Our ranking as not returned after penalty, Why?
-
Hi,
We have had a Google action against us for over a year. After many "SEO Company's" we found someone who help us remove (December 2013) the action. Which was due to our bad back link profile.
We have 100% improved our content for our website, as Google has requested. We are active within social media, we add relevant content to our blog and we clean up our desk after we finish work
After looking at Moz tools we have great results, sometimes even better than our competitors. But we are still not getting or improving on our traffic, if anything its decreasing.
Is anyone else in the same position? or has anyone recovered from a similar situation?
Josh
-
I dont know if you think this would be a big factor, but iv noticed on moz that we have 'keyword stuffing' on quite a few pages. This is just a result of the category names on those pages etc.
would this be the cause?
-
Id say the main features that our main competitor has done better than ourselves are:
- get people to share category and product pages via social media
- Their homepage content changes more often because of the new products features
- their urls are shorter than ours
- They added content to the category pages a long time before us
But then they have negative things that i would say should harm their site, which are:
- The navigation has to many links which is bad practice for internal linking
- The footer has a spam page which just targets a particular keyword
- The footer also use keywords which would be classed as a site link. Spam again.
- They also have duplicated content in the products pages like ourselves
and im going to check to see if i can see any changes to their rankings
Also could you expand on your comment above about user engagement?
Thanks
-
Since you have updated your website, have your competitors done the same? It may not be tied directly to a Google update, or all of the changes you have made, but also if your competition has made updates and improvements. Use the moz tools to check for updates to your competitors ranking changes, and visually look at their sites to see if there is an area or particular area of their site that works better for users.
-
Hi, could you explain your thoughts on this some more. Thanks
-
We recently changed the descriptions to the bottom as we didn't want all the text to distract from people seeing the products
-
Thank you all for answering my question.
Im going to try and answer all your queries as best as I can. Iv scanned through our analytics's
- Last year we jumped by 40% after Google lifted the ban in December
- Then this year our organic has dropped from January to May by 50%. There has been no report from Google saying we have had ban etc...
So our thoughts are that its to do with a Google update, but all our main pages have new unique relevant content etc
Yes we are/have removed many of our back links which which understand would effect our rankings, but like the Silkstream says, we are ranking for important keywords. In fact our main keyword beads has jumped from page 3 back to page1 (we used to be no1 for this keyword) So there has been a massive important, but our rankings are still falling.
This would then mean that a lot of our long tail keywords that only get 1 - 10 session have completely dropped off the map. Maybe this is problem?
In one comparison from March this year to 3years ago. there is a
- 40% higher bounce rate
- 35% high conversion rate
- 30% Higher sessions
Its difficult to check everything because we have changed website since then, which was in March 2012 and that is about the same time Google gave us our ban.
I can see that a the main pages that we got our traffic from are still in the top 10, just less volume.
As Mark Ainsworth says, we need to build up our link profile again, agree this is something that we will be looking at and treating with more care. But its confusing when things are looking to be moving forward with our traffic to be improving, but then to drop off again.
Let me know all your thoughts?
-
"After looking at Moz tools we have great results, sometimes even better than our competitors. But we are still not getting or improving on our traffic"
It was an assumption of what he meant, as multiple items are mentioned. I think you know as well as I do that the questions are sometimes not clear on here
From another member in this thread:
"I just did 3 random searches and you were on page #1 for all 3.
"pearl+beads" position 4
"glass+beads" position 9 (wiki is at 7!)
"shambala+beads" position 9"Seems his ranking is doing ok. What we really need to see would be the before and after rankings, which is why I stated he should look at his analytics, and compare time periods. Keywords, entry paths, exit pages, referring sites, root domains, ranking position, all that can be found there, and used to make an assessment of where they went wrong.
-
The title is "Our ranking as not returned after penalty, Why" So I would take that their rankings are not well
When they said looking at "Moz tools we have great results" I took that to mean PA/DA, Domain trust etc.
-
He stated that they are ranking well, but traffic is lower. I'm thinking that links are not his issue, but rather some other factor ie lack of engagement, listings not standing out, products not marked up, etc.
-
I just did 3 random searches and you were on page #1 for all 3.
"pearl+beads" position 4
"glass+beads" position 9 (wiki is at 7!)
"shambala+beads" position 9Seeing the usual ebay, amazon big brand domain clusters for these queries so I'd say your doing OK. You might want to consider moving your category descriptions above the fold to improve further rather than below your products on the landing page.
-
You need to think about why the website was performing well before the penalty. If it was spammy artificial links that were boosting your site, then removing the penalty means that they no longer help you. Therefore, your website is receiving considerably less link juice than before.
You may need to face facts that your link building efforts will probably need to start again from scratch.
-
Generally the reason is it was the bad links is what was making you rank so well in the first place, now they are removed you don't get the benefit they where giving you.
I had a quick look at you backlink profile with OSE, and I can see some good links there (channel 4), but also aload of junk directories. OSE just does not consider the quality of the back link so in the stats you may have better PA and DA but when you look at the backlinks your competitors might have better qualty links (not spam)
also there is a chance that the "seo company" you used might have disavowed some good links by mistake, but if they are any good they would not have done that.
-
Have you done a comparison month to month, or year over year since you received the penalty and after it was lifted?
Analytics can tell you where your visitors are leaving. Even if the content was revised, or changed completely, that doesn't mean it's connecting with your visitors. Check your exit pages, and on page time comparison with the following period to see if there are any negative changes that were made. I would look at your impressions as well.
Also, look at your competitors ranking closer, not just using tools. Tools only show a portion of data. If your competitors are using rich snippet markup, even if you outrank them, chances are their listing could stand out more and be getting more clicks.
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
-
Do you see sites with unfixable Penguin penalties?
Hello, We have a site with 2 Penguin update penalties (drops in traffic) and one quality penalty (another drop in traffic) all years ago, both just drops in rankings and not messages in Google Console. Now that Penguin is hard coded, do you find that some sites never recover even with a beautiful disavow and cleanup? We've added content and still have some quality errors, though I thought they were minor. This client used to have doorway sites and paid links, but now is squeaky clean with a disavow done a month ago though most of the cleanup was done by deletion of the doorways and paid links 9 months ago. Is this a quality problem or is our site permanently gone? Let me know what information you need. Looking for people with a lot of experience with other sites and Penguin. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW2 -
Dodgy backlinks pointing to my website - someone trying to ruin my SEO rankings?
I just saw in 'Just discovered' section of MOZ that 2 new backlinks have appeared back to my website - www.isacleanse.com.au from spammy websites which look like they might be associated with inappropriate content. 1. http://laweba.net/opinion-y-tecnologia/css-naked-day/comment-page-53/ peepshow says: (peepshow links off to my site)07/17/2016 at 8:55 pm2. http://omfglol.org/archives/9/comment-page-196 voyeur says: (voyeur linking off to my site)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IsaCleanse
July 17, 2016 at 7:58 pm Any ideas if this is someone trying to send me negative SEO and best way to deal with it?0 -
How can I 100% safe get some of my keywords ranking on second & third page?
Hi, I want to know how can I rank some of my keywords which are in the second and third page on google on page one 100% save, so it will pass all penguin, pandas etc as quick as possible? Kind Regards
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | rodica70 -
Partial Manual penalty to a URL
Hi Mozers, I have a website which has got a partial manual penalty on a specific url. That url is of no use to the website now and is going to be taken off in 3 months time as the website is going to be completely redesigned. Till then I dont wont to live with the partial manual penalty for this url. I have few things in mind to tackle this: 1. take out the url from the website now (as the new redesign will take 3 months) 2. take out internal links pointing to this url in question 3. file for reconsideration with google stating we have taken off the url and have not generated any backlinks and the backlinks are organic. (no backlinking activity has been done on this website or the url) Please let me know if this works or i will have to get the backlinks removed then the disavow then the reconsideration. Looking forward for ur response 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HiteshBharucha0 -
From keyword rankings to ......... what KPI?
Hi Folks, I have a customer whos keyword rankings for Google have fluctuated rather widly over the past two months which has caused some consternation on their part dispite our reassurance. This is caused in large part due to their lack of understanding of SEO, little effort on their part in implementing changes for SEO and what I belive to be unrealistic expectations (having done no SEO work on their site wanting to see first page ranking for competitive keywords like 'heart attack' within 4-8 weeks). At the moment we are using just keyword rankings as a KPI and I wish to reframe them by using additional or alternative KPIs so that as rankings fluctuate with future Google seach algorithm tweaks and changes that the customer isn't solely focused on them. I am still in the process of formulating this list but so far I have decided to include the KPIs listed below. Month-on-Month / Quarter-On-Quarter Organic search traffic volume (should be rising) Top landing pages excluding branding keywords and homepage (should corelate to content created to target specific keywords) Number of landing pages on the client site that rank List of landing pages and bounce rates (are the 'gateway pages' holding visitors due to meeting their search requirements?) Average number of keywords per landing page (possibly integrated with the landig page reports above as a dimension to demonstrate correlation of # of keywords to landing pages) Some visibility on top keyword search terms (provided from Adwords where possible and GWT also) Top organic keywords (from adwords and GWT) Conversions from organic search (will vary from client to client for their own needs but will primarily be implemented using Google Tag Manager event tracking for things like enquiry forms etc) Referral traffic Delta/Ranking trends over large set of datapoints (will depend on how often you poll/track rankings but for example if you track rankings weekly then assess the trend of the rankings over 3-6months to smooth out the fluctuations) Your thoughts and feedback on this would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Dave
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | icanseeu1 -
Ranking in Multiple Geographic Locations
Hey Mozers, We are a Joomla Web Design firm located in Milwaukee Wisconsin, however, we serve clients all over the midwest (and US) (chicago, madison, minneapolis, etc) I'm curious what the best strategy for ranking in these new geographic areas? Originally I was thinking of creating geographic specific landing pages for each area, however, i'm scared it will hurt us with Google's recent penguin and panda 3.5 updates. Also, won't i need to link to these landing pages from our main website to get them indexed? What about creating mini websites on subdomains: (example) Chicago.SavvyPanda.com?? What are your ideas? Do you have clients who have successfully started ranking in multiple geographic cities/areas?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SavvyPanda0 -
Google rankings dropped like a stone
I've heard of this happening many times, but never to me. My client was Page 1 or 2 for 20 phrases, and they ALL dropped like a rock overnight. The site hasn't been banned by Google, as it's still indexed and the company name is returning results.There were no major changes done to tags or the code, and nothing black hat has been done. The only phrases that didn't drop contain the company name, and the results in Bing and Yahoo either stayed the same or moved up slightly since last week for all the terms. There's also no threat of spam, and it's very search engine friendly. The URL is http://www.universalaccounting.com. Help!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JamesBSEO0 -
A domain is ranking for a plural key word in SERPs on page 1 but for the singular not at all?
What could the reasons that a domain is ranking for the plural version of a key word on SERPs page 1 and for the singular version not at all? Google knows that both key words belong together, as in the SERPs for one version also the other version of the key word is being highlighted. If I search for the domain with the plural keyword it shows up on the first page in SERPs, but If I search for the same keyword as singular (in German it is just removing an “s”) I see the plural version highlighted many times but I cannot find my domain. What could be the reason for this behavior? penalties?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SimCaffe0