The better my blog gets, the lower my rankings!
-
My blog was hit by Google Panda on July 21. My rankings dropped dramatically overnight. Nothing I do is helping. In fact, the day my guest post was published on one of the biggest blogs in my niche (DA over 70) my Google impressions dropped to an all time low and then got worse. (250 impressions and 12 clicks) You can see the first drop and the second drop in these screenshots and yes Google Webmasters and Google Analytics match.
http://tinypic.com/r/2dvtvlj/5
I am getting more fans, subscribers, traffic etc but my Google traffic just gets worse. I would really like to get some organic traffic! But I have no idea why this is happening. I checked manual actions and there is nothing. I cleaned up crawl errors and duplicate content. I get several backlinks a week within my niche from high authority sites. I just don't get it and I am very discouraged.
What should I do?
-
And keep an eye out for sweeping generalities--there's not much in SEO that is 100% black or white.
-
I cleaned up the dup content which was from archive subpages and a few duplicate title tags.
The site with the DA of 73 gets 4 million unique hits a month and is one of the top personal finance blogs in the US. There are no negatives to backlinks from this amazing site.
Thanks for the two Panda related links.
-
Often, a panda penalty reflects duplicate content issues and as you mentioned, you did have such issues--how bad they were or how well cleaned up they are you hadn't made clear. If content that you've had published on other sites is not also published on your own site, then of course, that won't be an issue for you but such couldn't be ruled out that from your question. You might look through these articles for
- The 10 Days of Google Panda - Search Engine Watch (#SEW)
- Are You Making These 7 Panda-Punishing Content Mistakes? | Search Engine Journal
Something to think about--domain authority tells not the whole story of the quality of a link coming from that domain. If you're getting a couple of links a week from one domain over a long period of time, there's a lot more you should know about that site than just the DA (I'm not saying that you don't, but only that you should) and that you may not be able to rule out a penguin issue.
-
Why are you assuming that my guest post was not original content? It was. There are no duplicate content issues whatsoever. The google traffic going down the day my guest post was published was just a coincidence. My point is Google Panda has hit my site unfairly and nothing is working to get my rankings back up.
-
Actually this is really terrible advice. I am not giving content away. The guest post was original content and only on that other blog. I got over 100 subscribers and 100 new Facebook likes from that guest post and my traffic is up. The backlinks from that guest post are also great because the DA of that site is 73. And this other blog is not a competitor. It is a supporter of my blog and that support has earned me a pretty penny.
My problem is Google Panda.
-
The easiest fastest thing to do may be to noindex those posts on your site that have copies showing on other sites and then just work on creating new content.
If you take a 10-word chunk text from each of your posts (or posts that have stopped receiving traffic) and do a search for each chunk in Gooogle within quotation marks and someone else's site shows up for that search above yours, then you should either ask the other site to remove your content, ask them to link back to your site with a followed link, or noindex that page on your site.
I know it's not fun to have to give up on content you may have worked hard at creating but when you let stronger sites than yours publish the same content that's published on your own site, they're often going to win out and yours will appear as the duplicate content to google. As EGOL said, don't do that.
-
...the day my guest post was published on one of the biggest blogs in my niche (DA over 70) my Google impressions dropped to an all time low...
Giving your content away is creating new competitors and feeding existing competitors. This is just like giving Goliath a club to beat you with and giving Google a reason to demote the rankings of your site for duplicate content.
Have the courage to not give your content away. Don't give it to anyone. Post in only on your own site. That will bring visitors to you instead of to your competitors. It sounds like you have fans who visit your site and will spread the word about it for you naturally.
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
-
Getting Started
Hi I am new to SEO and just getting started here with MOZ. I am a photographer and blogger and primarily interested in improving my sites traffic. My site gets reasonable amount of traffic but I want to do better. For example I am page 3 for Photography Blog but I want to be page one. I am a little overwhlemed and not sure where to focus? In Moz? With Backlink building? Does anyone have a methodology on how to approach looking at my site they recommend they are willing to share? I am also looking for someone to help me with the technical parts of ensuring my Wordpress site is up to speed. Any recommendations? Thanks Dave
Link Building | | ShootTokyo0 -
Getting backlinks on a page using https
Our company got a backlink on a page with high DA but using https (https://developer.apple.com/internationalization/) more than 2 months ago. However, this particular backlink was never counted by Open Site Explorer or other backlink checker. I've contacted the Moz Helpdesk and they said they are having issues crawling https sites. So I'm wondering if anything I can do to make sure this backlink gets counted? Thanks.
Link Building | | OneSky-Admin0 -
Backlink from unrelated blogs
Hi I would like to ask Im doing SEO for gambling related website should I post articles only on the relevant blogs, websites related to gambling? I found website with pagerank 4 where you can submit artcile to blog. There is so many articles related to different topics (gambling, sport, finance, health, traveling ) If I submit article this kind of website how google handle with backlink? Does it has positive impact for seo?
Link Building | | centrum0 -
When leaving guest posts on blogs, are blog profiles such as Disqus relevant for SEO?
In other words, instead of the comment linking back to the money site it is being linked back to a blog profile which contains a link to the money site. Is this still as effective?
Link Building | | msmdz0 -
Guest Blogging Duplication
We are looking to get some articles from www.ghostbloggers.net and use as guest post. Please can you help with 1. Can we submit to multiple blogs or is that considered duplicate content 2. How do we chose bet guest blog to post for. Example we would like to use article Online Business: Why You Should Not Build Your Own Website http://www.ghostbloggers.net/?page=detail&art_id=3392 but not sure where to post it. Thanks
Link Building | | break_thru_pro0 -
Ranking drop Any help please
hi i got a website www.willowstairlifts.co.uk and I am doing seo for keyword Stairlifts , it was going all good i managed to get it from page 15 to page 4 but yesterday its start going backward it jumps back from position 31 to 61 , i have been very careful in doing on page and also with my link building. I have just a few directories , bookmarks and I am targeting guest post, and i have got few links from them. i cant find anything wrong and worried, as surely it can be a penalty, is it just google dance? as i am aware google is recently doing some updates which they are denying it. hope you guys can help me , many thanks
Link Building | | conversiontactics0 -
Is buying blog reviews a good idea?
Hi there, I was wondering if it's worth investing on buying blog reviews for me site, by using sites like buyblogreviews.com? I've been making sure the blog sites are relevant and has good rankings, and not too many outgoing links. I also make sure they write about something interesting related to my site, that should get people's attention and gain more traffic. Any thoughts? Thanks.
Link Building | | eugenecomputergeeks0 -
SEO Submission Service or Ads on Blogs?
1. Can anyone recommend a good SEO Submission Service? Or do you not recommend using them? 2. What do you think is a better way to build links? Directory listings or place ads on blog sites? Each post a blogger post would have the ad link. Thoughts?
Link Building | | mof3kz0