Rank drop ecommerce site
-
Hello,
We're going to get an audit, but I would like to hear some ideas on what could cause our ranking drop.
There's no warnings in GWT.
We deleted 17 or so blogs (that had no backlinks pointing to these blogs and were simply for easy links) last summer thinking that they weren't white hat so we had to start eliminating them. At the same time, we eliminated a few sitewide paid links that were really strong. With all of this deletion, our keywords started to drop. For example, our main keyword went from first to third/fourth. With the deletions, our keywords dropped immediately a couple of spots, then with no more deletions, all of our keywords have been slowly dropping over the last seven months or so. Right now we are at the bottom of the first page for that same main keyword, and other keywords look similar.
We have 70 linking root domains, of which:
15 are blogs with no backlinks that were created simply for the purpose of easy links. We didn't delete them all yet because of the immediate ranking drop when we deleted the last ones.
One PR5 site has links to our home page scattered throughout it's lists of resources for people in different states in the US. It doesn't look like a standard paid link site, but it has many paid links in it's different pages.
One PR4 site has our logo with another paid link logo at the bottom of one of it's pages.
There are 2 other paid links from two PR4 sites that look editorial. There are other links on the sites to other websites that are paid. All links for these 2 sites look editorial.
That's all the bad stuff.
Other things that could be causing drop in rank - > Our bread crumbs are kind of messed up. We have a lot of subcategory pages that rel=cononical to main categories in the menu. We did this because we had categories that were exactly the same. So you'll drill down on a category page and you'll end up on a main category. To the average user, it seems perfectly fine.
Our on-site SEO still has a few pages that repeat words in the titles and h1 tags several times (especially our #1 main keyword), titles similar to something like:
running shoes | walking shoes | cross-training shoes
where a word is repeated 2 or 3 times.
Also, there are a few pages that are more keyword stuffed than we would like in the content. Just a couple of paragraphs but 2 keywords are dispersed in them three times each. The keywords in this content is not in different variations, it's exactly the keyword.
We've still got a few URLs that are keywords stuffed with like 3 different keywords.
We may have many 404 errors (due to some mistakes we made with the URLs in our cart) - if Google hasn't deindexed them all then we could have dozens of 404s on important category pages. But nothing is showing up in GWT.
Our sitemap does not include any broken links.
Google is confused about our branding it seems. I'm adding branding to the on-site SEO but right now Google often shows keywords as our branding when Google changes the way the title tag is displayed sometimes in the search engines.
We don't link out to anyone.
We have lots of content, almost no duplicate content, and some authoritative very comprehensive articles.
Your thoughts on what to do to get our rankings back up?
-
before I could tell you the best way to get your ranking backup I would have to look at your site.
I Would bet you that because you have bad back links that you try to remove you might've missed a few.
"There are 2 other paid links from two PR4 sites that look editorial. There are other links on the sites to other websites that are paid. All links for these 2 sites look editorial."
Google it is a $40 billion a year company that has the resources and ability to figure out if it's a paid link or looks like a paid link. They will find out from other sites using similar services paid links are one of the worst things you can have in my opinion.
Do a title tag like this is spamming
running shoes | walking shoes | cross-training shoes
using something like Shoes - Walking - Running - Cross-training
would be a better title tag
"Google changes the way the title tag is displayed sometimes in the search engines."
This is normal for Google will change your title tag to suit the queried keywords. It is supposed to help you.
"We may have many 404 errors (due to some mistakes we made with the URLs in our cart) - if Google hasn't deindexed them all then we could have dozens of 404s on important category pages. But nothing is showing up in GWT."
Are you only using Google Webmaster tools to try to figure out if you have for 404's?
when you say blogs I'm assuming your meaning posts?
when you delete blog posts and other parts of the website you're essentially deleting interlinking, back links that you may not know about, your changing your website structure.
If you have not corrected all possible 404's or at least most this will hurt you quite a bit.
For instance when people redesign their site and do not 301 redirect properly even sometimes when they do 301 redirect properly they go down drastically in the SERPS
this is because Google does not trust change immediately.
if you scroll down you'll see my answer in this post and its relevancy to changing parts of the website and Actually trying to keep your site rank.
http://moz.com/community/q/how-to-keep-old-url-juice-during-site-switch
" We have a lot of subcategory pages that rel=cononical to main categories in the menu."
That might not be the wisest idea.
I would strongly recommend a site audit.
if you give me your URL I will run it through some tools for you and give you my opinion.
Sincerely,
Thomas
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
-
Strange referral site: www.cyberonlineclicking.com would like some insights from the community
Hello Mozzers! I've noticed that our site has been receiving a significant amount of referral traffic from a rather suspect looking site: www.cyberonlineclicking.com Can anyone shed any light on this beast. Stopped receiving traffic around 11th November, but was getting 20K sessions over a 4 week period. The traffic was of poor quality, but would be good to know how or why they were linking to my site (fejobs dot com). Looks very suspicious. Thanks Justin
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Eteach_Marketing0 -
Should we remove our "index" pages (alphabetical link list to all of the products on the site)?
We run an e-commerce site with a large number of product families, with each family having a number of products within it. We have a set of pages (26 - one for each letter A-Z) that are lists of links to the product family pages. We originally created these pages thinking it would aid in discoverability of these pages to search engines, of course as time has gone on, techniques like this have fallen out of favor with Google as it provides negligible value to the user. Should we consider removing these pages from the site overall? Is it possible that it could be viewed by Panda as resembling a link farm? Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ChrisRoberts-MTI1 -
How would you optimize a new site?
Hi guys, im here to ask based on your personal opinion. We know in order to rank in SEO for a site is to make authority contents that interest people. But what would you do to increase your ranking of your site or maybe a blog post? leaving your link on blogs comment seem dangerous, nowadays. Is social media the only way to go? Trying to get people to write about you? what else can be done?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon0 -
Can links from an old site raise DA for other site? Or just unethical?
So this may be an odd question. So a competing company went out of business. Their domain name is now available. So just for research purposes, would you ever or would it be unethical for a person to buy an expired competing domain name, and point it to another site to collect their link juice? The site was only a DA of 10, but not sure if one - its bad to buy a competing companies expired domain - and two - even though in the same industry, this would be bad to point it to another site or create a site from it. Just curious your thoughts.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | asbchris0 -
Site-wide links: Nofollow or eliminate altogether?
As a web developer, it's not uncommon for me to place a link in the footer of a website to give myself credit for the web design/development. I recently decided to go back and nofollow all these site-wide footer links, to avoid potentially looking spammy. I wanted to know if I should remove these links altogether, and just give myself text credit without a link at all? I would like for a potential client who is interested in my work to still be able to get to my site if they like my work - but I want to keep my link profile squeaky clean. Thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | brad.s.knutson0 -
LOCAL SEO / Ranking for the difficult 'service areas' outside of the primary location?
It's generally not too hard to rank in Google Places and organically for your primary location. However if you are a service area business looking to rank for neighboring cities or service areas, Google makes this much tougher. Andrew Shotland mentions the obvious and not so obvious options: Service Area pages ranking organically, getting a real/virtual address, boost geo signals, and using zip codes instead of service area circle. But I am wondering if anyone had success with other methods? Maybe you have used geo-tagging in a creative way? This is a hurdle that many local business are struggling with and any experience or thoughts will be much appreciated
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vmialik1 -
Spam linking site how to report
I have a spam linking site that is generation thousans of links to my site. Even if i have a good link background, this is the only spammy i have, each week number of links comings from it increases by 500 , i know have 3000 links for that site and 1800 for other sites, but that one keeps growing What should i do, i dont want that link it is imposible to remove as webmaster does not respond
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Links to partner sites
I have some partnerships in some portals, usually I put the banner of my company with a link to my site on a space partners. How should I proceed? To place the banner no link? To put the link nofollow? Can’t I do it? Don’t I need to worry about it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | soulmktpro0