Does anyone have a clue about my search problem?
-
After three years of destruction, my site still has a problem - or maybe more than one.
OK, I understand I had - and probably still have - a Panda problem.
The question is - does anyone know how to fix it, without destroying eveything?
If I had money, I'd gladly give it up to fix this, but all I have is me, a small dedicated promotions team, 120,000+ visitors per month and the ability to write, edit and proofread.
This is not an easy problem to fix. After completing more than 100 projects, I still haven't got it right, in fact, what I've done over the past 2 months has only made things worse - and I never thought I could do that. Everything has been measured, so as not to destroy our remaining ability to generate income, because without that, its the end of the line.
If you can help me fix this, I will do anything for you in return - as long as it is legal, ethical and won't destroy my reputation or hurt others.
Unless you are a master jedi guru, and I hope you are, this will NOT be easy, but it will prove that you really are a master, jedi, guru and time lord, and I will tell the world and generate leads for you.
I've been doing website and SEO stuff since 1996 and I've always been able to solve problems and fix anything I needed to work on. This has me beaten. So my question is: is there anyone here willing to take a shot at helping me fix this, without the usual response of "change domains" "Delete everything and start over" or "you're screwed"
Of course, it is possible that there is a different problem, nothing to do with algorithms, a hard-coded bias or some penalizing setting, that I don't know about, a single needle in a haystack.
This problem results in a few visible things.
1. Some pages are buried in supplemental results
2. Search bots pick up new stories within minutes, but they show up in search results many hours later
Here is the site: http://shar.es/EGaAC
On request, I can provide a list of all the things we've done or tried. (actually I have to finish writing it)
Some Notes:
There is no manual spam penalty. All outgoing links are nofollow, and have been for 2 years. We never paid for incoming links. We did sell text advertising links 3-4 years ago, using text-link-ads.com, but removed them all 2 1/2 years ago. We did receive payment for some stories, 3-4 years ago, but all have been removed.
One more thing. I don't write much - I'm a better editor than a writer, but I wrote a story that had 1 million readers. the massive percentage of 0.0016% came from you-know-who. Yes, 16 visitors. And this was an exclusive, unique story. And there was a similar story, with half a million readers. same result. Seems like there might be a problem!
-
Thank you for responding Richard.
That would have been easy if there were any purchased or bad links, but there were none.
There were some links from blogs in sidebars and I did have two blogger blogs that referred to a number of our stories, but all of those were removed, and the two blogger blogs were deleted.
Most of the linking domains are real businesses.
I believe this is all about content, but I could be wrong. This is why I need help.
-
I had a site similar to the issue. The way I solved was to just use the disavow tool like a machete instead of scalpel. Mass disavowed any domains that was even suspected and ran constant reports through link detox.
Took around 6 months but it did the job. Then start rebuilding afterwards.
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
-
International SEO and Indexing in Country Specific Search Engines
Hey everyone! My company has recently migrated to a new domain (www.napoleon.com) which includes migrating many TLD separate domains to the new. We have structured the website to have multi-language and regions, including regional content, product offerings etc. Our structure is as follows just to give an example. napoleon.com/en/ca/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Napoleon.com
napoleon.com/fr/ca/
napoleon.com/en/us/
napoleon.com/de/de Currently, specifically the homepage version of the USA website is indexing into Canadian Search Engines, and I can't figure out why. It has been roughly 6 weeks since launch. Any thoughts on this? Thank you Dustin0 -
Can you disallow links via Search Console?
Hey guys, Is it possible in anyway to nofollow links via search console (not disavow) but just nofollow external links pointing to your site? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lohardiu90 -
Big problems with site traffic
Hello! I have big problems with website promotion. It's been 7 months and the attendance on the site is 1-5 people a day. I do not understand the reason. Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong? Site: www.azartlist.com Many thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bobic1 -
Sitemap Indexed Pages, Google Glitch or Problem With Site?
Hello, I have a quick question about our Sitemap Web Pages Indexed status in Google Search Console. Because of the drastic drop I can't tell if this is a glitch or a serious issue. When you look at the attached image you can see that under Sitemaps Web Pages Indexed has dropped suddenly on 3/12/17 from 6029 to 540. Our Index status shows 7K+ indexed. Other than product updates/additions and homepage layout updates there have been no significant changes to this website. If it helps we are operating on the Volusion platform. Thanks for your help! -Ryan rou1zMs
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rrhansen0 -
Unnatural Links Warning Disappeared from Search Console Account
Hello all, In 2013 I had an Unnatural Links Warning message in my GWT account. I believe that it was a result of the work of an old SEO company. When I received the warning I was working with an SEO. He helped me clean up some links. He also uploaded a disavow file for me. He did not file a reconsideration request. He told me that it was not necessary at the time. The message disappeared from my account. A few months ago a similar message appeared in the manual accounts section of my account. I gathered inbound links from GWT, Majestic, etc. I went through them myself and tried to contact lots and lots of webmasters. I got many links cleaned up. I spent several months on this project. I just logged into my Search Console account this afternoon and clicked through everything and guess what... that manual penalty message is gone. So... what does that mean? I assume that I should still upload the disavow file for the sites that did not respond to me that are spammy. Should I still try to file a reconsideration request even though there doesn't seem to be a manual penalty? How should I proceed? Thanks. Melissa
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pajamalady0 -
My website (non-adult) is not appearing in Google search results when i have safe search settings on. How can i fix this?
Hi, I have this issue where my website does not appear in Google search results when i have the safe search settings on. If i turn the safe search settings off, my site appears no problem. I'm guessing Google is categorizing my website as adult, which it definitely is not. Has anyone had this issue before? Or does anyone know how to resolve this issue? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CupidTeam0 -
How to optimise for search results which are affected by Query Deserves Freshness?
I am looking to rank a clients site for certain keywords which have a huge exact local search volume in the 200,000 region. Many of these keywords are celebrity names like Victoria Beckham, Pippa Middleton. etc. 9 times out of 10 these people are in the news and the first page is taken up by new article/news results. My client is a large media publishing company so their site is very relevant. Does anyone know how to optimise for getting on the first page with these types of queries? Thanks Barry
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HaymarketMediaGroupLtd0