Client has no visibility
-
Background:
Client was hacked a few months back. Everything was cleaned up, and he maintained rankings for some keywords before completely dropping off. Webmasters Tools was added after the hack, which shows no issues. ahrefs, majestic, and OSE show bad links but not GMT. Disavowed anyway. Not sure what else could be blocking his visibility, main pages have been index but not specific blog posts.
Any suggestions or directions to look?
-
No problem, glad I could help! Sometime it's helpful to have an extra set of eyes looking at a site's seo.
Let me know if you need any additional help, and the results after your changes.
-
Thank you David, obviously I was to close to the situation to be able to review it objectively.
Much appreciated. I will do those changes and just post back if there is any change.
-
I dont think that registering a new domain is the best plan of action.
Currently, the domain has been registered since October 29, 2012. Starting over means he loses the domain age. Granted it's not been registered that long, but most of the issues on the site seem to be seo/content related.
He stated that he did not get hit with a manual action, and already disavowed the links. I think that with setting up better content and optimisation, new sitemap, moving site to a dedicated IP, (hosted in Provo, Utah so I'm guessing hostgator), and resubmitting all after revisions in GWT as fetch as google and html highlighting, he will be fine. See my post on this page regarding his on/off page issues. It is very likely the site just got slapped with an algorithm update, and that his original presumption of the hack causing ranking loss is not entirely accurate. I think he could gain all the ranking back within a month if all is corrected and submitted properly.
-
After looking at the site, and hearing you say there was no manual action, I think your troubles lie elsewhere, as in Google just doesnt like the site anymore due to on page/off page issues.
I'm guessing your site wants to rank for "chiropractor in pickering" or "chiropractor pickering"?
Let's get started (cracks knuckles):
The home page currently has 4 versions.
http://www.drkevinfinn.com/
http://www.drkevinfinn.com/index.html
http://drkevinfinn.com/index.html
http://drkevinfinn.com/You have duplicate home pages, and need to process a redirect in cpanel/htaccess to prevent this. Here is the code you need to put in place in htaccess after the # RewriteBase /
force www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.drkevinfinn.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.drkevinfinn.com/$1 [R=301,L]remove index.php within the URL
RedirectMatch permanent index.php/(.*) http://www.drkevinfinn.com/$1
remove index.php at the end of the URL and change to /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ /./index.(php|html)\ HTTP
RewriteRule (.)index.(php|html)$ /$1 [R=301,L]Remove index.php from root URL
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.(php|html) [NC]
RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.drkevinfinn.com/ [R=301,L]#end code
Keyword selection:
The keyword selection on the pages is pretty jarbled, and could use a bit of cleaning up. For example on home page:
name="keywords" content="DR. Kevin Finn,Chiropractor Pickering,chiropractor services in Pickering">
could be changed to: (DC is the abbreviation for "doctor of chiropractic", CA stands for both Canada, and for Chiropractic assistant, a double benefit!)
name="keywords" content="chiropractor, chiropractic, care, clinic, service, pickering, CA, Dr Kevin Finn, DC, doctor">Site meta description: Also, the description for the site is not very.....descriptive:
name="description" content="Chiropractic Dr. Kevin Finn offers chiropractor services in Pickering.">
let's elaborate a bit further, based off of your services page:
name="description" content="Dr. Kevin Finn is a chiropractor clinic in Pickering, CA offering chiropractic care and services to clients suffering from back pain or injury.">
On page copy:
On page copy is a bit thin. Your headings list the main keyword and location, but the body copy does not. From the homepage:"Chiropractors are experts in the diagnosis and treatment of injuries or conditions related to your nerves, muscles, bones and joints and how these conditions may impact your overall health and ability to work, perform and enjoy life.
People most often think of visiting a chiropractor for back pain or neck pain and headaches, but chiropractors can help with problems in the shoulders, elbows, wrists, knees, hips even your feet! Research studies have demonstrated that chiropractic treatment provides excellent relief for these conditions."
^^^^^^^ NO LOCATION LISTED!! Also, the phrase "chiropractors" is used often, but not chiropractor, chiropractic, etc etc and anything else you want to rank for. Many pages only have 2 short paragraphs, which limits how often and where you can link to.
No Interlinking of pages in content.
Google hates dead end pages, and users dont spend much time on them. Add in additional copy, and link using anchor text to those related pages as you talk about them.No authorship or markup:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http://drkevinfinn.com/index.htmlClick-through ratio is probably getting hit hard because of this. You have the google+ page linked in the footer, so what is stopping you from creating the markup? Also, does he have any reviews? I'm sure one or more patients would be happy to write some reviews, and them you can add in aggregate review markup and make the indexed links shine. Don't know how? here you go: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/get-started-using-schema/
Start looking objectively at these areas of your site. I dont think you are being affected by the hack, as much as areas of SEO that need more attention to detail. If the hack was a major factor, you most likely would have received a message from GWT saying that malware was on the site.
Best of luck, and let me know if I can help with anything!
-
Again, it's one of those where we are reliant on Google with providing us with dates of updates, and they have suggested they will stop doing that altogether. Similarly, a Penguin refresh is different than an update and arguably occurs more often.
Only thing I would suggest here is to see whether your drop coincides with any SERP flux in Mozcast or Algoroo. If it does, do a Google search for "[date] google update" and see if anyone else reported any changes on that date. That might be able to tell you more.
-
Silly me didn't look was being a bit quick when looking sorry!
-
I was also thinking it could be penguin but the drop did not coincide with an update, and all the spam links are only found in 3rd party explorers and not found in WMT
-
The robots is a meta tag in this case
-
Oh wow, that's a lot of spam. Very sorry to hear your client was a victim of this.
If the site was hit by an algorithmic penalty (which could be very likely given the amount of low quality spam links the hackers built) that might account for the sudden drop. That would also explain why your disavow-ing has had no effect thus far. It can take much longer for the algorithm (the Penguin portion in this case) to update and take into account any disavowed or removed links on that domain, hence why a penalty might still be remaining.
It's pretty much impossible to predict when that might happen - could be tomorrow or another 6 months. This is probably the biggest frustration many businesses have with Google - the sheer ambiguity on algorithmic penalties.
With all of that in mind, as sad as it is I think you might be better off starting on a fresh domain and taking all necessary precautions to prevent hacking. I don't like leaving it to chance on when the Penguin algorithm could update, leaving you with an indefinite period of waiting to see rankings come back. Similarly, we can't even be sure you have an algorithmic penalty, due to Google's vagueness on that matter as well (although I suspect at least one is at play here).
The way I see it, starting on a fresh domain gives you that control back, although I realise that may not be an option.
-
I don't see a robots file, may want to think about getting one..
-
1. How long has it been since the site was hacked?It has been about 6 months
2. Have all linked been resubmitted in GWT (fetch as google) and in sitemap?Yes, and a fresh sitemap
3. How long has it been since links were disavowed? Disavow 6 weeks
4. Have you tried uploading the site under a new (dedicated) IP address after all the fixes were put in place? No
5. Have you checked using site search to make sure pages are indexed, just not ranking? Site search shows all pages but blog posts
6. Are there any robots rules in place blocking pages, and are the pages set to index, follow? Everything is clear from a robots aspect
7. Was there a manual action made against the site by Google? If so, was a reconsideration request completed?There is no notification of manual action.Site is http://www.drkevinfinn.com
-
Thank you for your response Chris. I have done a fetch and everything is good
-
1. How long has it been since the site was hacked?
2. Have all linked been resubmitted in GWT (fetch as google) and in sitemap?
3. How long has it been since links were disavowed?
4. Have you tried uploading the site under a new (dedicated) IP address after all the fixes were put in place?
5. Have you checked using site search to make sure pages are indexed, just not ranking?
6. Are there any robots rules in place blocking pages, and are the pages set to index, follow?
7. Was there a manual action made against the site by Google? If so, was a reconsideration request completed?Can you provide the url, so that I can have a closer look?
Lots of questions, but I think this will point you in the right direction of where to start.
-
I assume you checked the bots haven't been blocked on specific pages did you also try "fetch as Google"?
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
-
Ranking & Visibility suddenly Down for my website
Any google updates or, can anyone tell me what google running, web ranking down, majority keywords showing on 1st pages right now those are on 3rd page, so is there any specific reason, or any solutions plz.. this s my website www.iqlance.com can anyone help me to audit and what was the issues facing exactly..
On-Page Optimization | | harry5501 -
What should I be shooting for for search visibility percentage?
Realistically - what's a "good" search visibility score? I'm working on a site that has been around less than a year. We are doing 3 blogs a week with carefully selected keywords. I know it will take time and lots of SEO work - but I'm interested in any ideas on what I should shoot for. Thanks for any thoughts! (Also not a local listing or anything - national search.)
On-Page Optimization | | mm19804 -
Client Worried About SEO Decline After Site Redesign
Hi, We're in the process of redesigning www.directvillasflorida.com/ for a client. The client has recently expressed concern that their rankings may drop off after the change. Here are some facts about the site: As you can see, the current homepage is _very _keyword heavy. They have a DA of 26 and are ranking #1 for 'florida villas', higher than their more authoritative competitors. They are also ranking #1 in the mobile search results, despite not being mobile-friendly. Their link profile is pretty average and the anchor texts are pretty keyword-rich 'florida villas' appears 30 times with a 4.41% keyword density 'florida' appears 66 times with a 3.31% density The client has admitted keyword stuffing years ago and hasn't changed anything because it worked and still is working. In the site redesign, we've cut out a lot of the spammy, keyword-rich content and he's worried he'll suffer because of this. Any ideas what to do here? It seems clear that the site is breaching Google's guidelines, but, for whatever reason, isn't being picked up by Google. Cheers, Lewis N.B. The client is just paying us for a redesign, not SEO.
On-Page Optimization | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Single Page on my client's website is not crawling and indexing new changes. What could be the possible reason?
I made several changes on client's website on different pages, changed titles, add content on few pages, moved blog from subdomain to sub directory. Everything is crawled but there is one page on the website (not part of the blog) that isn't getting crawled in Google and picking up changes. The last crawl of the website is 2 days back whereas that page was last crawled on 30th sep. I just wanted to know the possible reasons and has anyone encountered this before?
On-Page Optimization | | MoosaHemani0 -
How to explain to a client that duplicate content is bad...
Afternoon! An SEO client of ours has copied a load of landing/category page content from other sites. Lots of emails have been sent back and forth asking them to remove it, but they are adamant to keep it up there until we have time to amend it. We have explained to them: The Google penalty risks The copyright risks The short and long-term implications for their brand new business/website The money they are spending on our SEO package could be completely wasted if they're caught I think the above is pretty black and white, but the director of this company will not budge. Does anyone have any different approaches? The director said he's happy for us to amend the content but, in the meantime, the plagiarised content will not be removed. Cheers, Lewis
On-Page Optimization | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
I want to improve our client's website structure, so he gets more traffic locally. What advice do you have ?
We want to "revamp" our client's website, by improving the overall looking (content, images, structure). Our client is a small retail business but wants to have more traffic. What advice can you give me ?
On-Page Optimization | | marketingmedia.ca0 -
Good idea to use hidden text for SEO purposes due to picky clients not allowing additional content?
I do SEO for eCommerce websites both in-house and for clients. A few of our clients want increased rankings but are not willing to allow us to make the changes internally to help make that happen. One of which is adding content to the webpages since 90% of them have very little to none. I have a couple clients that are extremely picky about what can be seen on their eCommerce website. They have the site setup the way they want it but it is not SEO friendly in the slightest. The pages (including homepage) have little to no content, and the only things they want changed are things visitors CANNOT see on the webpages (META, ALT Tags etc). The tactic i am wanting to use is often used by spammers but i have a legitimate reason to use this and wanted to know if this would be a good idea. They are wanting to target fairly competitive keywords but are unwilling to allow any on-page changes to add any information and keywords to help with rankings. I was thinking about adding text behind images or hide the text in whatever ways to prevent the end user from viewing it (except for the search engines). My idea was simply to add a paragraph or two of content for the search engines purely to help in ranking because they have a lot of pages that have zero content except for product image and title listings. Is this tactic recommended or does anyone have any other ideas for these type of situations. Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | VITALBGS
Stephen0 -
Homepage Keywords for a Client with Multiple Services
We have a local client who services are very broad and there is no one service, i.e. keyword or keyword phrase, that covers all that they do. This is making it very challenging to select keywords to optimize the homepage for. Basically they do everything from engineering, surveying, planning, environmental, etc. We were thinking we would focus mainly on their most important service which is engineering and then use the other services as supporting phrases. However, this feels very diluted and there will be pages on the site for each of these services where the keywords will be targeted. Any thoughts or recommendations for this type of situation?
On-Page Optimization | | DragonSearch0