Massive drop in traffic, recently.
-
We have been focusing on Local SEO and quality, original content and social media. Over the past 4 weeks we have seen sharp declines in our impressions and overall traffic to the site.
Crawler does not reveal any new massive issues, index is growing and there are no penalties.
Where do we begin to troubleshoot?
-
Hi Greenstone!
Great questions from everyone in the community here! I will add, from a purely local perspective, you might want to be sure you've got all these ducks in a row:
http://moz.com/blog/troubleshooting-local-ranking-failures
Hope you'll come back with further details, based on the the questions the community has put forth!
-
Could it just be seasonality? Is the total search volume for your key terms likely to drop at this time of year? I always see about a 35% reduction in traffic from Thanksgiving to February. No one typically buys my products in the winter months. Is that a possibility?
-
Does any of it tie in with the utter craziness of a drunken penguin (starting on thanksgiving) - http://algoroo.com/ (seems to show the best results compared to some other algo pages) also some dates here http://searchengineland.com/holidays-google-breaks-updates-rules-gives-fresh-penguin-updates-210367
More info & dates you can give us the more we can help i'm sure.
-
Can you see based on your landing pages which pages declined most and if there are any pages that had a bigger drop than others? That would be the first stop for me followed by looking at the keyword volumes and trends to see if it could just be a seasonal trend or not.
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
-
Server was banned, now all sites have dropped ranking.
Hi, I'm new here 🙂 I look after half a dozen sites on the one server. Early January three of those Wordpress sites were hacked and reported for phishing. All sites have been cleaned and the report(s) removed but they are all ranking much lower than previously. I also added IP block to the sites to limit the traffic to Australia and New Zealand as these are all local small businesses. I checked IP reputation for the server and it is neutral, with no blacklisting showing. I checked with the hosting company and they have no bans or warnings on the server either. These sites were ranking ok, usually first or second page but they have all dropped down to page 5 or worse now. Is there anything else I should check? I have resubmitted the sites to Google a few days ago. Any guidance greatly appreciated. I a web designer so I know a little about SEO but this is beyond me.
Local Website Optimization | | MarkNWD0 -
Ranking Dropped Off for HOMETOWN + BRAND
I work with a number of local businesses that generally rank well for the query "HOMETOWN + BRAND." The brand is not the business name. In late August, three of these businesses (all located in the same large US city and owned by the same parent company) stopped ranking for this important keyword. They were all in pos. 1 before., and now they're not on the first 5 pages. There are no issues or errors recorded in Search Console, rankings haven't shifted dramatically for any other keywords and the GMB listing is fully filled out and completely accurate. I'm banging my head trying to figure out how to fix this issue and start seeing my page 1 rankings again. Also, I'm not sure if it's related but I have seen a significant increase in organic traffic from a city within the same state that's about 3.5 hours away. I thought maybe there was something on the sites telling Google they're located in the wrong city, but I'm not seeing anything. Any suggestions or ideas? Any help would be extremely appreciated!
Local Website Optimization | | LocalSEOLady0 -
Why has my site dropped to page 2?
I haven't been paying attention to my sites SERP for the past year, and only realized I've dropped to page 2 on a keyword search. Specifically, on Google.ca, searching the keywords "wedding invitations" My site, www.stephita.com, used to consistently rank in the top 3 links. While my competitors have leapfrogged me. 😞 I realized that my site wasn't "mobile-friendly", and had a few other issues like keyword stuffing, long meta descriptions and titles. I've fixed these issues "now", but wanted to know does this mean my site was severely penalized by the Panda/Penguin updates for the last few years? Does having a PR3 site mean anything? My competitors who our rank me on SERP, are all PR1 sites. Greatly appreciate any feedback you can give me! 🙂
Local Website Optimization | | TysonWong0 -
How to get traffic from Canada Only
I have a website from Canada based, and need only Canadian traffic. But i am getting traffic from USA more than Canada. I have submitted site on Canada based business listing, Classified and rest of sites. But still getting traffic from USA. Please suggest me what should I do?
Local Website Optimization | | 1akal4 -
Removed huge spammy location footer, looking to rebuild traffic the right way
Hello, On this site, I removed a huge spammy location footer with hundreds of cities, states, and dog training types. The traffic and rankings have gone down a lot, and I'd like a discussion on how to rebuild things the right way. There's some local adjustments to be made to the home page content, but other than that: My plans: 1. Analyze top 10 Google analytics keyword queries and work them into the content as best as possible, though I am debating whether the client should make new pages and how many. 2. I'm going to suggest he add a lot of content to the home page, perhaps a story about a dog training that he did in Wisconsin. I'll think about what else. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Traffic drop for all clients
There are approximately 20 clients that we have that all show a drop in traffic in GA this month (anywhere from 5-25%). any idea what could have happened? How to fix? Thanks so much,
Local Website Optimization | | lfrazer1 -
Our rankings are all over the place but mostly keywords are dropping
our rankings are all over the place but mostly keywords are dropping from 2-20 to 35 and over 51. it has been happening over the past 3 weeks but don't know what to look for. any advise is appreciated. stevesautorepairva.com . our other automotive website hometownetire.com seems to be doing better but do not know why. they are 2 separate businesses. Thank you very much in advance for any help. AqDQnRx
Local Website Optimization | | ifixcars0 -
Why a site just dropped out of ranks
I have a site i am working on link It was ranking fairly well and then I added content to the homepage to better optimize it for the keywords it was already ranking for. Ever since I did that the entire site is no longer ranking well. Thoughts?
Local Website Optimization | | Atomicx0