Sites went from page 1 to page 40 + in results
-
Hello all
We are looking for any insight we can get as to why all (except 1) of our sites were effected very badly in the rankings by Google since the Panda updates.
Several of our sites londonescape.com dublinescape.com and prague, paris, florence, delhi, dubai and a few others (all escape.com urls) have had major drop in their rankings.
LondonEscape.net (now.com (changed after rank drop) ), was ranked between 4th & 6th but is now down around 400th and DelhiEscape.net and MunichEscape.com were both number 1 for several years for our main key words
We also had two Stay sites number 1 , AmsterdamStay and NewYorkstay both .com ranked number 1 for years , NewYork has dropped to 10th place so far the Amsterdam site has not been effected.
We are not really sure what we did wrong. MunichEscape and DelhiEcape should never have been page 1 sites ) just 5 pages and a click thru to main site WorldEscape) but we never did anything to make them number 1.
London, NewYork and Amsterdam sites have had regular new content added, all is checked to make sure its original.
**Since the rankings drop **
LondonEscape.com site
We have redirected the.net to the .com url
Added a mountain of new articles and content
Redesigned the site / script
Got a fair few links removed from sites, any with multiple links to us. A few I have not managed yet to get taken down.
So far no result in increased rankings.
We contacted Google but they informed us we have NOT had a manual ban imposed on us, we received NO mails from Google informing us we had done anything wrong.
We were hoping it would be a 6 month ban but we are way past that now.
Anyone any ideas ?
-
Are your sites cross-linked at all (I'm not seeing anything obvious)? The cascade effect across all of them almost suggests they were either (1) seen as a link network, or (2) you're using the same link strategy across all of them.
I'd watch the keyword stuffing - your titles are pretty aggressive, and then you repeat those lists in the copy at the top and bottom of the page. It's borderline at best. I don't think it's enough to get multiple sites penalized, but it may not be helping you right now.
You've got a duplicate of the London Escape home-page floating out there in the index:
http://www.londonescape.com/index.php?option=com_wesearch&task=loginVIAFacebook
Might want to add rel=canonical to the home-page, just to sweep up things like that.
You're indexed and I'm able to get the site ranking on very targeted keywords (exact-match and fairly unique), but you fall off the map for everything else. That's definitely indicative of a link-based penalty.
-
Hello Brian
Thanks for the coments
We have been removing links since the site went down in the rankings so that accounts for the slow hemorage of links
We thought having the .com would be better than the .net as was recommended by a SEO company we hired and then fired.
We had a links company 5 + years back get us links and that is how we have 50% links with same anchor, stupid we now know of course and could well be something to do with penalty.
Several of our other sites would be in the same link boat I guess and also went down the rankings but they had little content, so it is not surprising they went down.
We were never bothered with analytics as our sites were all top and were for years. The drop came after penguin update. Over a few days the sites all went down.
-
Hello Charles.
Thanks for taking a look at londonescape.com , this is the correct site.
As far as I know, all our pages have meta descriptions.
Not sure what you mean by (a production description is in one place and the order button is on another page). Each property has it's own page and the order / book button is on the same page.
There is a fair bit of internal linking and all our content is 100% original text.
We have asked Google and got this reply
There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team.
Of course, there may be other issues with your site that affect your site's ranking. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users.
If you've experienced a change in ranking which you suspect may be more than a simple algorithm change, there are other things you may want to investigate as possible causes, such as a major change to your site's content, content management system, or server architecture. For example, a site may not rank well if your server stops serving pages to Googlebot, or if you've changed the URLs for a large portion of your site's pages. This article has a list of other potential reasons your site may not be doing well in search.
If you're still unable to resolve your issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality TeamWe are in the process of removing links we suspect may be spammy.
Many of our article pages do rank very high in Google, just rankings for our main keywords are in the 100's.
-
Charles,
I took a look at the home page and two random pages of londonescape.com. All three had meta descriptions. Were you by chance referring to a different domain? Making that clear would help.
Rather than stating something is horrible, it's more helpful to state that it is difficult to use because a production description is in one place and the order button is on another page (an example from one of my own sites).
I'm looking at content pages from the main navigation of londonescape.com, such as Guest Information and Short Term Apartments, and see plenty of internal linking.
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
-
DNS Prefetching for wordpress site
We have given below as DNS prefetch in our website. CMS is wordpress. Are these okay? I wonder why fonts.googleapis.com is not working. One of our competitors is using youtube. Can we improve it any how?
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Changing top level navigation between site sections
We've got an internal proposal to change our top level nav depending on the section of the site. For example, on our homepage it might read: Products, Library, About with relevant links dropping down below. As we have varied products, the drop down underneath it would include the various families. When arriving on the product family page the top-level nav would change to represent more specific offerings. For example: xxx.com 1. Products; 2. Library; 3. About xxx.com/xxx 1. Product family 1; 2. Product family 2; 3. Product family 3; 4. Library; 5. About What are the SEO/UX implications of this? It seems confusing but allows more specific navigation via the main nav depending on the section of the site. Also it seems that an alternating TLN might not be too Google-friendly.
Web Design | | gwelch0 -
Funnel tracking with one page check-out?
Hi Guys, I'm creating a new website with a one page checkout that follows the following steps:
Web Design | | Jerune
1. Check availability
2. Select product
2. Select additional product & Add features
3. Provide personal information
4. Order & Pay I'm researching if it is possible to track all these steps (and even steps within the steps) with Google Analytics in order to analyse checkout abandonment. The problem is only that my one-page checkout has only one URL (I want to keep it that way) and therefore can not be differentiated on URL in the Analytics funnel. To continue to the next step also the same button (in a floating cart) in used to advance. The buttons to select/choose something within one step are all different. Do you guys know how I can set this up and how detailed I can make this? For example, is it also possible to test at which field visitors leave when for example filling in their personal information? Would be great if you can help me out!0 -
Too Many Outbound Links on the Home Page - Bad for SEO?
Hello Again Moz community, This is my last Q of the day: I have a LOT of outbound links on the home page of www.web3.ca Some are to clients projects, most are to other pages on the website. Can reducing this to the core pages have a positive impact on SEO? Thanks, Anton
Web Design | | Web3Marketing870 -
URL Designing and Site Architecture
Hi, 1. At the end of the URL, should we have "/" or not (for e.g. my website www.example.com/abc/) 2. What is the optimum level of site depth 3. Google crawler will go through the breadcrumb or url (If a page is at 6th level through breadcrumb and at 4th level through URL, at which level will google crawler recognize this.
Web Design | | adiez12340 -
Changing Links that Show Up when I Google Brand (Site) Name
Hi SEOmoz Community, A quick question for you all. I've added an attachment for reference. When I google my brand name, say for example, Applied StemCell, I see six links as well below the description. Oddly though, these links seem to be chosen at random, or at least I'm not sure how Google decides on them. When I click on one of the links that is the company's name, Applied StemCell it brings me to a PDF document! Is there any way I can choose which ones to display there? Thanks! OF2oVVN.png
Web Design | | swzhai0 -
New site - same host domain?
Building a new site for my business (different URL) For SEO purposes...Is it ok to host the site on the same account as my existing site (GoDaddy) or should I purchase a seperate hosting account? Thanks
Web Design | | Tustep0 -
Why do site links appear under one keyword and not another? Any ideas?
Hi everyone, I have a client whose website is doing the strangest thing. When I search the branded keyword (the company name), Google doesn't show any site links under the result. However, when I search for the company name plus Inc., I do get site links. Now, the website is ranking first in both searches, so that's not the issue. And, as near as I can tell, the site only contains one or two uses of the company name plus the word "inc." Most of the text on the page and all of the meta data only uses the company name, and most of the links that connect to the site use only the company name as well. Even the Who Is for the site doesn't use the term "inc." And ideas what might be going on? I know Google says that the process is still automated but for the life of me I can't figure out what kind of automated process would result in these results. Thanks! Megan (Rebecca's minion)
Web Design | | RebeccaRalston0