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Thanks Richard

I have suspected that might be the case, thanks to providers used in the past.

Would you be interested in giving me a proposal/some costs for SEO to try and undo this mess?

I don't really want to dominate the SERPS any more, as I was for a while and it just resulted in me fielding thousands of calls which weren't worth my time.

I'm looking in particular for these pages to rank well again http://www.flatroofs.co.uk/projects-case-studies/

I've never had any onsite SEO as I haven't trusted the providers with back end access, so there's probably some improvement to be made there too...

My site has run into some serious and unexplained SEO issues over the last 6 months, i.e:

I wrote the content at http://www.flatroofs.co.uk/flat-roof-insulation/ about 3-4 years ago, and ever since it's competed for position with the huge PLC websites and hovered around the top 3 spots in google.co.uk.

However, since May this year things have declined rapidly and now isn't even in the top 50 for [flat roof insulation]! Why??

I am aware that this content has been pretty heavily plagiarised since day 1, with some other sites making the effort the 'rehash' my wording and others just blatantly copying. At the same time it's also been relatively well linked to (for a very boring subject) since day 1.

Over the same period (since May) the site has suffered a huge decline in traffic and rankings, as can be seen here http://www.flatroofs.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Capture.png, but I find the huge drop harder to justify for a relevant article than for the homepage/site in general.

What strikes me about the above is the two step changes in traffic volume; one in early June and the other in late October. I am vaguely aware of the penguin update etc, but it seems to me like I've been manually banished somehow?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Some great advice, thanks a lot Paul.

I hadn't even noticed myself that there are links in the slider text !

All the best

ps: I hope to join you as a resident of Alberta (or BC) in the not too distant future! : )

Thanks Paul

I think you may have hit the nail on the head to some extent!

I did the old site in a week back 2008 after being made redundant and seeing my financial life flash before me. I had no clue what I was doing or where to begin, so landed on a WYSIWYG editor called moonfruit sitemaker.

Nowadays I can tell you that this means the whole site is flash, and the analytics set up is only via the tracking ID / UA code, which is entered via the dashboard. This has meant I have no way to enter the code for conversion tracking or a number of other things. Apparently there is a html version of the site available to SEs, which I assume is why it has still ranked quite well.

The landing page for the old site is on the fist domain i bought: flatroogrp.co.uk. Would the code be visible from this?

As some evidence of what you describe, the attached screenshot shows the unexplained EXPLOSION in bounce rate which occurred some time ago. I even tried to speak to moonfruit about this as it was such cause for concern; they could offer no answer, but as you can see, it disappeared again some 9 months later...

A few visitors that became customers have asked me why our (old) site is laid out so strangely. This is where they have seen the pure flash version that bears no resemblance to the real thing. If that hasn't put them off then nothing should!

Thanks again

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Hi Egol and thanks very much for your advice.

On the top banner image suitability I totally agree, but am having upload issues with wordpress at the moment.

I also agree with your other points, but, most of them don't really seem to apply to sub pages (which are returning an equally high bounce rate); these have a sidebar menu with all services showing in there and no moving parts really.

I have even considered whether the confusion with a (very big) competitor has anything to do with the old site's success?

My other big question mark is the yellow branding, although I like it and it's definitely distinctive.

I am going to look at getting a sidebar menu back on the homepage right now!

Thanks

I moved our site to a wordpress theme over the christmas break. All content is pretty much the same word for word, and I think the new site looks much, much better than the old one.

Why then, has our overall bounce rate gone from 7-8%, up to 74%? Bounce rates for some KW focused internal pages have gone from 2-3% to similar 70+% in some cases.

Just to confuse things further, I have also changed the name and branding for the site to differentiate us from a competitor and stop the confusion we've experienced at times. But, I can't see how the new logo would cause and extra 65% of visitors to leave straight off! I really don't want to go back to the old name and don't think that's the answer anyhow, but I may have to test it out of sheer desperation.

There's only a static holding page for the old site now as a reference point for people searching the old name (not many). So I've attached a screenshot of how it looked below. Also at http://imgur.com/aM5o9.

The new site is at flatroofs.co.uk.

I have just noticed that by placing the previous 'more information' links a secondary menu in the left widget area rather than on the page, they are less noticeable especially if you scroll down to the bottom of a page, where the only links are in the footer? Again though, if 75% of people are put off this easily something else must be at play!

Any advice/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance, Danny.

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