Website Suddenly dropping rank
-
Morning Moz Fans:
My URL is: http://goo.gl/Dhbjwj
According to MOZ, which we are tracking this URL with, somewhere between the 3rd Feb and 10th the domain went from being fairly well indexed to being dropped to pages further back than 6-7, for pretty much everything, even the company name was only registering at the bottom of page one.
Around this time we were transferring the website from .php into wordpress, so we were creating new pages, called by the same names and all the same content but we created the wordpress area in a sub domain of the website. Again around this time we had an issue with the blog area and had to take it down for 4-5 weeks due to some errors which meant google wouldn't have been able to crawl these pages properly, but the rest of the website was up and running.
We also discovered recently that the company have and use this domain http://goo.gl/5JvDUH
So my question is, what do you think caused the problem? has it been premaritally penalised? is there a way I can get google to specifically look at it and is there any more i can do?Thank you for your help
-
Ok thanks Dan
-
Hi Adrian
It's always tricky! It's a longterm solution. Things will need to get sorted out by Google and the dust needs to settle.
You can really ensure this happens faster by taking all appropriate measures - like redirects, notifying webmaster tools, updating internal/external links where possible (social, local listing, etc).
The fact that rankings were lost, means you have less to lose right now - so it might be a good time to take a step back and "do it right"
-
Great, thanks for that. Just one question, my client says that if we feel it's better he's happy to use the old domain as the main and switch the site, which makes more sense as it's the name of the company, in light of the fact we seem to have lost most keyword ranking, will this have any improvements or disadvantages?
thanks
-
Hi Adrian
I think there's a mixture of things going on here. I'll just spell out the top ones I see after a quick look:
-
On the old domain, URLs returning a 404 code need to also LOOK like 404 pages, right now they just look like the homepage: http://www.perfectprofiles.eu.com/kjhgjkhg
-
On the current domain the alt text on the logo is "dental implants luton - logo" - just make that the company name "perfect profiles".
-
In fact there's only one plain text of "perfect profiles" on the entire homepage, which is in the footer.
-
And the current domain is not the company name (?) which is why it might not be ranking as well for "perfect profiles" which is kind of a vague name to begin with.
-
Also, why not just redirect the old domain homepage to the new? I think that would be considered the best user experience since there's not really any useful content on the old domain - Google's cache shows no content really since the page is an image
-
The old homepage has a few good links as well
-
There's also three Google Plus pages and only one has a verified link to the website - it looks like there are two physical locations and one corporate? You can have three pages, but just really beef them up with as much info as possible.
-
Make sure the corporate G+ page is in fact verified and then Customize your knowledge graph listing
-
Consider having separate pages for each location only if you fill them with helpful unique info on each, like office pictures, staff names/pictures, hours, directions, etc.
I think it's a mix of a) Google not being 100% on the brand/company name - and then b) doing more local optimization for each location.
-
-
Hi Dirk, thanks for this. No we hadn't noticed a difference. Its important to point out that the page rank dropped before the new framework went live though. Although we have been looking at this and have made some improvements this afternoon. Google speed test now says 74 for the desktop so we will work some more on it tomorrow.
Thanks
-
Hi,
Did you see an increase in the load time of your pages in Analytics (pre/post launch). For a site which is not very complex in terms of structure, your load times are not really great. See http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150330_ZF_X41/1/details/ & http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150330_A8_WR6/1/details/
Page speed analysis by Google gives pretty low scores as well - for mobile 47/100 - desktop 63/100
In pagespeed - you can see the content breakdown - on your homepage 66% of the downloaded content is css/js - most of it is not used on page: https://unused-css.com/detect-unused-css?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.perfectdental.eu.com%2F (a disadvantage of most frameworks like bootstrap / foundation)
I would try to work on improving the speed -a similar case with low page speed scores noticed immediate improvement after reducing load times: http://moz.com/community/q/problem-with-getting-a-site-to-rank-at-all
rgds,
Dirk
-
I tend to think something bad must be happening here since it's been almost two months. If it's just re-indexing, it should have been over long ago.
-
No true, but if thats the case does it say "penalty" or just re-indexing
-
I'm actually not totally shocked by that. Google's results are getting more personalized by the day. It looks like Perfect Profiles' two office locations are both quite far from Manchester. It makes sense to me that they rank lower in locations that are further away.
-
Sorry a quick update. If you search in google.co.uk and search with your location being in certain areas of the UK they come up top for the brand name, but if you search for the brand name in say "Manchester" they show at the bottom of the page.
Weird
-
Hi Mark, thanks for that. As it happens the brand name seems to be appearing again today and google webmaster tools also suggests this in WMT with in the ranking section. We've been checking the manual action section for a few weeks now but it just says "No manual webspam actions found"
Thanks
-
In addition to what Becki said (all correct), I feel like it's important to note 2 other things:
-
Even websites that are appropriately redirected, lose some link equity in the process. See Matt Cutts' video here which says that roughly 10-15% of PageRank is lost through redirects and outgoing links.
-
With regard to the blog problems, I'm wondering if perhaps the blog being down for 4-5 weeks had something to do with it. If there were historically some links pointing to the blog that were boosting the site, those pages 404ing would effectively remove the links from the link graph.
Still, it seems there's some sort of penalty here because you mentioned them not even ranking for the brand name anymore. I've never seen that unless there was a penalty. Have you checked Google Webmaster Tools' manual action viewer?
-
-
Hello, there! yeah everything has 301 redirects, no duplicate content is live now. They used to come top for "dental implants luton" http://goo.gl/fO74zy
Thanks
-
Hi there, thanks for posting this.
Some questions, before I can help you properly:
Have you redirected all of the old URLs across to any new ones using the 301 directive?
That duplicate content in the subdomain, is it still live somewhere or have you removed this now?
Do you know which landing pages in particular have seen the biggest loss of traffic?
Usually, a site that drops rankings when it moves to another platform is having duplicate content or redirection issues in my experience.
I really would like to help, so please let me know the answers to the above when I can.
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
-
How to increase DA of website?
My website Domain Authority is not improving what should I do to improve DA of website
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JOkoiue0 -
Ranking dropped after changing title tag
I recently changed my company's site homepage title tag to make it start with our target keyword. The page was originally at page #7 or #8 and dropped to page #17 directly after I changed the page title. Is this normal? Is it's a temporary drop or should I change it back to the previous title.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ForumOne0 -
Website Traffic Is Down
Hi, My Website www.financeninvestments.com is down for almost now 2 years. I was receiving the good traffic before this but now the traffic is almost down. I want to again do something to get my Traffic back with some consistent efforts. So what efforts should i do to make this back.Pls suggest.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rahulsoni250 -
My website has dropped in the rankings drastically. How can I get it back up the SERPs?
I manage a website that I took over 6 months ago - the site was sitting happily on page one of google so I haven't had to do much to keep it there - other than a few onsite improvements. However, last week the site dropped off the SERPs. The site is http://www.pro-techairconditioning.co.uk/content/home.html Could someone please suggest reasons for this and ways to solve the problem? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SWD.Advertising0 -
Can changing G+ authorship on a well-ranking article drop its search ranking?
We have an article that ranks #1 in Google SERP for the keyword we want it to rank for. We decided to revise the article because although it's performing well, we knew it could be better and more informative for the user. Now that we've revised the content, we're wondering: Should we update the article author (and the G+ authorship markup) to reflect that the revisor authored the content, or keep the original author listed? Can changing G+ authorship on an article impact its search ranking, or is that an issue that's a few Google algorithm updates down the road?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pasware0 -
Construction website
Hi, I have a construction website that is aimed at tradesmen. There are 2 goals of the site: 1. To allow potential customers to sign up for a trade account. 2. To allow existing customers to access to products and login to their account to make an order. The site is full of categories and products which should be indexed so we rank for these trade products. The homepage redesign is where i am having an issue: Currently the site is set up like a standard retail site but without prices, which are viewable only when logged in. The homepage is designed such that there is several call to actions about promotions, services and to apply for a trade account, that apply to both existing and potential customers. At the moment there is a poor conversion to get potential customers to apply for a trade account. This is because there is too much distraction away from this goal and they are allowed to engage other areas of the site freely. The main purpose of the homepage should be to encourage potential customers to sign up. The secondary purpose to for existing customers to access the accounts and products. I believe potential customers should not be exposed to the categories and products as it is a distraction from the primary goal. Potential customers, i.e. Tradesmen, would already have a certain understanding of the types of products we provide, so I don't feel it is necessary to allow them to crawl the rest of the site unless they have an account. What are your thoughts on that? Here is my lack of understanding: On the homepage, if I restrict access to categories and products to existing account holders only, where a login is required to proceed, would that mean Google cannot access these pages to index them? Or is this only controlled by NoFollows & Robots.txt? Obviously not indexing is undesirable. I do understand potential customers will need some information about our range of products but the idea is to coerce them to sign up for an account so they can see this information. The more information that is provided to a potential customer, the higher the probability a person can make a decision against applying for an account. Restricting access creates a motivator to reveal information and we capture their data to converse with them personally. This increases the probability of us being able to retain their interest by providing a customised service based on their needs. All of this I feel makes perfect sense to me, the only query/obstacle I have is the indexing of the site. If Google cannot index pages that are restricted by account access, then I would like suggestions to solve/compromise/optimise the above. Just to address the desired behaviour of index pages. If in search a our product page appears, the person clicking the link would either be redirected or exposed to a login or sign up screen to view. Thank you so much for your help. Antonio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AVSFencingSupplies0 -
Website Crawl problems
I have a feeling that Google doesn't crawl my website. E.g. this blogpost - I copy a sentence from it and paste it to Google. The page that shows up in search results is www.silvamethodlife.com/page/9/ - which is just a blog page with all the articles listed, not the link to the article itself! Did anyone ever have this problem? It's definitely some technical issue. Any advice will be deeply appreciated Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alexey_mindvalley0 -
Why traffic to my link has dropped suddenly?
Hi I would like to know why the traffic for the website link http://theindustrymeasure.com/2010/07/15/rediffmail-login has dropped suddenly on google.I used to get around 5000 page views on this page and then suddenly dropped to 15-20 . I still get good traffic from yahoo (around 500). Just before the drop I noticed that I started to get spammy trackbacks from Many questionable sources. I have not approved any of these trackbacks. The trackbacks are regular frequency of. 1 per day. is there any action which I can take to ensure that I get back my traffic. Traffic to other links are fine , only this page seems to have dropped off ever since the spam attack. As per seomoz tool I have a grade a for keyword rediffmail
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ShoutOut0