My pages are absolutely plummeting. HELP!
-
Hi all,
Several of my pages have absolutely tanked in the past fortnight, and I've no idea why. One of them, according to Moz, has a Page Optimisation Score of 96, and it's dropped from 10th to 20th. Our DA is lower than our competitors, but still, that's a substantial drop. Sadly, this has been replicated across the site.
Any suggestions?
Cheers,
Rhys
-
Thanks, Stevie. Apparently, there's been a 'phantom' update which I suspect is the culprit...
-
Oh, and I just spotted that you have the same text in 2 x H1's and the title, It just might make a difference if you either change the second H1 to a variant if possible, and make it an H2 OR probably better, just lose the h1 tag on the logo completely. You never know
I'd also be inclined to make the title longer, you've plenty of space for a few related keywords or a call to action
-
Hi Rhys,
I'll be honest with you, I usually deal with relatively small businesses, so am probably not the best person for this one. It's mobile friendly (responsive), so that's not the issue. It doesn't have SSL, so that could be a factor, I'm sure I remember Google saying they'd be giving a boost to secure sites early this year.
Yours is an authority site in itself, so I doubt a few links either way would make a diffference either. Theres also plenty of text which I assume is unique. I appreciate that you may not have control over the whole site, so could it be that the general site navigation changed somewhere further up and inadvertantly pushed you deeper into the site as a whole (i.e. more clicks from the homepage)?
-
Hi Stevie,
This is the course page in question, but this is only one of a number of pages that have dropped.
It's not great in mobile, but speed isn't an issue, but more to do with how it reacts to mobile.
http://www.swansea.ac.uk/undergraduate/courses/medicine/bscbiochemistry/
But this is the page which has an optimisation score of 96. Not really sure what else I can do.
Our domain did drop by 2 in the latest update a fortnight ago, but then again, so did many of our competitors.
Cheers,
Rhys
-
Hi Rhys,
Without your url it's impossible to take an educated guess I'm afraid. Google are constantly tweaking things so if it's only Google not any other SE's it could well be an algorithm adjustment, assuming you've not changed anything yourself. You can check that in your Moz account if you're tracking any other SE's (I always keep a non Google one in there myself for that exact reason).
If your site doesn't have SSL and the sites that rose above you generally do, perhaps it was that, or if not mobile friendly, they could have put more emphasis on it? My blind guess is they're the two likely culprits at the moment. But it could be something as simple as you dropped a high authority link, if there weren't many to start with, or one of soooooo many other factors.
-
Hi Stevie,
Thanks for the link; I don't think it's that because we don't have any pop-ups or ads. Individual pages have just plummeted, one dropped 81% in a week. Any other ideas? There's not much left for me to optimise, so I don't see how I can regain my first-page positions.
Cheers,
Rhys
-
Complete stab in the dark not knowing what your url is, but there was an update around that time, see if it applies to you: https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
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
-
SERP: From page 4 to page 1 to page 4 again -_- ...
Hi there Moz Amigos! So I have this Website: campmusicaladagio.com Right now, our main target keyword is "camp de jour gatineau". The website was on WIX before. So, I created the worpress version and redirected the domain name to the new hosting server (outside of WIX). So before doing the changes, the website was on page 4... After the changes, it went in 1 week on page 1 (lol, WIX sucks so much). After 3 weeks on page 1, it went on page 4 again... I am so confused XD like what the hell happen... Any ideas?
Local Website Optimization | | Gab-SEO0 -
Should Multi Location Businesses "Local Content Silo" Their Services Pages?
I manage a site for a medical practice that has two locations. We already have a location page for each office location and we have the NAP for both locations in the footer of every page. I'm considering making a change to the structure of the site to help it rank better for individual services at each of the two locations, which I think will help pages rank in their specific locales by having the city name in the URL. However, I'm concerned about diluting the domain authority that gets passed to the pages by moving them deeper in the site's structure. For instance, the services URLs are currently structured like this: www.domain.com/services/teeth-whitening (where the service is offered in each of the two locations) Would it make sense to move to a structure more like www.domain.com/city1name/teeth-whitening www.domain.com/city2name/teeth-whitening Does anyone have insight from dealing with multi-location brands on the best way to go about this?
Local Website Optimization | | formandfunctionagency1 -
Ecommerce Site Structure -- "/our_locations" page: helpful or harmful?
Hello! We are a retailer with brick and mortar stores in different cities. We have a website (ourbusiness.com), which includes a blog (ourbusiness.com/blog) and a separate ecommerce site for each store in subfolders (ourbusiness.com/Boston-store and ourbusiness.com/Atlanta-store). NB: We do this for non-business reasons and have no choice. So, this is not like REI (for example) or other stores with lots of locations but one central ecommerce operation. Most experts seem to recommend a site structure that echoes REIs. IE: a home page principally devoted to ecommerce (rei.com) includes an Our Locations-type page (rei.com/stores) which links to local store pages like (rei.com/stores/fresno) I understand how this would help REI, since their homepage is devoted to ecommerce and they need a store locator page that doesn't compete with the shopping experience. But since we can't send people to products directly from our home page, is there any reason for us not to put the store locator function right on the home page? That is, is there any reason in our case to prefer (A) ourbusiness.com/our_locations/Boston_store over (B) ourbusiness.com/Boston-store? As i see it, the extra page (/our_locations/) could actually hurt, as it puts products one click further away from customers, and one link deeper for bots. On the other hand, it may make the multi-store structure clearer to bots (and maybe people) and help us in local search. Finally, would it make a difference if there were 10 stores vs 2? Thanks for any thoughts!
Local Website Optimization | | RankAmateur...1 -
One of my man pages is not ranking and does not seem to exist.
One of my main pages is not ranking and does not seem to exist. I have gone through every tool on webmaster and yoast. I cannot find an error, but every metric I know of says my page should be on the first page of my target search term. Moz graded it as an A, but It is not ranked on any page. Can someone please help?? my target search is "Jekyll Island Wedding Photographer" my home page shows up on page 2 but this page http://saintsimonsphotography.com/jekyll-island-wedding-photographer/ is my page that does not seem to exist. I have never had this problem with any of my other businesses. Jekyll island is the next island over and I need this term to rank. Thank you for any help.
Local Website Optimization | | krivec80 -
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 -
Google plus page multiple domains
Hi I have had a .com domain for many years linked to my google plus page and local verified to my UK office address. This site sells and advertises my products, some of them are uk only like the school and computers I sell and the rest are digital and world wide. I decided to start a .co.uk domain to be more targeted to the uk and advertise only the school and computers which I sell to the uk and just link to the .com for digital products. I want the .com domain to attract world wide customers and the .co.uk for uk customers. What do I do, does it make sense to connect my google plus business page to the .co.uk site? Should I still have a google plus page for the .com site? I only have 1 office and thats in the uk. Not sure what to do here. I dont want to lose rankings or do anything negative. Thoughts? Thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | theindic0 -
Doorway Pages & Service Area Business
I see many national brand franchises that offers restoration services such as water damage (Servpro, Service Master etc.) There are local websites for each franchise. Each franchise has 50+ locations that they service They currently have pages like 'water damage + city' that have about 500-700 words each Some websites have 30- 100 location pages optimized for 'water damage city' These location pages do not have a physical offices None have duplicate content (word for word) above 20% The only different between these pages is perhaps 200 words about the city Example: www.servicecompany/water-damage-los-angeles www.servicecompany/water-damage-reseda www.servicecompany/water-damage-van-nuys Are these doorway pages?
Local Website Optimization | | MilestoneSEO_LA0 -
Targeting different cities for my service - Geo landing pages
I am breaking my head trying to figure out the best way around this... so we have an hvac company located in nyc. We want to also target all the different boroughs. We have a bunch of different major keywords hvac repair + location hvac service + location along with keywords such as air conditioning repair + location, heating service + location , and so on..... Should each borough + keyword have its own page? Or should we just have one page called brooklyn and in that page target all the different keywords like hvac, air conditining, and heating ? Also does it matter how we have it laid out? Domaim/hvac-repair-brooklyn or should I add domain/service-area/hvac. ..... Some of my competitors have the same content written on each borough page just moved around a little with different city names, how are they ranking so well? Isn't that duplicate? Would love to hear from some people with success in this local area. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | interstate0