Never recovered from loss of visibility in Google, what did we miss?
-
Hello, I hope someone can help me, or can recommend someone who could look into this in more detail a a consultancy service or something.
Our client https://bit.ly/2IjLD7X experienced a bad drop in visibility early 2017 which we didn't manage to recover from. We had a problem with one main category page that wasn't indexed anymore (it was #1 for a major keyword in the Netherlands). We were able to fix the problem eventually (had to do with the .be being indexed instead due to no hreflang) but never really recovered with that page, only the entire site around that time saw a major drop in visibility.
The client went to another agency (a renowned agency in the Netherlands) but after over half a year they haven't been able to recover. Organic visits are still down 45% compared to the same period last year. Another major Dutch keyword they ranked #1 for is now #9 for instance.
So basically two SEO agencies (we and the other one) have tried everything we could think of for the past year, but none of us seem to know what the problem is and the owner is quite desperate (it's a small store with only 3 employees and his monthly revenue is only half of what it once was.
I'm afraid a quick look into the site won't help anyone find the issue, so if someone has a good idea of how we can help this previous client I would love to hear so!
-
I read about "Fred" since Moz mentioned it in their newsletter yesterday. Two interesting links:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/leticiamiranda/overstockcoms-search-engine-business-is-crumbling-after
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-history/fred-update/I guess this sounds familiar and aligns with the period that my client suffered. I don't remember ever reading anything about it, but it might help.
-
I only have 43 pages...3000 pages its a hard work!
-
I had the same issue recently, and I, unfortunately, we lost almost 80% of visibility, in my case, the main problem started with, no-index pages, took me a month of manual submissions just to get indexed and until now the crawler starts to recognize the links migrations. At this point, there are 2 possible options optimize the structure of the site (remember best internal structure you have the less external links you will need) or start a link building campaign.....trust me I tried everything and just those options show me some results. As I see the page has over 3K pages indexed so will be a challenging project
-
I think that's the key: get more external links with the "follow" tag. Is that they have many more "follow" links than the rest of competitors (including your client).
-
Thank you for helping. It started well before that actually, more or less in April / May 2017, but it did get worse in October 2017 (although based on your image one of the competitors improved its backlinks right after that). Well I'm sure it had something to do with it. Unfortunately my client doesn't have the same budgets for referral / authority building as some of the competition does.
-
Hello, KAWP.
An analysis in Moz Pro, according to the dates, has made me doubt in the following image. There are two timestamps in which the competition has managed to grow its external links in a potential way. Could it be that it coincides with the change of positions in google with your client?
In that case one of the solutions would be to increase the external links. So so much.
If the answer were useful do not forget to mark it as a Good Answer. Thanks!
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
-
What could cause Google to not honor canonical URLs?
I have a strange situation on a website, when I do a Google query of site:example.com all the top indexed results appear to be queries that users can perform on the website. So any random term the user searches for on the website for some reason is causing the search result page to get indexed - like example.com/search/query/random-keywords However, the search results page has a canonical tag on it that points to example.com/search, but that doesn't seem to be doing anything. Any thoughts or ideas why this could be happening?
Technical SEO | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Google UK and the slog of Link building
Background:
Technical SEO | | Brinley
I have a number of sites built using the open eCommerce software zen cart. One of these sites was penalised by the original Penguin algorithm back in April 24, 2012. The reason for the panalty was that two ecommerce sites in Hong kong had a link to the above site in the footer of their 2000 & 4000 product website. I have no idea why the site had these links and even though I did contact them a few months before the Penguin massacre asking them to remove the footer link I was technically unaware of the ticking time bomb that they presented. The result, as is now engrained in SEO history, was that the site was moved to sit alongside Googles equivalent of the restaurant at the end of the universe and stayed there for 2 years until April 2014.
As I had never indulged in link building for the simple reason that I found it laborious I was obviously infuriated with the resulting loss of revenue but that was balanced with an understanding that I had not kept pace with the changing landscape of SEO according to Google. The quest I am now on is to increase my 3 sites profile on the web without getting another spanking from Google in the near future. The problem I have is that white hat today may well be black hat tomorrow. (I can recall the days when Google said links are good and everyone went out and asked other websites to link with them and look where that led.) So do I ignore actively cultivating links as some suggest and look to produce good content (which is quite difficult when you make mugs and candles by the way.) or do you go out and look to intentionally build links by studying competitors links, reviewing link opportunity or get bloggers to review products. For a small lifestyle entrepreneur like myself, the ever changing seo landscape and the amount of time & effort it requires is slowly and inevitably pushing us back out to that restaurant mentioned earlier. If only Google had a little brother that was designed purely for small businesses - like it was in the good old days before the dinosaur that is big business grunt and thought hmmm! whats that?
And if there were such a thing I would add a caveat that it would be illegal to generate pointless amount of cyber content because the web is becoming something akin to a landfill. Which leaves me nowhere really - but I think I am okay with that. Waiter !!0 -
Why is my blog disappearing from Google index?
My Google blogger blog is about 10 months old. In that time i have worked really hard with adding unique content, building relationships with other bloggers in the same niche, and done some inbound marketing. 2 weeks ago I updated the template to something cleaner, with a little more "wordpress" feel to it. This means i've messed about with the code a lot in these weeks, adding social buttons etc. The problem is that from some point late last week thurs/fri my pages started disappearing from Googles index. I have checked webmaster tools and have no manual actions. My link profile is pretty clean as its a new site, and i have manually checked every piece of content published for plagiarism etc. So what is going on? Did i break my blog? Or is something else amiss? Impressions are down 96% comparing Nov 1-5th to previous 5 days. site is here: http://bit.ly/174beVm Thanks for any help in advance.
Technical SEO | | Silkstream0 -
Google authorship what am i doing wrong
Hi, i am using google authorship on my site but when i use the testing tool it is not working. before the upgrade we had it working fine but now it does not seem to work. we have our google plus account pointing to the site and the writer we are trying to add is not coming up on the tool here is the code we are putting on the page Google+ and the page in question is here http://www.in2town.co.uk/emmerdale/emmerdale-laurel-is-determined-to-take-action when i check the tool i get the following Authorship Testing ResultAuthorship is not working for this webpage.andAuthorship rel=author MarkupCannot verify that rel=author markup has established authorship for this webpage.the tool i am using to check is http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippetsany help to solve this problem would be great. i am using joomla
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Google Local Gone Loco
I am a bankruptcy attorney in Southern California. I have been doing my own SEO since I had a couple of bad experiences paying someone to "do" it in the past. If you want it done right, do it yourself I suppose. Anyway, I have been ranking well in Google local results. At first I peeked in at 3/3 showing on the first page of the searches. Then I climbed to Number 2 in local searches, probably as a result of finding sites and making sure my addresses, phone numbers and business names were all correct. However, this week (as I climbed to #3 spot in the local search for my city+ bankruptcy attorney, my Google local result dropped to page 2. One of my employees rated me on google local and gave me a google + which is gone and the pictures that I uploaded to Local Google are gone. I don't know if this is some kind of penalty because an employee gave me a rating (they were completely up front about working for me) or if something else is going on. I was also trying to claim my business on Yahoo (which resulted in some kind of "Account Suspension"). I have no idea what is going on. You can take a look at my site if it helps: http://ashcraftfirm.com We are trying to rank for "murrieta bankruptcy attorney" Thanks for any help you can provide.
Technical SEO | | gcashcraft0 -
Is this a google dance?
My website keeps moving up and down in ranking but stays within page 2 to 3. Everyday its at a new position.
Technical SEO | | ragivan0 -
Google Dmoz description in SERPS
My dmoz description is not as KW rich as my sites normal description. IS there an advantage or disadvantage to either? If so, How do I prevent google from doing this?
Technical SEO | | DavidS-2820610