So weird sudden drop in rankings
-
Hi All, ok so at the beginning of July we launched our new website, SEVEN weeks later we have dropped completly off all rankings what-so-ever, (except brand) but weirdly if i pan between browsers we dont use (for saved searches/cookies etc) sometimes the rankings show up where they used to be.
Whats strange is we get crawled daily but it took seven weeks for our rankings to drop, ive done all testing i can - no manual actions, no updates when we dropped (15th Aug) no real differences in webmaster tools, no crawl errors, no massive rise in 404s, 500s etc etc, im really a bit stumped!
Any help would be mucho appreciated in diagnosing this stumper!
-
Its not a new website (3 and half years) we think its 301s on our product lines (200 URLS) whats the quickest way to deal with 301s - dont want to be writing up a spreadsheet of every url that we stick into htaccess file!
-
Brand new sites typically get lots of traffic at first because Google sees them as completely fresh content. Then once the content gets older the rankings will drop.
-
Right off the bat, the www and non-www aren't properly redirected. I'm running a crawl right now. I'll let you know if I see anything else.
-
Hi Amelia, it is 3 year old website, 301s have been done in terms of some pages and others have kept the exact same URL as they did previously, the only thing that havent been 301 is product pages which have a different structure now and never where high value content, 301 products is something i am doing currently - we have a LOT of products so if anyone knows of a tool to simplify this please let me know :DApart from that i am stumped, i hate leaving it to see what effects happen in natural course but it is stumping me!
-
Have you recently reblaunched a new version of your old website, or is it a completely new site? Only ask because your original post made me think it was a new company, new website, but your response to James suggests otherwise - 'we have held those keywords for 3 and a half years'...
This makes a difference.
If it's all completely new (new company, new domain, new design) then I think your good listings for 7 weeks were the freshness thing (sorry I call it that...) where Google will give a new site a better place in its index than it necessarily deserves based on links etc because it hasn't had a chance to build any links being so new and all.
If it's a rebrand of an old site then you may want to look at your 301 redirects and make sure they are page-to-page rather than sending everything to the homepage (which is so common I just want to bang my head against a brick wall - highly frustrating for a user, stoooopid for a webmaster). If you've changed domains then you can 'tell' Google via webmaster tools using the change of address tool.
Good luck with your problem - I hope it gets sorted out soon.
-
Hi James, yep i see we are dong ok on bing its a weird one! Masoud, point taken we have got some new content and good links coming inbound, interesting about WMT we have held those keywords for 3 and a half years!
-
Hi
Maybe its a sandbox effect. I suggest you to wait for another week, make contents and update, build brand name and generic links and track the results. I use this strategy when my new site drop like this and it worked.
and another thing, check your content keywords in WMT, if your main keyword is in top 3, you should decrease using it; I had a experience of this, Google thought we are doing keyword stuffing.
-
Wow really struggling with this one also,
Worth mentioning that you are very much in favor with Bing still and rank very well,
I am struggling to understand why so well but not with Google,
I will keep digging, hopefully a few other mozzers will pick this up and take a look,
James
-
Hi James its www.kennelstore.co.uk
-
Can you give a URL ?
Thanks
James
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
-
Organic Traffic Dropped By Half
My company website (https://factoryexpodirect.com/) organic traffic is dropped in March 2017 and after that it never recovered. I am not sure what is the reason. Can anyone help me out to figure out the reason.
Technical SEO | | christmaslaserlights0 -
Subdomain Ranking Question
Hi All - Quick question that I think I know the answer to, but I feel like I've been going around in circles a bit. My client is launching a new product and wants us to build a microsite for it (product.clientname.com). My client really dislikes their brand website, and wants to use paid media to push their audience to this new microsite. However, they also said want it to rank well organically. I feel uneasy about this, because of the subdomain vs. subfolder argument. I believe that the product will also be listed/featured on their main brand website. What is the best way forward? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | AinsleyAgency0 -
I am having an issue with my rankings
I am having an issue with my rankings. I am not sure if there are issues with onpage dup content or with the way wordpress is behaving but there is no reason based upon the sites back link profile that the site shouldn't be ranking well. The site is mesocare.org. If anyone can help it would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | weitzluxenberg0 -
Struggling to get indexed and ranked
I am working on a brand new website and really struggling to get the site indexed and listed for it's business name! I don't normally struggle and have got clients ranked for much more challenging keywords so I'm a bit stuck! The site is a new domain and has been live for about two months. The business previously used an old domain and this has been correctly 301'd to the new domain. There is no duplicate content with any other website when checked through Copyscape.com Webmaster Tools has been set-up and verified and this shows the site is being crawled but in Google site:www.website.com.au shows no pages as being indexed. Google Places has been set-up and verified, the site has also been added to local citation sites. There are also a few incoming links from other sources. Robots.txt is fine and has been checked. Business name mentioned in the title tag, footer and throughout the site. Does anyone have any ideas how I might be able to get ranked or is it just a waiting game? Or have I missed out something really obvious?? My last step is doing a crawl test to see if this brings up anything I have missed. Thanks Karen
Technical SEO | | Karen_Dauncey0 -
Why do they rank the home page?
We are trying to rank for the key word Motorcycle Parts. We have moved up to page 2 over the past couple months; however, google is ranking our home page not our http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/s/49/61/Motorcycle-Parts page that is for motorcycle parts. We are working on internal linking to help point the right signals too. Any other thoughts? ( we have new content written to put in as well we just have to wait for an issue to be fixed before we can put it in)
Technical SEO | | DoRM0 -
Huge drop for main branded keyword
The past week the main branded keyword for a site i am working on has dropped from the top three on Google US to page 7! It is still ranking in the top three on Google in other areas. I recently redirected /index.php to / using .htaccess. Could this have caused a problem? If not, what else could have caused such a huge drop?
Technical SEO | | Tedred0 -
Does ViewState affect SEO Rankings
We are redesigning our website and looking at our large data in the viewstate hidden field. Our thoughts are to move to bottom of page but our developers are stating this is an old myth and no resent documentation if it improves our SEO. Does ViewState (big data in hidden fields ) effect SEO in any way? If ViewState (hidden field) is present at the end of HTML document instead of near the start of HTML document then will it increase our ranking in search engines? Does Google or any other engine read the hidden fields? or do they ignore them? Can you point me to some valid documentation to back this up? Feed back is appreciated. Cathy
Technical SEO | | SEO-Team0 -
Keywords Ranking Dropped from 1st Page to Above 5th Page
Hello, My site URL is http://bit.ly/161NeE and our site was ranked first page for over hundred keywords before March, 30. But all of a sudden, all the keywords on first page dropped to 5th or 6th page. When we search for our site name without ".com", the results appeared on first page are all from other sites. And our page can only be seen on 6th page. We think we have been penalized by Google. But we don't know the exact reason. Can anyone please help? Some extra info on our site: 1. We have been building links by posting blog, articles and PR. All the articles are unique, written by the writers we hire. It has been working fine all the time. We also varied the anchor text a lot. 2. We didn't make any change to the website. But one real problem with our site is that the server is very slow recently and when google crawl our website, many errors were found, mostly 503, 404 errors. And the total number of errors have reach to over 50,000. Do you think this might be a problem for Google not displaying us on first page? Our technicals are working hard to solve server problem. And if it is solved, shall our rankings be back? Please advise. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Milanoocom0