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
-
Advice regarding latest Google Algo Update please, if possible...
Hi there I wonder if anyone can advise on this. Since the latest google update on 1st Sept or whenever it rolled out, we noticed an initial spike in hits on our site, which was great. However now we are noticing levels going back to where they were and less people visiting the site. It also seems to be very sporadic. So we have a period of say a couple of hours with no one on the site, then suddenly loads visiting. We have also noticed a big dip in enquiries, despite the site having roughly the same amount of visitors. All our stats on Moz, Webmaster Tools, Ahrefs, Serpfox and various other rank trackers are showing that we have had an increase in visibility on our tracked keywords. There is a definite spike on all, but where is our traffic and where are our enquiries? Usually we are able to work out where the problem is when updates occur but with this we have no idea. We are utterly baffled. Is this normal? Is this just fluctuations and will settle down? Has anyone else noticed weird things happening? If anyone has any ideas or experience of this then would be most grateful for any advice. Feeling rather desperate at the moment. Many thanks in advance. Clojo
Algorithm Updates | | Clojobobo0 -
Reasons for change in organic traffic year-over-year
Need some help in answering the concern of my client. My client is concerned that organic visits from the 1<sup>st</sup> and 2<sup>nd</sup> quarter of 2016 are LESS than q1 & q2 of 2015. Overall there was about a 15% variance. Basically, I am trying to explain why the 2015 quarters have more organic traffic than 2016 (over the same time frame)? I have explained that to the client: There are external factors that affect SEO such an increase in competitor presence That we have been focusing on generating quality traffic to the site rather than just quantity That Google’s new SERPs layout is pushing organic rankings down Unfortunately, my client does not believe the above points to be valid, despite the fact he is still receiving the same amount of conversions, with less traffic. Why would his traffic be less in 2016? What else could cause this? Any help would be appreciated so I can help him.
Algorithm Updates | | TowerMarketing0 -
Site has disappeared since Panda 4 despite quality content, help!
Our site www.physicalwellbeing.co.uk has lost over 20 first page rankings since the end of May. I assume this is because of Panda 4.0. All content on the site is high quality and 100% unique, so we did not expect to get penalised. Although I read somewhere that if Google can't read particular js anymore they don't rank you as high. The site has not been blacklisted as all pages are showing in Google's index and there are no messages on webmaster tools. We have not taken part in any link schemes and have disavowed all low quality links that were pointing there just in case (after the penalty). Can anybody see anything on www.physicalwellbeing.co.uk that may have cause Panda update to affect it so negatively? Would really appreciate any help.
Algorithm Updates | | search_shop0 -
Organic Traffic: Hockey-stick growth followed by slow rampdown of death!
My site, Site Builder Report, was started last year. Months 1 - 6 saw modest organic traffic growth.
Algorithm Updates | | steve_benjamins
Months 6 - 9 saw explosive organic traffic growth.
Months 9 - 12 have seen a steady decrease in organic traffic. (I've attached a graph for visualizing this) The site has not changed much over this time. In fact, in the last 3 months, I've done two things to try to get organic traffic trending upwards again: Increased the amount of long-form articles on the site (from 1 new article every 3 weeks to 1 new article every week) Fixed approxately 150 five hunded (500) errors in Google Webmaster Tools three weeks ago (converted them to 404s) Neither fix has really been able to change the trend (although perhaps it's too early to tell with the fixing of errors). Does this downtrend warrant concern? It's having significant business effects- would hiring an SEO consultant be the next step for reversing this trend? Any thoughts? GeYyuvA0 -
Has Google lost its mind? I am the only link in every SERP for a query?
I run a small online debutante dress store and have been doing some onsite seo recently. Anyways, when I search for the search query "deb dress style guide" my site is the only search result for the first three pages of Google Australia (my target market). Just endless links to my site. I have competitors in my niche who all have websites worthy of listing in the SERP as shown when you google "deb dresses". Can anyone explain whats going on?
Algorithm Updates | | mydebdress20 -
Can anyone help me to understand why specific key words are no longer searchable on Google
I’m not sure where to start so please bear with me. I apologize now for the length of this question.Like so many others that I have read about over the past few weeks I lost my presence on Google search results beginning on April 24th. My website iswww.getyourphotosoncanvas.com .I have spent the past few weeks trying to figure out what the problem is and have read and participated in many forums and have read and re-read Google Webmasters Help and anything else I could to try and resolve this problem. I have submitted my website for reconsideration by Google twice and have gotten the following message: Reconsideration request forhttp://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/ : No manual spam actions foundMay 23, 2012Dear site owner or webmaster ofhttp://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/ , We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines. We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. 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.I read this carefully and have tried to address all aspects of the message. I am not a SEO or website expert and have been learning along the way.First, we did not just loose ranking on Google, we went away from the top 100 on all key phrases searched including specific page titles that all rank #1 on Yahoo and Bing. Example: "Free Digital Proofs Photos on Canvas". This search returns our Like Us on Facebook page #5 and our webpage Free Digital Proofs is not listed in the top 100?Like Get Your Photos on Canvas on Facebookwww.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/like-us-on-facebook/UPLOAD YOUR PHOTOS TODAY! WE PROVIDE FREE DIGITAL PROOFING OF YOUR PHOTO CANVAS BEFORE WE PRINT! Customer Favorite Example... Basically get back what they think you want and not necessarily what you had in mind.The description text above is taken from the sidebar that is on all pages of our website and not from the title and description meta tags._Page Title: Like Get Your Photos on Canvas on FacebookPage Description:_Like Us on Facebook and keep in touch with Special Offers and information about Get Your Photos on Canvas!This page also shows up for other title page searches? It’s like Google is all confused?Sorry this is long, if you are still with me; Thank You for hanging in there!I have followed all of Google’s Rules, I’m not perfect but not bad either:I have not participated in link buying or building schemes, I have not used hidden text or Keyword stuffing, I use rel=canonical tags, I use noindex, nofollow on pages such as privacy policy, terms of use, and order confirmation pages, and blog comments.I have not considered a server problem with Gooblebot but maybe? The server seems to work fine for Yahoo, Bing, Ask and SEOmoz.I did change a significant number of page urls in January when we rebuilt the website and changed to a new WP format and Bluehost. That didn’t seem to effect Yahoo, Bing or even Google before April 24<sup>th?</sup>Using the tools at SEOmoz the website has no Errors, had a few warnings, fixed and in all looks OK.The On Page grade for "Free Digital Proofs Photos on Canvas" is "A" Here is an interesting test:Search: Gallery Wrap vs Museum Wrap (we show up as number #2 on Google)Search: Gallery Wrap vs Museum Wrap Canvas (we are not in top 100 on Google)Search: Gallery Wrap vs Museum Wrap Photos (we are not in top 100 on Google)Gallery Wrap vs Museum Wrap Photos on Canvas www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/gallery-wraps-vs-museum-wraps/****Gallery Wrap vs Museum Wrap, two options for your Photo on Canvas Prints. Find out the difference between Photo Canvas Gallery Wrap vs Museum Wrap.**I have considered the possibility that Google may see us as keyword stuffing. Our url has photos and canvas, our website title is "Get Your Photos on Canvas" and in our content we talk about "Canvas" allot, how can you not? We have used Picture and Photographs in content to reduce the number of uses of Photos. The content was not written for stuffing it is well written and reads well. I can’t think of substitutes for "Canvas" it is what it is.
Algorithm Updates | | rdominey
My Question is simple, Can anyone HELP?
What else can I do to try and find and fix the problem**0 -
I need help with drastic SERP difference between Bing and Google
One of our sites that has been around for a couple of years has about 60,000 pages showing on google, however, bing only shows 90 pages for the site. This same phenomenon has been happening across the board for our sites. Any ideas to improve our indexing results for bing?
Algorithm Updates | | atuomala0 -
Bounce rate help?
I'm trying to get to the bottom of the bounce rates of a few of the keyword results on my site. I think I'm getting traffic to an informative page and visitors are reading it then hopping back to Google to search for the terms I've just given them and I'm getting high bounce rates for this. I'll use an example to make it clear. A Google search for "hp 3050 ink" gets my HP 3050 printer page (A page that lists all the cartridges that will work in a HP 3050 printer) as a pretty good result. So far so good, right? My problem comes when I look in analytics and see that this page has a massive 80% bounce rate. The only reason I can think of is that people are using my site to find out what cartridge a printer will take and then using that information to refine their search. Am I over looking something? Is there anything I can do? Does it even matter? If it does is it really fair that my site is being punished for being a useful resource? Thanks in advance
Algorithm Updates | | Stinkyink0