Ecommerce site impressions and clicks drop
-
Hello,
A new client came to me with their ecommerce kids clothes website 6 weeks ago. I installed Yoast SEO plugin and set to work changing all their products to proper words rather than codes and optimising titles and descriptions. I did no link building. The domain is new- about 2- 3 months only so has very few links. I added it to webmaster tools and submitted the sitemap. Traffic was good during this time and infact the impressions in webmaster tools and clicks were increasing. It seemed to be punching beyond its weight actually with some keywords on page 1 which I thought odd for such a new domain in such a competitive arena. Then on the 4th October the impressions and clicks fell drastically. The traffic is about a third of what it was.
Now I don't think this was anything Penguin-ish as the domain is so new with no links yet. I know there was a Panda update on the 25th September. Could it be that? All I have done is changed the titles to something more human and I thought Google appeared to like that as traffic was increasing. Could it be that now everything is indexed that it has settled down to its proper position in the rankings which is currently low? We added another way of categorising the products by brand as on the site their USP is their designer brands. I have checked for duplication but as far as I can see this isn't an issue.
Anyone seens this before?
-
Thank you Bruce.
-
Everything points to the first flush of youth. New site, lots of new content and google loves this. Now time as started to balance as your rightly say, to settle the site to where it naturally sits as a new kid on the block, but not that new.
What-ever you do, do not tweak, if Moz page rank scores are good for your keywords etc, as this will end up with you being totally confused about the stats you are starting to see.
Make sure each main page scores well for your keywords and build good content and update regularly to your main category pages. Products pages are static, so use your entry pages to add fresh content. Improve each page where you can.
Penguin is cannot penalise sites without spammy links, so this is not the problem if you don't have any.
Remember Google is about quality end user content, fresh and unique.
Hope this helps on the journey. Look forwar to many more questions in due course I am sure.
Bruce
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
-
Site address change: new site isn't showing up in Google, old site is gone.
We just transitioned mccacompanies.com to confluentstrategies.com. The problem is that when I search for the old name, the old website doesn't come up anymore to redirect people to the new site. On the local card, Google has even taken off the website altogether. (I'm currently still trying to gain access to manage the business listing) When I search for confluent strategies, the website doesn't come up at all. But if I use the site: operator, it is in the index. Basically, my client has effectively disappeared off the face of the Google. (In doing other name changes, this has never happened to me before) What can I do?
Technical SEO | | MichaelGregory0 -
Site hacked in Jan. Redeveloped new site. Still not ranking. Should we change domain?
Our top ranking site in the UK was hacked at the end of 2014. http://www.ultimatefloorsanding.co.uk/ The site was the subject of a manual spam action from Google. After several unsuccessful attempts to clean it up, using Securi.net and reinstating old versions of the site, changing passwords etc. we took the decision to redevelop the site. We also changed hosting provider as we had received absolutely no support from them whatsoever in resolving the issue. So far we have: Removed the old website files off the server Developed a new website having implemented 301's for all the old URL's (except the spam ones) Submitted a reconsideration request for the manual spam action, which was accepted. Disavowed all the spammy inbound links through Webmaster Tools Implemented custom URL parameters through Google to not index the SPAM URLs ( which were using parameters) Our organic traffic is down by 63% compared to last year, and we are not ranking for most of our target keywords any longer. Is there anything that I am missing in the actions I have taken so far? We were advised that at this stage changing domain and starting again might be the way to go. However the current domain has been used by us since 2007, so it would be a big call. Any advice is appreciated, thanks. Sue - http://www.ultimatefloorsanding.co.uk/
Technical SEO | | galwaygirl0 -
Google Site Search
I'm considering to implement google site search bar into my site.
Technical SEO | | JonsonSwartz
I think I probably choose the version without the ads (I'll pay for it). does anyone use Google Site Search and can tell if it's a good thing? does it affects in any way on seo? thank you0 -
Linking out to authoritive sites from my ecommerce site
Good afternoon SEOmoz community. I was looking for a specific answer or advice or opinion about linking out to other sites. My Site www.tacticalbootstore.com has been undergoing a complete content rewrite. In the process we have been told and read where it can be good to link out to other authoritive sites. One of the pages we have rewritten is here. http://www.tacticalbootstore.com/belleville-boots-sizing-chart-a-97.html We have not added the graphics yet as they are being built now. This is just an informational page about sizing of a particular manufacturers boots. Once you get to the bottom of the text we have added a link to the actual manufacturers page. Is this helpful for us in the SERPS or not? Thank you for your time. Chris
Technical SEO | | scamper0 -
Poor Site Performance
Hello, A couple of months ago, this site was dropped from google due to a noindex, nofollow tag thewealthymind(dot)com It's back up, but performing poorly. Take for example the term "The 4 step belief change" in the home page title tag. This site is the #1 authority on that and yet it ranks 3rd below weaker pages. There's 180 404 errors in GWT, many from past versions of pages of the site but also including thewealthymind(dot)com/index.html and thewealthymind(dot)com/index.htm even though there is a rel=cononical tag on the home page. What's the process of getting this site back to health?
Technical SEO | | BobGW0 -
Really stuck guys. how do you earn links for an ecommerce site?
Hi seomoz guys So I read a lot on seomoz and other sites, and see a lot of info about earning links, but this all seems to be aimed at blogs and brochure sites. Being blunt, we sell stuff. Our competitors sell the same stuff. We are limited on what we can do product description content wise as our suppliers expect us to use the content they supply. We are now putting together q and a pages based on a great article in the seomoz blog. Does anyone have any great ideas for developing link bait or just getting links to an eCommerce site? We know our service is good, and our product is good, but that's not enough to convince someone to link to us. Help Thanks Paul
Technical SEO | | TheUniqueSEO0 -
How to turn WP site into Ecom site?
I have a couple of old wordpress sites that are old affiliate blogs. I currently sell products that are on amazon on these sites and sell quite a bit of volume. I have found a source and can afford the inventory to replace Amazon with my own product. So the dilema is how to turn these wordpress sites into ecommerce sites. The thing I am worried most about is that each site gets about 100-200 visitors a day for great buying keywords. I obviously don't want to lose my rankings. What are the options of turning a wordpress site into a store. I am not interested in plugins or some of the other solutions that make the store look very cheap and I would assume horribly convert. If you have inner pages ranking for keywords how does that work? Do the post pages become product pages? So to sum up I guess I am asking, what are the options that are of the higher quality that will also help me keep my rankings? Thanks
Technical SEO | | PEnterprises0 -
Adding more content to an old site
We have a site which was de-moted from PR4 to PR3 with the latest Google update. We have not done any SEO for a long time for the site and the content is the same with over 100 page. My question is, in order to update the site, which is the best to do it, do we: 1. re-introduced new content to replace old once 2. re-write old content 3. Add new pages Many thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | seomagnet0