technical SEO | | mybabyradio0