Traffic drop 98% in two days
-
I changed my theme on April 12th and within 24 hours my traffic plummeted 98%. I have also seen a huge difference in my keyword ranking. A few things have been tweaked, but with no results.
I need to get to the bottom of this fairly quickly. Do you have any recommendations of a trustworthy someone I could hire to dig deeper and find out what the %#^!$@ is going on? I didn't see that SEOmoz does the "hire and let us check it" thing.
Of course, if anyone has any free suggestions...I'm open to those as well.
Thanks
Heather
-
Yes, that sounds really plausible. Thanks for explaining that to me! I'm passing your comment on to my programmer for him to take a look.
I have a few "tech smart" people I know, I'll ask them to take a look as well - Wisdom in many counselors!
Thanks so much!
-
I'm willing to bet that the reason you are seeing a 98% drop in traffic from simply changing a theme is that the Google Analytics tracking code was not properly installed on the new theme. I know you already mentioned that you checked with your programmer and didn't find any problems with the tracking code itself, but I can see that the GA account numbers are two different accounts. I checked the source code of a page using the current theme as well as a cached version from the old theme and the Google Analytics tracking account numbers are different.
This is the page in question - http://www.incredibleinfant.com/safety/pacifier-use/
**Current theme - ** _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-28262936-1']);
**Cached theme - ** _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-32310484-1']); (Google cache from April 5th, 2013)
So if you are looking at the Google Analytics data for the 323 account, then that's why you are seeing a 98% drop in traffic once the new theme was installed. The actual data should be captured in the 282 profile, which you hopefully have access to.
And it's not surprising that you've noticed some rankings drop since that often happens when doing a site overhaul if the site architecture, internal linking structure, on-site SEO are not kept exactly the same. This decrease in rankings is likely only temporary as the search engines will recrawl and reindex the new versions of the pages.
Hope that helps!
-
Matt, the old theme was custom. I'm just going to remove the squeeze page entirely and see what happens. That way the homepage will be the blog roll. I've also added the meta description for the blog page. Thanks.
-
Those are great suggestions Matt! Thank you! I will send those to my programmer and see if I can add a blog link on the squeeze page and see if that helps also.
Perhaps it's the combination of these other issues AND the squeeze page that tipped the scale...
-
I will go through the plugins idea, Moosa and check that. Good idea. thanks
-
That's true there isn't Federico. The blog is being relaunched. Since I'm not currently adding new posts, the homepage is a squeeze page.
I had it set it up that way for about 2 months before this dip happened, so I'm doubting that's the issue. It was gaining in traffic actually.
-
I have a couple theories but I'm having trouble finding a cached old page. What theme DID you have?
I'm going to posit a few theories and maybe some direction for you to check out.
First, there is definitely a problem here somewhere.
On this link: http://www.incredibleinfant.com/blog/page/2/
I see: Sunscreen, Muppets, Bad Parents, New Foods, Breastfeed, Earn money at home,
On this link: http://www.incredibleinfant.com/blog/page/3/
I see the same exact posts.
Same on page 4, page 5.
Also, according to your archives, you have one May post - the Sunscreen post. But
http://www.incredibleinfant.com/blog/
is showing Muppets most recently. It's not picking up your posts or updating correctly
Also, I see 43 validation errors and some warnings. Usually these aren't a big deal, a bit of coding oops here & there. Yours are not what I normally see.
Some of the worst errors here may be contributing to problems. I'm not sure how the new theme compares to the old but this one looks like it has some coding issues - one of which may be causing Google to not like your site as much. (Imagine if you turned all your H3s into H2s at once. Google would probably not like that. Same if you went the other way.
The fact that the homepage doesn't link to the blog is probably "stopping" any juice from flowing through. You have over 6000 links pointed at your homepage and about 30 pointed at the blog. A tiny link on the squeeze page from the home to the blog may make all the difference.
The actual blog link (http://www.incredibleinfant.com/blog/) doesn't have a meta description at all. This really isn't good and it should have one. You are using Yoast so this should be a simple fix. If you used to have one (ie. it was built into the theme) this could hurt. I know description isn't an SEO "factor" but not having one at all likely is, especially if the old one was related to your content.
I think your pagination issues and some of your validation errors are likely the issue, as is the theme change - I'm sure it changed either your headers, important bits of code, etc. and lacking the link from homepage - yeah, that would not help.
Hope the direction helps!
-
I really don’t think that the problem is with indexation as when i search for post title i still can see the post appearing in the search results...The only different thing is when I use this simple search “site:www.incredibleinfant.com” I see categories are appearing in the search results instead of the post titles... which is kind of different then usual.
I can be wrong but is there any plug-in that you was using in the older theme and actually not using in the current theme? Just wondering!
P.S: Idea by Fede also makes lot of sense to me!
-
Hi Heather,
There's no link in the homepage to your Blog...?
First thing you should do is remove that page and have the blog as the index page.
Then you can see what happens.
-
I've had a programmer check the code, and so far they haven't found any issues with the analytics implementation or noidexing. Not sure about the malware.
I've also taken your suggestion and contacted Marie Haynes for a consultation estimation. Thanks!
-
Sorry, I should have included the URL...it's late and my brain isn't functioning...
the website URL is http://www.incredibleinfant.com - but that is a squeeze page while I do a re-launch.
to see the back door, go to http://www.incredibleinfant.com/blog.
This squeeze home page was in place for months using the old design and Google didn't seem to have a problem indexing my articles and bringing me traffic.
Thanks
-
That is a traffic drop so steep and fast that it probably extends beyond Google. It could be...
bad analytics implementation
malware
unintentional noindex
If this was my site I would hope that I could hire Marie Haynes to look at it.
-
Post or PM the URL in question. So that me and others can provide some thoughts.
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
-
Drop in performance
Some pages in Search Console have troubles in indexing. Although Google Index says url is on google and indexed , Live test shows something different( image is attached ). My performance has badly been affected(image attached). Anybody knows what the problem is? R5iCT20
Technical SEO | | ehsanamel0 -
Direct To Site Traffic Decline
Hi Everyone, My company's site went from Http to Https and responsive design last year. After 6 months passed, we noticed a 40% decline from direct visits but revenue saw an increase. Could the 301 redirects from Http to Https cause the drop in direct traffic? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | JMSCC1 -
First Link Priority - Drop Down Menu
Hey Mozzers Just want to make sure I have this right - If a website offers a service, say "digital marketing" - and has this link in a dropdown menu in the header, would this make any link in the body of a page (using different anchor text) pointless in SEO terms?.. e.g. a link with "online marketing" or "digital strategy" Cheers!
Technical SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
IP address changed and some rankings drop
I changed my hosting company coz better server hardware and results (google). My website was perfectly for every queries on google but after changing company and ip address some results dropped to second page. What can i do now? These drops caused by changing ip address?
Technical SEO | | umutege0 -
Splitting Page Authority with two URLs for the same page.
Hello guys, My website is currently holding two different URLs for the same page and I am under the impression such set up is dividing my Page Authority and Link Juice. We currently have the following page with both URLs below: www.wbresearch.com/soldiertechnologyusa/home.aspx
Technical SEO | | JoaoPdaCosta-WBR
www.wbresearch.com/soldiertechnologyusa/ Analysing the page authority and backlinks I identified that we are splitting the amount of backlinks (links from sites, social media and therefore authority). "/home.aspx"
PA: 67
Linking Root Domains: 52
Total Links: 272 "/"
PA: 64
Linking Root Domains: 29
Total Links: 128 I am under the impression that if the URLs were the same we would maximise our backlinks and therefore page authority. My Question: How can I fix this? Should I have a 301 redirect from the page "/" to the "/home.aspx" therefore passing the authority and link juice of “/” directly to “/homes.aspx”? Trying to gather thoughts and ideas on this, suggestions are much appreciated? Thanks!0 -
Homepage dropping back to page 30 and being replaced by a random page?
Hi All Please accept my apologies if i have posted this in the wrong place, i am new to this. I have asked for help over and over again on Google Webmaster Forum but everytime i am faced with sarcastic, unhelpful answers and then moaned at for asking the same question again when i get no answers. Well, my website is http://www.hillfieldscampingandleisure.co.uk. The site is nearly 2 years old and is an ecommerce online camping equipment store. It is hosted on the EKMPOWERSHOP Platform. After a about a year of adding products and designing my site i decided to hire an SEO Company based in the UK, they were a good company with some big clients. Anyways to cut a really long story short....they completely ripped me off by £700 a month for 7 months for my site to keep going backwards, they wouldnt target the keywords i wanted and all they did was provide really spammy, non relevant, no page rank links...my site ended up on number 31 of Google. I managed to drop the company and try to do things myself. I optimized my sites content so it wasn't keyword stuffed I re-wrote all my alt tags to look more natural I optimized my meta and h1 tags I carried on with trying to build relevant, high page rank links Anyways i managed to get my homepage to page 3/4 of Google. It stayed there for a few weeks but over the past few weeks my Homepage is dropping back to page 28-30 and being replaced with a random page of my site on page 4-6. It corrects itself after a while and my homepage returns but then it happens all over again....today i have a random page on page 4 and my homepage is on page 29. Any ideas on what is causing this and how can i get my site up there? I have had some ideas come back that it is the EKM platform i am using but since the seo company took the p out of me, its the only one i can afford at the moment until i start selling. I am a small business with stock waiting to be sold but no matter how much i read and rules to follow my site just doesn't seem to move. Any help would be really really apreciated and be nice!
Technical SEO | | hillfields0 -
Dramatic Decrease in Google Organic Traffic Indicates a Penalty But None Found
So we've been having some difficulty with one of our websites since we split it in half and moved one section of content to a new domain with a new name, at the end of May. http://www.dialtosave.co.uk/mobile/ was moved to http://www.somobile.co.uk And in the following 6 weeks, the google organic traffic has fallen to miniscule levels, that seem to indicate a more serious issue than just low ranking. Initially when the site was moved, the 301s transferred the authority very quickly and the new website pages ranked well. Now, some of them simply won't rank at all unless you include the name of the website "somobile". Here is one of the current rankings that indicates an issue:
Technical SEO | | purpleindigo
"somobile" - 1
"somobile mobile phones" - not in top 50 These are some of the terms we used to rank in the top 10 on Google UK, and still do on Bing UK, but don't rank in the top 50 on Google UK now:
samsung galaxy ace
apple iphone 5 deals
samsung tocco icon Our webmaster central account says that only 30% of the pages in our sitemap are in the index. It seems like a penalty has been imposed, but our reconsideration request (just submitted because it seemed like a sensible next step) came back saying there were no manual actions taken. Can you see what it is that might be causing the problem for us? I would have thought it was the new domain (with less direct links and less brand credibility), or content issues, but I would have thought that would just reduce the ranking by a few pages rather than just hide the pages altogether.0 -
Google dropping pages from SERPS
The website for my London based plumbing company has thousands of specifically tailored pages for the various services we provide to all the areas in London. It equates to approximately 6000 pages in total. When google has all these pages indexed, we tend to get a fair bit of traffic - as they cater pretty well for long tail searches. However, every once in a while Google will drop the vast majority of our indexed pages from SERPs for a few days or weeks at a time - for example at the moment Google is only indexing 613 whereas last week it was back at the normal ~6000. Why does this happen? We of course lose a lot of organic traffic when these pages don't displayed - what are we doing wrong? Website: www.pgs-plumbers.co.uk
Technical SEO | | guy_andrews0