HELP: What happened to my rankings? No warning from google how to know if i was penalised?
-
Hi Guys
I have just completely a site re-design, I have 3 top level domains.
I have no idea whats causing the drop in ranking. I have changed the title tags and meta tags to improve them and make them better, as the last ones weren't really doing us justice. But I see now it has actually dropped our main keyword. I read somewhere that i had to completed **site search **to check and I don't see our home page showing. I was ranking for the keyword: "online psychics" for over 4months at #6 and now is not showing anywhere in the top 50 keywords. I'm also affraid I can not find our other keyword "online psychic readings" which we were ranked #11 seems to have dropped to #44 I have no idea why this would be the case. Our new home page shows a better user experience and also added more content, unqiue content at that - our last design was content thin so I have no idea why we have dropped so much in rankings. The site is also new about 6months new. I have checked WMT and have not received any warnings of any penalties as such, unless it is still coming?
Does anyone have any suggestions here?
Cheers
-
WOW thanks again Dirk, your feedback is beyond! Thanks for informing me of these changes and sending me those links!
I will work on getting the above sorted asap with my developer
Cheers for all your help!!!!
Justin
-
Forgot to mention: don't forget to change it on all three sites.
The new site looks really nice compared to the old one - and speed seems to have improved. However still some work to do:
- time to first byte takes ages - could be related to the configuration of the server or related to some plugin causing delay.
- ask your programmer to use gzip to compress HTML
- minify your css & js
- optimise your images
- modify your caching (time is too short)
The detailed result from webpage test is here: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150503_A2_BZ7/
Also check https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ - your score is not too bad but check the improvements that are suggest.
Good luck!
Dirk
-
Hi Justin,
Normally everything should return to normal after a few days. You could try to speed up the process a bit by taking your key landing pages from Analytics. Fetch these pages in Webmaster tools (Fetch like Google) - when they are fetched submit them to the index (off course you first have to remove the noindex tag).
It's a quite common mistake - we had a similar case with a test robots.txt which was put in production. I was on holiday at the time and only noticed the error when I returned (3 days after go live). Everything returned to normal within a day.
rgds,
Dirk
-
Oh wow hey Dirk, silly me! Yes thank you for that oh how embarrassing.
I had told my developer to remove this last week - seems he hadn't and I didn't bother to check it! After I remove this should all be back to normal again?
-
Hi Justin
I fear that you have migrated your test settings to production - you have 196 HTML pages on your site - 115 pages have a content='noindex, follow' name='robots'> in the head section - this is also the case for your homepage and several other pages that seem important for SEO. Removing the tag will certainly help
Dirk
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
-
Curious, have you ever had a client dispute your Moz Ranking Report?
one of my international clients from China does not believe that his site is now on page #2 for a national search term. He said he had a colleague search from a location in the United States and his site did not come up in any of the top 10 Google search page results. Suggest any ways to back ranking up? Maybe use an additional rank report? appreciate any/all suggestions. THanks! Chris
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Sundance_Kidd0 -
I'm seeing thousands of no-follow links on spam sites. Can you help figure it out?
I noticed that we are receiving thousands of links from many different sites that are obviously disguised as something else. The strange part is that some of them are legitimate sites when you go to the root. I would say 99% of the page titles read something like : 1 Hour Loan Approval No Credit Check Vermont, go cash advance - africanamericanadaa.com. Can someone please help me? Here are some of the URL's we are looking at: http://africanamericanadaa.com/genialt/100-dollar-loans-for-people-with-no-credit-colorado.html http://muratmakara.com/sickn/index.php?recipe-for-cone-06-crackle-glaze http://semtechblog.com/tacoa/index.php?chilis-blue-raspberry-margarita http://wesleygcook.com/rearc/guaranteed-personal-loans-oregon.html
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TicketCity0 -
Can image links help improve my backlinking profile?
I recently spent some time looking at the backlink profile of a leading UK food & clothing retailer and noticed that a high number of their backlinks for very competitive search phrase's consisted entirely of image backlinks. 50% of the links contained no alt text and other 50% contained a mix of just the targeted keyword or a phase containig one mention of the targeted keyword. Has anyone had any experiance of this type of marketing producing any positive effect on SEO or search engine rankings?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BigJonOne0 -
Help figuring out if certain paid directories are worth it
The person in my position previously had quite a few paid directories our site was listed on. What is the best resources you guys have used or know of to figure out which ones are good to keep? For instance one that is up for renewal this week is site-sift.com. I know the person previous to me did some not so ethical stuff and I'm trying to clean up messes. Any advice on directories would be much appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | inhouseninja0 -
How does Google decide what content is "similar" or "duplicate"?
Hello all, I have a massive duplicate content issue at the moment with a load of old employer detail pages on my site. We have 18,000 pages that look like this: http://www.eteach.com/Employer.aspx?EmpNo=26626 http://www.eteach.com/Employer.aspx?EmpNo=36986 and Google is classing all of these pages as similar content which may result in a bunch of these pages being de-indexed. Now although they all look rubbish, some of them are ranking on search engines, and looking at the traffic on a couple of these, it's clear that people who find these pages are wanting to find out more information on the school (because everyone seems to click on the local information tab on the page). So I don't want to just get rid of all these pages, I want to add content to them. But my question is... If I were to make up say 5 templates of generic content with different fields being replaced with the schools name, location, headteachers name so that they vary with other pages, will this be enough for Google to realise that they are not similar pages and will no longer class them as duplicate pages? e.g. [School name] is a busy and dynamic school led by [headteachers name] who achieve excellence every year from ofsted. Located in [location], [school name] offers a wide range of experiences both in the classroom and through extra-curricular activities, we encourage all of our pupils to “Aim Higher". We value all our teachers and support staff and work hard to keep [school name]'s reputation to the highest standards. Something like that... Anyone know if Google would slap me if I did that across 18,000 pages (with 4 other templates to choose from)?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Eteach_Marketing0 -
Google Results Pages. after the bomb
So, ever since Google "went nuclear" a few weeks ago I have seen major fluctuations in search engine results pages. Basically what I am seeing is a settling down and RE-inclusion of some of my web properties. Basically I had a client affected by the hack job initially, but about a week later I not only saw my original ranking restored but a litany of other long tails appeared. I wasn't using any shady link techniques but did have considerable article distribution that MAY have connected me inadvertently to some of the "bad neighborhoods." The website itself is a great site with original relevant content, so if it is possible, Google definitely recognized some error in their destructive ranking adjustment and is making good on it for those sites that did not deserve the penalty. Alternatively, it could just be random Google reordering and I got lucky. What are your experiences with the updates?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheGrid0 -
Why doesn't Google find different domains - same content?
I have been slowly working to remove near duplicate content from my own website for different locals. Google seems to be doing noting to combat the duplicate content of one of my competitors showing up all over southern California. For Example: Your Local #1 Rancho Bernardo Pest Control Experts | 858-352 ...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | GerryWeitz<cite>www.pestcontrolranchobernardo.com/</cite>CachedYou +1'd this publicly. UndoPest Control Rancho Bernardo Pros specializes in the eradication of all household pests including ants, roaches, etc. Call Today @ 858-352-7728. Your Local #1 Oceanside Pest Control Experts | 760-486-2807 ...
<cite>www.pestcontrol-oceanside.info/</cite>CachedYou +1'd this publicly. UndoPest Control Oceanside Pros specializes in the eradication of all household pests including ants, roaches, etc. Call Today @ 760-486-2807. The competitor is getting high page 1 listing for massively duplicated content across web domains. Will Google find this black hat workmanship? Meanwhile, he's sucking up my business. Do the results of the competitor's success also speak to the possibility that Google does in fact rank based on the name of the url - something that gets debated all the time? Thanks for your insights. Gerry
0 -
Would the same template landing page (placed on 50+ targeted domains) help or hurt my ranking?
Scenario: Company ABC has 50 related domains that are being forwarding to the main company URL. Q1: Would there be SEO value by creating a template landing page for each domain that includes product info, photos and keyword links to the main URL? Q2: If all 50+ landing pages were the same, would that penalize the main site due to duplicate content?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | brianmeert0