Why have I lost my #1 ranking?
-
Hello!
Ever since switching to a new website back in late 2014, my rankings have suffered. My webpage https://www.shwoodshop.com was always the #1 google position for the keywords "wood sunglasses" and "wooden sunglasses". For a while my site bounced back a forth between the #1 and #2 spots, but in the last 4 months I have been stuck with a #3 rank for both keywords.
I hired an SEO company to help fix the problem but after a year of work, there was still no positive change. I have had multiple experts take a look at my site, but to no avail. All signs seem to point to a stronger, healthier site than my competition. My domain authority and page authority are much greater than the competition with the #1 and #2 rankings. I have used the On-Page grader and other tools to try and help, and even though I am getting an "A" grade, I'm still not improving my rankings.
I ran a link metric comparison for my website versus the competition and attached it to this post. The main area I seem to be lacking is the Internal Equity-Passing Links. The top competitor has a ridiculous amount, which I think may be due to their use of breadcrumbs. Is this enough to make the difference?
My other thought is that I could be suffering from duplicate page content. My website is setup to be "localized" via Subdirectories With gTLDs (.com/us, .com/eu, .com/au, .com/international). The on-page content is the exact same, but the prices for the products changes depending on your location. Moz shows a ton of duplicate pages due to this. Could I be getting penalized for this?
I am an SEO novice and trying to learn as much as possible while investigation this issue. Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated!
-Taylor
-
Hi Taylor,
That screenshot is interesting. My assumption would be that Google has seen this duplication and is simply disregarding the other versions of what it considers to be the same content. The reason duplicate content isn't such a huge deal these days (it's not a good thing at all but it won't really get you penalised) is because Google is much better and dealing with it.
From my understanding, what you're seeing here is exactly the expectation - they determine which piece seems to be the most relevant and useful to searcher intent based on a number of things, then disregard the others. No point in indexing multiple versions of the same thing, right?
As for the smaller bits and pieces, I'll take a closer look at your site again once I'm back in the office this afternoon and let you know
-
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the input! What you're saying makes sense. However, although MOZ is showing versions of each country code as duplicate content, I am wondering if google is seeing the same thing.
I have attached a screenshot from google webmaster tools of my sitemap index. As you can see, google is using the main /all-sitemaps.xml which contains individual sitemaps for each country subdirectory. You'll notice that google is only indexing the .com/us version. Does this mean that google is not seeing the duplicate pages from the other country subdirectories?
Also, would you mind listing the other bits and pieces that you think could be improved on the site to bolster SEO?
I really appreciate your help!
-
There are a few bits and pieces that could be improved on the site but really, I think the biggest issue is going to be that amount of duplication.
Having a small volume or percentage of pages with identical content isn't going to kill your site, Even now, you're ranking #3... you're definitely not penalised, just seen as slightly lower quality now. Besides pricing, there doesn't really seem to be any need to have an entire subset of pages for each country since the only thing that seems to change is the price.
If it were my site, I'd be culling all the country code subdirectories and having the price generate dynamically based on the user's location. If you're in the US, show US pricing in USD, if you're in Australia then you get the Aus price in AUD etc.
It will give you fewer redundant pages to manage, less duplication and help out with your crawl budget efficiency as well.
Admittedly I've only checked from Australia, but your site speed could do with some improvement too
-
I don't know if it is harming your rankings, but it looks like you've got two or three meta description and keyword tags on most of your pages, including your home page. Probably an easy fix worth doing using your site's CMS or template files to remove any unnecessary meta tags. Didn't really see anything else that stood out.
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
-
Ranking all but lost after new content pushed
Okay, I thought I was following best practices. In our industry, electronic hardware, we were ranking well for a particular product line (/spacers) but we wanted to do better. We addressed several concerns that Moz found first; duplicate page titles, lack of meta-descriptions and overall lack of targeted keywords. We also took a new approach to add a better structure to our site. Instead of being presented with a list of part numbers we wanted the user to learn more about our products with content. So we added a /products page with content and a product specific page (/spacers) that is almost a definitive buyers guide. We are attempting to answer the questions that we think our customers find most relevant. Well our customers might find it relevant but Google sure didn't. After our deployment of new content our rankings for targeted keywords in Google fell from 10-15 to 80-95 As an open ended question, could somebody explain to me why our ranks fell off a cliff? Homepage: https://www.lyntron.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jandk4014
New catalog summary page: https://www.lyntron.com/products
New content with focus to rank high: https://www.lyntron.com/spacers TPdn6ym1 -
Keyword difficulty and time to rank
Hello, Is there a correlation between the keyword difficult and the time it takes to rank ? In other words let's say I try to rank for the keyword "seo" and it is going to take 2 years to rank 1 st whereas if I go for "best seo tools in 2018" and it takes just 2 weeks ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
How recovering the ranking after an hacking
Hello, I'm Alexia and a few months ago (end of March) my site has been hacked: hackers have created more than 30.000 links in Japanese to sell tires. I've successfully removed the hack and after 14 days of struggle even decided to change the domain to Siteground as they've been really keen to help. I still have some problems and I desperately need your tips. In search console, Google is informing about the +30.000 404 errors due to the content created by hackers which is not available anymore. I've been advised to redirect those links to 410 as they might have penalty effects in the SERP I have 50 503 server errors recognised by Google back in April but still there. What should I do to solve them? I still have a lot of traffic from Japan, even if I've removed all the content and ask Googled to disavow spamming backlinks. Do you think I have on page keywords? I don't understand how they can still find me. Those KWs are indexed in analytics, but not effective clicks, as the content is not there anymore. I also asked Google to remove links in search console with the tool removing links but not all of my requests have been accepted. My site disappeared from the organic results even if it hasn't been recognised as hacked in Google (there wasn't any manual actions on the Search Console). What can I do to gain the organic positioning once again? I've just tried to use the “Fetch as Google” option on search console for the entire website. Thank you all and I look forward to your replies. Thanks! Alessia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlessiaCamera0 -
Ranking Page #1 for Keyword without Hypen, Not at all for Keyword with Hyphen
Hi There! So I work in an industry where there are different conventions for referring to, searching on and spelling the industry name. For example, let's pretend there were a variety of different conventions for referring to the SEO industry. So someone could search for S-EO, SEO, sEO, etc. and those would all be accepted and understood means of referring to the industry. If we use the SEO example as a comparison for our industry, the two most common conventions would be S-EO and SEO. Using this example, we rank on the first page for the term "SEO" but do not rank AT ALL for the term "S-EO". We have a high-value piece of content that is targeted in the following way: "S-EO (SEO): The Basics Guide" so it is more targeted at the hyphenated word but does not rank at all for the hyphenated version, whereas it is page one for the non-hyphenated term. As additional pieces of context: -In general, our site is more targeted at the hyphenated term and there are places where we rank in the top spot for both the hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions. For example, we rank in a top 2 position for both S-EO & SEO software but do not rank at all for the broader "S-EO" term. -There are times when we do appear on page one for the term "S-EO" but it's typically only for a matter or hours or days and then we disappear entirely from the SERPs for that term. We consistently appear for "SEO." -I currently do not believe we are dealing with a penalty of any sort - our link profile is clean and our spam score per Moz is 2 / 17. Any thoughts or ideas as to what is going on here and how we can potentially rank for the term "S-EO?"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dpayne10 -
Competitor Ranking in Positions 1 & 2
I have seen an increasing instance of where the same company, one of our main competitors, are ranking in positions 1 and 2 for the same search phrase. It appears that both the homepage and dedicated service page relevant to the search term are ranking, but surely having them at position 1 & 2 is not something search engines like Google want to encourage? I have also seen other instances of the same company ranking twice on page 1 but not necessarily in #1 or #2. Is this an anomaly or just something I have to live with?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kevbyrne2 -
Web Site Ranking
Hi Folks, I made some changes on my website www.gemslearninginstitute.com and published it two days ago. It was ranking on Google first page for a few keywords. I did not touch the pages which were ranking on first page. Since then I am not seeing the website ranking on the Google. Does it take a few days to rank again? How can I ensure that next time if I update the website or publish some blog on my website then it should not effect the ranking. Secondly, if I would like to rank in three different cities then do I need to create separate pages for each city or how should I proceed with this. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fslpso0 -
Rankings drop from the new update
Hello, I've noticed some big ranking downs on important keywords, from the last Google update, and don't really know what seams to be the problem, but have an assumption. In April 2015 we had 3.000.000 pages indexed by Google, and 80% of them had duplicated content for about 90% of it. The site I'm talking about is http://nobelcom.com/. The duplicated content came from variations between calling from and calling to selections, because each of this selection was making a new url (ex. nobelcom.com/caling from/calling to). If "calling from" and calling to were the same country the url was nobelcom.com/calling-from, but after you chosen another calling to, the url become like the one in the example. To solve this I've decided to keep the nobelcom.com/calling-from urls and for different calling to country to display the content trough a javascript, because it was the same, it changed only the country names and the rates. I thought that this change will help us with the duplicate content, and still deliver our client what they are interested in, without affecting the UX, and also reducing the link juice dilution because we had 3.000.000 indexed by Google and most of them with no added value Can this be the reason for the drops? Now we have 590.000 pages indexed by Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Silviu1 -
Huge Google Dance For Some Rankings. What Gives?
I've got a relatively new website (launched at the beginning of June 2013). For some keywords I'm targeting, it first ranked around page 15. It made huge jumps to finally rank on page 2 or 3. Since then, it goes back to page 15 and then back to page 3. It does this every now and then. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740