Lost over 65% of organic visits since Sept - Please help
-
Hi all,
I'm fairly new to SEOmoz, i am here because i dont seem to be getting any actuall help from my SEO company, so am trying to figure this out myself.
I have done a quick analysis using google analytics and have gone from 13441 google organic visitors in Sept to 4527 google organic visitors in March.
(see attached image GA Sept - March)
Visitor numbers seems be to fairly stable in sept, oct, nov, and perhaps a slight decline in Dec, but then on Jan17th seems a big drop, and i have never recovered...
(See images GA - Oct, GA - Nov, GA - Dec and GA - Jan )
I am at a bit of a loss, i have heard about google penalties, but there are no warnings in my webmaster tools about this, the only warning i ever got was a message on Dec 24th which read :
http://XXX.co.uk/: Big traffic change for top URL
Search results clicks for (my site) have decreased significantly.
The number of clicks that your site receives from Google can change from day to day for a variety of factors, including automatic algorithm updates. However, if you have recently made significant changes to the content or configuration of your site, this change may be an indication that there are problems.
This is not a penalty notice is it? its simply google telling me i have lost a lot of traffic?
Strange thing is December's traffic was pretty much fine, so do not understand why i got this message, when the drop in traffic happened a month later.
I've been racking my brain for months trying to fix every little possible issue i can find with my site (its not nice, when you do not actually know what google has decided it doesn't like about your site!) but nothing seems to be helping, i've been hiring content writter's as i found loads of websites have copied a lot of content, i also decided maybe the product descriptions are being classed as duplicate so again have got in content writter's to re-write hundreds of product descriptions (all this is costing me an arm and a leg)... Nada!
Then today, when doing this google analysis (see image GA Sept - March) i noticed two sites, i have renamed them on the image to:
XXX-1.co.uk & XXX-2.ecomm-search.com
XXX-1.co.uk was a test server where i could play around with code on my website before i actually implement changes, usually i delete all the files after i use it... but it looks like i forgot to do that.... the site is a complete copy of my website (but obviously a version where you can not actually process an order) but all the pages still have canonical links back to the proper website... Just in case this was causing issues, i have 301 redirected the site back to my main site... Is this wise? or should i just delete the site?
XXX-2.ecomm-search.com is a search company i was trialing as i wanted to improve the search functionality on my own site, however the search features are hosted on their site... I was told it has no bearing on SEO as its not indexed... however if google is seeing refferalls coming from that site, which is basically a duplicate of my search pages but with better functionality, could they be considering this a duplicate content issue?
If anybody can give me any advice at all about above questions, or in general about what happened on Jan 17th (as i see from web search's many people were affected but i can not seem to find people who actually know what google did) i would be very grateful.
Thanks
James
-
Hi EGOL,
Thanks for the link, i went through the quiz, and a couple of things jump out at me...
First it talks about "thin content" being lots of images then a little writing, or just a few paragraphs of text and lots of images on a page...
The majority of my pages are like this, we're an ecommerce website, so all product categories have many images and little bits of text etc...
I dont think there is too much i can do about that one, as i'm not about to try to pioneer a new way of designing ecommerce stores! lol
However, another issue it pointed out is links from "blogs / directories" etc that have keywords in the anchor text... Well i have loads of these, i know my SEO company does link building for me, not too sure how much of it involves directories, but i'll have to speak to them and perhaps get them to stop (remove if possible) them...
To be honest this has opened up a hole new can of worms for me lol, what a mine field SEO is ahh... Just looking at anchor text causing websites to drop in rankings makes me wonder, what about the links that are not on directories / blogs etc... do you get punished if they also use key words in anchor text? I mean, i appreciate google saying it doesnt look natural, but who owns / updates websites that hasnt heard of SEO and would not use a keyword as anchor text if linking to someone? I know if i link to a website, the anchor text isnt just the brand name.
Also, what about if your brand name is a keyword, i heard before google was giving less weight to companies who use a keyword in their URL... but wouldn't this mean they have no choice but to give a little extra weight to companies with the keyword in their domain.... as now the anchor text can be their brand name... and a keyword...
OK i'm straying... getting back on track... if the issue is being cause by this anchor text / keyword ratio... how can one go about fixing this?
-
ok i just googled it, and i think your talking about google "places", this has no effect on what i am talking about, i only registered for google places about two weeks ago, so i have never been on the local listings...
Correct me if i have misunderstood please
-
By local listings I mean the maps or Google places listings. These are the ones that come up for local searches such as "plumber in seattle". They have their own algorithm. If you have a Google places page and you have over optimized it then it can cause your site to drop out of one of these listings and then appear in the organic listings (the non maps ones).
-
I'm guessing link rot or something to do with upstream links. Majestic SEO may give you some insight into what back links may have disappeared prior to you losing traffic.
-
Hi Marie,
Can i ask what you mean by "local listings"? Sorry, just no idea what you are reffering to, and if there is a chance it can be part of the cause, i really need to learn
thanks
-
My guess (and it can only be a guess without a thorough investigation) is that this is not Panda, Penguin because the dates don't match up with the dates of algo changes.
It could just be a regular algorithm change. It could be competitors beating you.
It could be that you've dropped out of the local listings. I've seen a number of sites that have had that happen to them recently. A drop from local can take you from #1-3 or so to the bottom of the page quite easily.
-
Most are not massive drops, from say 1st or 2nd to position 8 / 9 (note i'm talking about on Page 1 position)...
Some are all over the place as i mentioned in this thread : http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-it-me-or-google
Kind of shocking how many less visitors you get moving 6-7 positions down the first page ahh...
I've been going through WMT fixing what i can, nothing jumped out at me as a big issue, a few crawl errors etc (when this first came to my attention) i did notice my sitemap was very old... i.e i hadnt updated it in almost a year, obviously thats upto date now.
-
Ok,
So we know from your charts 16/17th Jan is when the real drop happened, we know it's not just a handful of keywords it's basically everything down and we know you haven't received a warning so it 'might' not be off the back of a penalty.
What's the drop like in keyword positions in the search engine, we talking a drop from Page 1 to Page 2 or Page 1 to Page 150?
Also in WMT's if you look at the Health tab, flick through some of the sections, see if anything is out of the ordinary around the time the traffic dropped.
EGOL knows what he is doing, so if anything follow his guidance as well.
-
Determine the exact date of your traffic drop if possible. If your traffic tanked on a specific date that is valuable information.
You might have a Panda problem which is from thin content or duplicate content.
You might have a Penguin problem from links that Google does not like.
There are other penalties that could have hit your site.
I would go here.. take the quiz and see if you can determine if it was Panda, Penguin or something else. http://www.mytrafficdropped.com/
If this is an important site I would hire someone who knows how to diagnose and recover penalized sites.
-
Hi Bond,
of the top 25 keywords...
1 down by 62% (not provided key word)
2 of them down by approx 35%
1 down by 133%
1 down by 150%
19 of them down by 200% or higher
1 of them up by 40% - This is my brand name
-
In Google analytics go traffic sources -> All Traffic -> click Google / organic -> Secondary Dimensions (dropdown) -> Traffic Sources -> Keyword
Now compare the 16th and 17th Jan with the same range in Dec.
Are all keywords massively down or is it a hand full?
-
Hi Chris,
Drop in traffic is happening for all keywords... but mainly only to do with the home page...
by that i mean nearly all our traffic comes through the home page, apart from one or two other pages... the key words for the other pages have not lost any ranking... only any search where our home page use to do well, is now suffering...
No changes were made to the site during Nov / Dec or Jan... so i dont think it was an on site issue... apart from the duplicate content issue (which was that lots of websites had copied our homepage "introduction to" messgae... so we have since had that re-written...
-
Is the drop in traffic happening for keywords across the board or for specific keywords? From the graphs you gave, it looks like a change in your traffic pattern started in November and your decrease in traffic may have started as early as late that month, too. Doesn't really look like a penalty, though. What changes had your seo's been making prior to that time.
-
Just PM'd the URL to you... Didnt want to post it here
-
Unless I missed can you attach the real URL of your website or PM the URL.
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
-
Help guide pages from subdirectory must be opened in a new tab?
Hi, We have help guide pages for every feature we provide. They been hosted on different sub directory and we linked them from our website pages. Do we need to make these sub directory pages to open in a new tab when clicked from our website pages? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Puzzling Penalty Question - Need Expert Help
I'm turning to the Moz Community because we're completely stumped. I actually work at a digital agency, our specialism being SEO. We've dealt with Google penalties before and have always found it fairly easy to identify the source the problem when someone comes to us with a sudden keyword/traffic drop. I'll briefly outline what we've experienced: We took on a client looking for SEO a few months ago. They had an OK site, with a small but high quality and natural link profile, but very little organic visibility. The client is an IT consultancy based in London, so there's a lot of competition for their keywords. All technical issues on the site were addressed, pages were carefully keyword targeted (obviously not in a spammy way) and on-site content, such as services pages, which were quite thin, were enriched with more user focused content. Interesting, shareable content was starting to be created and some basic outreach work had started. Things were starting to pick up. The site started showing and growing for some very relevant keywords in Google, a good range and at different levels (mostly sitting around page 3-4) depending on competition. Local keywords, particularly, were doing well, with a good number sitting on page 1-2. The keywords were starting to deliver a gentle stream of relevant traffic and user behaviour on-site looked good. Then, as of the 28th September 2015, it all went wrong. Our client's site virtually dropped from existence as far as Google was concerned. They literally lost all of their keywords. Our client even dropped hundreds of places for their own brand name. They also lost all rankings for super low competition, non-business terms they were ranking for. So, there's the problem. The keywords have not shown any sign of recovery at all yet and we're, understandably, panicking. The worst thing is that we can't identify what has caused this catastrophic drop. It looks like a Google penalty, but there's nothing we can find that would cause it. There are no messages or warnings in GWT. The link profile is small but high quality. When we started the content was a bit on the thin side, but this doesn't really look like a Panda penalty, and seems far too severe. The site is technically sound. There is no duplicate content issues or plaigarised content. The site is being indexed fine. Moz gives the site a spam score of 1 (our of 11 (i think that's right)). The site is on an ok server, which hasn't been blacklisted or anything. We've tried everything we can to identify a problem. And that's where you guys come in. Any ideas? Anyone seen anything similar around the same time? Unfortunately, we can't share our clients' site's name/URL, but feel free to ask any questions you want and we'll do our best to provide info.
Algorithm Updates | | MRSWebSolutions0 -
Getting listed in the Google local result - help!
Good day, I'm really struggling to get a client to appear in the Google Local map snapshot (on the right of the SERPs), even when their company name is Googled. I've tried everything including getting the main Google Local account verified, had some reviews put up, all the required and relevant info has been completed, yet their location and the map never appear. Any help out there as to how I can remedy this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | Martin_S1 -
80-90% drop in visits after Panda/EMD update - now what?
Hi everyone, Had my first wonderful experience with an algorithm update. Business was doing great - about 90-100 visitors a day down to about 12-15 from Sept 29th to current. Our domain is www.hamiltonscarservice.com which I don't think exactly qualifies for an exact match but may be close enough (car service is one of our keywords). I am more likely to think its related to the Panda 20 update. I haven't changed the site at all lately so I was wondering what tips you guys may have going forward. The site isn't perfectly optimized (which is where you guys come in) but when I first set it up it worked great so I mainly focused on backlinks from that point on. Now evidently this has caught up with me. Any suggestions are appreciated - thanks! 09cSe.png
Algorithm Updates | | kabledesigns0 -
Advice / Help with simliar post titles
Does anyone know if the new google ove optimisation penalties would be actioned for similar post titles? We have a back catalouge of our magazines online and each title is very simliar ie magazine name - issue number - month. These have been flagged up by the SEO Moz pro service as being duplicate content but although each post is laid out the same each has different content with int it. the titles however are all very simliar - is this a bad idea and also if so what would be a better way of grouping the posts so that the titles are different enough - would the main subject of each magazine included be enough? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | luwhosjack0 -
Lost and confused after Penguin!
I own an EMD which was hit by google penguin. I lost my #1 position to Google US SERP and went to #5 for the keyword which applies to the EMD. What I have tried so far is deleting the exact anchor text links from the footers of my c-block sites. That did not seem to help because i did not gain any position from that change. I also altered my meta title, description and keywords because they were spamming a bit. Things did not improved. My Links w/ Exact Anchor Text is at 5%, Linking Root Domains w/ Exact Anchor Text at 3% The web pages that are above me are to 0% to both categories because they are not showing up with their main page. What is going on? The thing that confuses me the most is that i am also targeting for two other markets, Australia and Canada. In Canada I have maintained my #1 and to Australia I lost my first position falling to #2. I did not receive any message to my webmaster tools account and never made any black hat link building. Is the EMD fact the problem, but why not for other markets except US? Penguin has run to other markets(CA, AU) as well becuase i have seen a drop to other keywords and also to my traffic. Really what do you think?
Algorithm Updates | | Tz_Seo0 -
Help on Page Load Time
I'm trying to track page load time of the visits on my site and GA only says to me that it's equal to zero and page load sample is aways zero too. I've made a research, and I found that GA is used to track page load time automatically, isn't it?
Algorithm Updates | | ivan.precisodisso0 -
Tuesday July 12th = We suddenly lost all our top Google rankings. Traffic cut in half. Ideas?
The attached screenshot shows all. Panda update hit us hard = we lost half our traffic. Three months later, Panda tweak gave us traffic back. Now, this past Tuesday we lost half our traffic again and ALL our top ranking Keywords/phrases on Google (all other search engines keywords holding rank fine). Did they tweak their algorithm again? What are we doing wrong?? eartheasy.com wtf.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | aran0880