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 some links, when will I see results?
Hey Guys, I started getting some links to my website. When do you think I will see an increase in rankings? Thanks!
Link Building | | RafeTLouis0 -
Benefit of Guest Blogging with weak relevancy
No - not that awful kind of guest blogging Matt Cutts called time on - but legitimate blogging on quality websites. Just thought I'd get that out of the way first 😉 I work for a legal services provider as a Content Marketing and PR Executive, and I have a regular spot guest posting on Search Engine People which I acquired in my previous role at an SEO agency. As I'm still working in the industry (in-house rather than for an agency) I thought I'd carry it on, not only because it's good for me personally, but because it'd also be a nice link building quick win from a good site with a strong DA. My question is, with next to know relevancy between domain-domain, page-domain, page-page, is there much value in the link? To be clear, I'll be doing it anyway, but the answer might inform whether I do it under the guise of an employee of my company or just as myself. Thanks all!
Link Building | | NAHL-14300 -
Drop in Rankings After Removing Links
So I removed some links to a particular homepage for one of the sites we own, this page had A LOT of links pointing to it using exact match anchors. And for the most part the links were coming from low quality pages/content. After removing a good chunk of them I noticed are rankings went down from around 8-9th two weeks ago to 21 as of today. Has anyone else had a problem like this before? I'm thinking about restoring some of these links now to see if I can recover some of that. Any thoughts on doing this? Thanks
Link Building | | ThridHour0 -
Precautions for Linkbuilding with Mommy Blogs
If you are seeking links from blogs in a niche that is known for having a lot of commercial links from reviews or sponsored posts what precautions should you take? Should you avoid any blog with sponsored posts or that reviews products?
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Blog Commenting - Useful?
How useful are you finding blog commenting to be regarding link building? I was having a discussion with someone about this today, and I thought some input from the Moz community may be helpful. How helpful do you find blog commenting to be in link building? Do you have any evidence of effectiveness/ineffectiveness? Is it something you still currently do (for link building)? Any input is appreciated. Thanks guys!
Link Building | | DeliaAssociates0 -
Better to redirect domain or to link from home page?
Hi, I have a niche directory and sometimes clients remove themselves because they have discontinued their business practice. If they sometimes provide me with their own website (as they will no longer use it either), is it wiser for me to: a) directly point their URL 301 to my own directory b) keep their website as is, and add a url link to my directory in their homepage c) keep their website as is, and add an anchored link with the industry keyword to my directory Thanks! D
Link Building | | Demosthenes0 -
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 -
Struggles with Rankings
Links seem to be very important to the success of websites today. That said, they are real tough to come by in my specific industry. Plus the president of the company does not want any links on the site, so,................... thats where I am. I paid for links in the past and that was a big mistake!! I am still looking to gain a few links for the website (www.allianceconcretepumps.com) is ezinearticles.com a good location to post aricles in hopes to get links? If it is a good location, do you know of any other ones which would be beneficial? I know I could use some more and better sight content......... I have quite a lot of fresh stuff in the works not just up yet. Hopefully in the next few weeks.........? Any other words from the wise are very much welcome. Thank You Dave
Link Building | | APICDA0