Trying to escape from Google algorithm ranking drop
-
in 2010 our website was ranking number 1 for many keywords. we suddenly saw a crash in this a few years ago. we have since identified we have been hit by many shades of Panda and penguin updates. Mainly due to low quality back-links and poor content (some duplicates).
- since then we have done a major overhaul of our backlink profile. We have saved rankings that went from number 1 for many keywords to number 60 -70. We are now placed at around 11 to 18 rankings.
- We have also looked at our duplicate content issues, and removed all duplicate content, introduced a blog for fresh bi daily updates in an attempt to gain traffic. We also amalgamated many small low quality pages to larger higher quality content pages.
- we are now mobile friendly with a dynamic site, and our site speed is good (around 80).
- we have switched to https, and also upgraded our website for better conversions.
- we have looked at the technical issues of the site and don't have many major issues, although we do have 404's coming up in the google webmaster tools for old pages we removed due to duplicate content.
- we are link building at a pace of around 40 mentions a month. some are no follow, some do follow and some no links. We are diversifying links to include branding in addition to target keywords.
- We have pretty much exhausted every avenue we can think of now, but we cannot jump over to page 1 for any significant keywords we are targeting. Our competitor websites are not that powerful, and metrics are similar to ours if not lower.
1. please can you advise anything else you can think of that we should look at.
2. we are even considering going to a new domain and 301'ing all pages to this domain in an attempt to shake off the algorithm filter (penalties). has anyone done this? how long can we expect to get at least the same ranking for the new domain if 301 all urls to it? do you think its worth it? we know the risk of doing this, and so wanted to seek some advice.
3. we have on the other hand considered the fact that we have disavowed so many links (70%) that this could be a cause of the page two problem, however we are link building according to moz metric standards and majestic standards with no benefit.. do you think we should increase link building?
Advice is appreciated!
-
Hey There!
Sounds like you're doing a lot of things by-the-books and "right" "on paper" but it's really tough to know if you're on the right track for sure without seeing the site or an example of some of the links being build, or content, etc.
I say this because "40 links a month" for example sounds like a nice number, but also sounds suspect because that's a pretty sizable amount of links, which makes me wonder about the quality of them.
What I'd be curious about is - what are the things outside of SEO or SEO tactics/fixes have been done? I'm thinking in regards to social, audience building, brand building, design upgrades, content, adding value etc? Also, what type of site is this and how big is it?
The other thing that's tough to know is how well the technical things were implemented. For example, switching to https among other things can create a lot of redirect chains. I would try to undo redirect chains and only do page->page redirects (instead of having chains of page->page->page->page etc).
And right, it's tough to know if your disavow is helping or hurting without knowing a lot of the specifics.
If it was me, I'd make sure you're focusing enough on others things besides just directly on SEO. That doesn't mean you'd ignore SEO when doing social, content, audience building etc - just that you're taking a more holistic view. I think Google definitely favors recovering sites that prove they are building something people want.
-
This has been a long struggle which has caused a massive traffic drop. Do you think we should switch to a new domain with 301 redirects?
-
If you ask me you are doing everything right and you have to keep doing it. I remember when I was doing the same for one of my client, the rankings did improve but didn’t really hit the first page for many of the real money making keywords.
I think when your website went through Google penalty it took more than usual to gain the trust of Google. If I would be at your place, I would have looked in to the past data and see how every penguin and panda update affect my traffic and rankings.
If the ranking and traffic went positive (significantly) then you should continue what you are doing and wait for the penguin and panda update to release. This way they will look in to your efforts again and give you back the rankings that you deserve.
Also, my advice is to get a link from highest authority websites (if possible) that Google really trust, this should also help big time.
Adding my two cents!
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
-
Link with Anchor to header of the page: Keyword is ranking
I saw something interesting this week. I am doing research and spec-ing out a content page we are creating and one of our competitors "office Depot" on their phone repair page create exact match keywords that lead to an anchor that took you to the header of that pages. They were ranking first for all of those keywords with little to no links Thier strategy is the more local long tail that includes "near me" Have you guys ever seen this
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | uBreakiFix
this is the URL: https://www.officedepot.com/a/content/customer-service/samedayrepair/ They are ranking for these keywords ( Top 3 nationally ) iphone 6 repair near me iphone 7 repair near me I am assuming that this is both due to their PA and DA authority shifting the authority to itself, but it does not make sense how they are lacking in a lot of SEO low-hanging fruits like H1/H2 keyword saturation, URL, Title Tag within this content page....Anyone up for discussing this?0 -
Competitor Bad Practice SEO Still Ranking Well But Why ?
Moz Friends, A very close competitor have always been challenging for similar competitive keywords. We seem to have the advantage for alot of long tail keywords but on one of the higher traffic relevant keywords they seem to do well. I really struggle to understand why, particularly with the back links they use Just my thoughts and notes on the two: Our Page Better written text content (Maybe slightly written to for experienced target audience but we are working on simplifying things) Good Clear site URL structure and navigation for usability Fresh content updates Mobile optimized Reasonable page speeds Good on-page optimization Good back links from industry influences Competitor Page Negatives Site structure and URL's are inconsistent and messy Lower quality content site wide They use tried and tested on page optimization methods like Keyword spamming, Bold Keywords,Underlining Keywords (Sarcasm) Terrible back links, all directories and free article submission sites (Seriously take a look) Less focused on page optimization Not mobile optimized Most of the rest of the sites carry on the same sort of differences, Engine: www.google.co.uk Keyword: Sound level meters **Our Page: **www.cirrusresearch.co.uk/products/sound-level-meters/ **Competitor Page: **www.pulsarinstruments.com/product-information/Sound-Level-Meter.html Any feedback would be greatly appreciated please, i am really struggling to get my head around this Thanks James
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Antony_Towle1 -
I have plenty of backlinks but the site does not seem to come up on Google`s first page.
My site has been jumping up and down for many months now. but it never stays on Google first page. I have plenty of back-links, shared content on social media. But what could i be doing wrong? any help will be appreciated. Content is legit. I have recently added some internal links is this might be the cause? Please help .
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | samafaq0 -
The wrath of Google's Hummingbird, a big problem, but no quick solution?
One of our websites has been wrongfully tagged for penalty and has literally disappeared from Google. After lot's of research, it seems the reason was due to a ton of spammy backlinks and irrelevant anchor text. I have disavowed the links, but the results are still not rebounding back. Any idea how long the wrath of Google gods will last?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Mouneeb0 -
Google +1s Quality Factors?
It is apparent that Google +1s are becoming an increasingly large factor in results pages and I had a few questions about some of the dynamics. Do +1s take into account factors such as c-blocks, location diversity based on IP, and similar elements? To what degree? Do +1s from well-diversified and historically more active/authoritative G+ accounts carry more weight than someone who simply has a G+ account because they use Gmail and were prompted? What is the spectrum here? How much weight would a +1 from Rand Fishkin hold in contrast to an account created one year ago with little activity? I know Google has a great deal of user data from Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Docs, search history and many more so would imagine this plays a role. Do +1s from newly created accounts that only target one business or niche cause damage? I am assuming that +1s should accumulate naturally just as backlinks so if what would be considered an unnatural amount of +1s in what time period? Any insights here are greatly appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOGroup1230 -
Has google done well with these search results?
I am struggling to grasp the new logic behind google, my understanding was that they wanted to return more related searches so that the search matched the results giving people exactly what they are looking for from trusted suppliers. However I work in the vacation rental niche and I have found that the individual long tail searches have started to become less valuable as they are no longer giving the exact property. Here is a screenshot of the top 10 results for the key phrase "10 bedroom villas in quinta do lago" Position 1 & 2 are good results and would be expected however the next 7 positions are completely not related to the search, yes it is quinta do lago. But I am looking specifically for a 10 bedroom villa, none of these pages offer 10 bedroom villas. I actually found my listing outside the top 20 and mine is a 10 bedroom villa in quinta do lago. Does anyone have anything that can enlighten me on this? Thanks Andy 0bqdRJi
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | iprosoftware0 -
Google Disavow and Penalty lifted please help?
We disavowed 80% of our backlink profile due to our last SEO building cheap nasty links and filed a reconsideration requested (we had the Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.xxx.co.uk penalty for a year from the 24<sup>th</sup> march 2012 but thought it best to clean up before round 2 – even though we had no real penalty and we dd some decent link building that moved us up). We then received a successful penalty lifted note (on the 22<sup>nd</sup> of May 2013) but our rankings dropped (due to the crap links propping us up) since then we have built a fair few high quality links but our rankings do not seem to be moving much if at all (7 weeks clear now). has anyone had any experience with the above (are we in a sandbox type situation). Thank you for your time Thanks Bob
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
How Google deal with a Domain Buy
Hello folks, How is google dealing with those clever peoples who decide to buy a famous place on internet( domain ), to be their domain name. For example if someone buy a very well ranked domain name for some keywords in their niche, is there any punishment? Whats the bad things about buy a domain? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | augustos0