Google Update
-
My rank has dropped quite a lot this past week and I can see from the Moz tools that there is an unconfirmed Google update responsible. Is there any information from Moz on this?
-
Hi Marie,
Thanks for taking the time to write up such a lengthy reply. I completely understand that a trained SEO eye is what is needed, which is why I set about training myself, and in the past 4 months have learnt and conducted more beneficial SEO on my site than in its 7 year history. Moz is a great tool for tracking, after conducting my own SEO changes my ranking keywords doubled, and even with this latest drop, are still higher than they have ever been.
My weakness is link building, as opposed to onsite SEO. This is my next area of focus, but without being able to identify what Google has changed it makes it incredibly difficult to make the correct changes. I suppose I can do nothing else but keep searching for my definitive answers and employing them.
Thanks again!
-
There are many different kinds and qualities of site audits. I've seen some expensive site audits that were useless. It frustrates me that some SEO companies are producing these expensive audits that are not helpful at all.
There are good tools out there to cover the basics, but a good SEO audit has to go well beyond what a tool can give you.
When I do a site audit it will take me several weeks to complete it. Seriously...weeks. I'll often discover something that seems off and then go down a rabbit trail for a few days investigating that. I'll agree that tools like Moz and SEMRush are awesome. But a good site audit needs an experienced eye in order to be helpful.
I also think that many SEOs overlook overall site quality when doing an audit. I'm not talking about technical quality, but rather, answering the question, "Is my site truly better than the ones that are ranking above me?" I really think that as Google gets better and better at answering a user's query, the only sites that are going to be ranked well are the ones that truly are better sites...not just the ones with the proper h tags, title tags and url structure.
For example, I recently reviewed a site that ranked #1 for years and then dropped to page 3. He was sure that he was being penalized. When I looked at his site I couldn't figure out how to purchase the product he was selling. There was almost no helpful information on product pages. There was only one stock image of the product. As a user, I would be much more likely to purchase from any of the sites on page 1 than from his site. Those sites had beautiful design, buying guides, easy to understand shopping carts, etc.
A tool won't give you that info.
The problem though is that to have an experienced person who has successfully helped sites recover look at your site, it's going to be expensive.
-
Hi, I use Moz's Campaign's Report and SEMRush for Site Audits. SEMRush's Site Audit is very user-friendly and generates a very useful report. I tend to use that more for technical audits. I'd definitely give that a go. You can get a free trial easily enough. Sign up and they offer you a week's trial fairly quickly.
-
Where is the best place for a site audit in your opinion? I find that every SEO company I approach is ridiculously expensive and do very little work (hence why I do it all myself now). Are there tools for this type of audit?
-
It used to be that when Google updated their algorithms significantly we could say, "Oh! This update targets THIS". In the past, fixes were much easier to address. But now, when Google makes a significant algo update, in most cases there is nothing specific to fix. This is probably the case with the updates that happened this week.
My advice is usually to have a site audit done and to do whatever you can to make your site a better option than your competitors. That's not always easy though.
Also, don't necessarily assume it's due to an algorithm change. If you've made any site changes recently, make sure that those haven't affected the site as well.
-
It appears that there have been two Google algorithm updates, recently: See: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-algorithm-update-23381.html
This might help you connect some dots.
I hope that helps.
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
-
Different snippet in Google for same page
Hello, I have a question regarding the snippet of a specific case: When i search the homepage by searching the business name, i find the correct snippet of the homepage (with the meta description that was entered). If i search it via site:www. it still show the default meta description. Has anybody had experience with this? Is there a way to change the snippet of site:www.? Does it influence SEO? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversal0 -
Google News and Meta Title
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPalmer
1. I just read this article: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-news-titles-h1-19876.html
Google want the same title. no problem. but what about the brand? for example
POST TITLE BLA BLU | My Brand
The "post title bla blu" is the H1 and title of the article and | My Brand is my brand...
I can keep it as is with the My brand? or remove it? what about posts with long title for example "POST TITLE BLA BLU POST TITLE BLA BLU | My Brand"
What is you suggestion, I know Google doesn't show all the text and we'll see "...". it's still important to write the brand name in the title or just the post title? (without the brand). Thanks,0 -
Google and JavaScript
Hey there! Recent announcements at Google to encourage webmasters to let Google crawl Java Script http://www.googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/05/understanding-web-pages-better.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/05/rendering-pages-with-fetch-as-google.html We have always put JS and CSS behind robots.txt, but now considering taking them out of robots. Any opinions on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CleverPhD0 -
Why is this site not indexed by Google?
Hi all and thanks for your help in advance. I've been asked to take a look at a site, http://www.yourdairygold.ie as it currently does not appear for its brand name, Your Dairygold on Google Ireland even though it's been live for a few months now. I've checked all the usual issues such as robots.txt (doesn't have one) and the robots meta tag (doesn't have them). The even stranger thing is that the site does rank on Yahoo! and Bing. Google Webmaster Tools shows that Googlebot is crawling around 150 pages a day but the total number of pages indexed is zero. It does appear if you carry out a site: search on Google however. The site is very poorly optimised in terms of title tags, unnecessary redirects etc which I'm working on now but I wondered if you guys had any further insights. Thanks again for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iProspect-Ireland0 -
Switching from Google Plus Local to Google Plus Business
Greetings, We have a website design firm located in India. We wanted to target customers in our city who are looking for website design locally. And with google plus local and a few content marketing would get us into first page very soon because none in the competition is using social signals or even content marketing. BUT unfortunately from last month even though our Google Places is verified we cant verify our Google Local Plus page https://plus.google.com/b/116513400635428782065/ It just shows error 500. Its a bug and its been a year for people without it being addressed. So we are skeptical if our strategy would work without Google+. At the least we decided we would just make company local page and connect it with website. But it might not have effect as local. So we are still unsure which step to take either to wait for google to fix it.(feedbacks emails calls nothing worked) OR We start the process with Google Business Category.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hard0 -
Google + Local Pages
Hi, If I have a company with multipul addresses, Do I create separate Google + page for each area?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
Random Google?
In 2008 we performed an experiment which showed some seemingly random behaviour by Google (indexation, caching, pagerank distributiuon). Today I put the results together and analysed the data we had and got some strange results which hint at a possibility that Google purposely throws in a normal behaviour deviation here and there. Do you think Google randomises its algorithm to prevent reverse engineering and enable chance discoveries or is it all a big load balancing act which produces quasi-random behaviour?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dan-Petrovic0