XML Sitemap Leads to loss in ranking and traffic in Google.
-
I have submitted XML sitemap in Google's webmaster tools for some of the categories of my website. after submitting the sitemap i have seen the drop in traffic and ranking of keywords for the categories tof which sitemap was submitted.
The other categories for which i have not submitted the sitemap the ranks have not changed.
my sites alexa rank is approx 3000
Please help me out should i remove the site or change the priority of the urls which i have fixed in the sitemap?
-
just leave it. Double check for errors on it.
-
I believe you should leave the sitemap as it is for now. and Work on improving the quality of your website; The Pages, Design, Link Structure, URLs, Content... I mean everything
Improve the quality score of your pages and your rankings will surely rise again
-
hi Dennis
so what do you suggest should i remove the sitemap or leave the sitemap as it.
-
Hi Mrtijn
the categories are the top performing categories from the websites. i have done the keyword tracking the keywords from the categories having the sitemap have gone down. whereas the keywords from the non-sitemap categories have remained stagnant or move up.
-
if it was indeed caused by submitting the sitemap, its too late for you to worry about it. My vote, another coincidence. Ive actually experienced this twice and i got my rankings back by analysing where i went wrong with the tech/structure.
With an alexa like that, you probably have a big site. Try to find a "main" problem and fix that first rather than going for different changes all at one time.
-
I've seen such behavior before, but I'm also pretty sure that it's not related to just uploading the site maps itself as it's just a signal to Google to where they can find the (new) pages. Are the category pages of low quality or is there something else which could cause this?
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
-
Yelp (recrawl Google/Bing)
If Google and Bing show an older version of a site's Yelp rating in the search results, what options are there to help ensure Google and Bing recrawl the Yelp page? Additionally, it appears third-party sites such as MapQuest show Yelp ratings and appear in Google search results; is it possible to request MapQuest to recrawl Yelp and then ask Google to recrawl MapQuest? Any advice would be much appreciated!
Industry News | | Mack_1 -
Manual action penalty by Google
Hello, We have a big well-known brand - www.titanbet.com. This brand is well established and the site has been live for almost 4 years now ranking very well on some very strong KWs. we received a message from Google on Aug 29<sup>th</sup> saying “Google has detected a pattern of artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site” and that “Google has applied a manual spam action to titanbet.com/” The past 2 weeks since the penalty was received we saw some of our major KWs drop in rankings. BUT all brand related KWs were still ranked 1<sup>st</sup> Over the last weekend the penalty has worsen and we no longer rank on any of the brands KWs (we find the site in 5<sup>th</sup> page at best). Moreover, when searching for a sentence from the any of the page on the site in Google, we see other sites ahead of us in the SERPs. Based on the message we originally received from Google we have started cleaning some of the bad links to the site. We found a lot of links from bad sites, some of them are not indexed and probably penalized as well, some are from affiliate websites and some are from some automatic indexation websites based in China and Russia
Industry News | | Tit
we have started reaching out to some of these sites to try and have them remove our links. We are also worried about the duplication of our site. We have found many other sites (mostly affiliate websites) have copied and in some cases completely duplicated our content. Google for some reason has chosen to penalize us for this. Although we do not have control over these other sites. We have run copyscape to try and figure out which pages are the most problematic and we will try to re-write the content on these pages. But what if the other sites copy us again? Any suggestions on the above would be appreciated as we try to understand why Google has penalized us. thank you Titan Bet Team0 -
Is this still Google?
My niche, my concern.
Industry News | | webfeatus
http://www.google.com/search?q=jimbaran+villa
My site just dropped out of the rankings completely. But if you look at the Google search above you will notice 2 things:
1. First page: 75% of space above the fold is dedicated to Google making money
2. Subsequent pages: It is like you don't actually search "Google" If you flip through a few pages what you actually search is:
agoda.com
flipkey.com
tripadvisor.com
homeaway.com Do I have a point or am I simply having a cynical day?1 -
How can you change 'Google related searches'?
I am having problems for a few clients where google is suggesting negative related searches. I have had success getting Google suggestion (auto-complete) to suggest the keywords we want to be associated with the brand but the 'Searches Related to....' at the bottom of the search page is a big problem. Many of the terms are negative of sometimes defamatory and have absolutely not relevance to the brand. Even upon clicking on the related searches the pages Google displays are about other businesses. Can anyone suggest how to teach Google these term are irrelevant or any other suggestions as to how to remove them?
Industry News | | skehoe0 -
Help ranking for a keyword
So I found a keyword that is labeled as "Low Competive" on Google Adwords. About a week and a half ago I optimized the page using the SEOMOZ On-Page optimization tool. It says that I am 100% with everything. My website is new but it has been around for about a year. I haven't gotten into linking and the more in depth SEO. After doing some searches though I noticed a lot of other new website that are atleast ranking in the top 50 for certain keywords, so I figured I could get my page to rank atleast in the top 1000 for this "Low Competitive" keyword. Could someone take a look and see if maybe I over optimized it or did something that would make this keyword not rank even in the top 1000 on google? Any advise is appreciated. I am obviously very new to SEO, but I am someone that likes to do and learn everything for myself. Thanks in advance! The keyword is: Nitro Monster Truck The web page is: http://www.rcnitroshop.com/nitro-monster-truck
Industry News | | bilsonx0 -
Paste 'do a barrel roll' into Google - See what happens!!
Hi, Paste the words 'do a barrel roll' in Google and see what happens!
Industry News | | activitysuper0 -
Searching for a keyword on html source code of a website via Google
Is such a thing possible? Can we google for a specific keyword that can be found on the source code of a website? Is there any search operator for this? Thanks in advance!
Industry News | | merkal20050 -
How to achieve the highest global and local relevance in google?
Let's say I have a company that has its main business in Europe for thefollowing languages: English German Portugese French Italian And let's say some other markets (e.g. the Portugese one in south america) is also important. The question now is how should we structure the Domain if we want onlyone top level domain (www.company.com)? a) By using subdomains to target users with Google Webmaster Tools for the relevant country: portugal.company.com/pt (same content) brasil.company.com/pt (same content) germany.company.com/de england.company.com/en etc. or b) by using virtual folders www.company.com/pt www.company.com/de www.company.com/en
Industry News | | imsi
etc. or c) something completely different I do not know about? What do you reckon is best? I appreciate all suggestions!0