May last year my sites orgainic listings, and therfore visitors, plumeted. Why?
-
Hello,
May last year my site took a major fall. I am unsure why, and it's time I found out why. Recently I have rebuilt the site from scratch, except for the urls and content, and it's starting to turn back.
What is the best method to go about understanding just what caused the decline? What are the options I have?
See the image for a graph of the all-time traffic. http://i.imgur.com/uL93yPj.png
My website in question is: www.ditalia.com.au
Thanks.
-
Thanks guys, this does seam like a good place to get answers and help in my area of expertise--design and layout.I have had a couple of SEO people work on backlinks and they say they didn't do any black-hat stuff. But, I guess I will find out during this research and fix.
-
Did you get a manual penalty notice in Webmaster Tools?
-
I haven't had any penalty notifications from Google at all. (other than some 404 errors)
-
Have you examined your link profile closely for obvious spammy, dubious, unrelated links?
-
I will check this.
-
Are your inbound links heavy with keyword anchor text?
-
I will check this.
-
Is your textual content unique and give value to your visitor?
-
Yes, every page is unique, however, I have not check for plagiarism--if others have stolen it from us.
-
have you changed your meta content?
-
Only recently when I made the new site--about 4 weeks ago. They weren't change just before May 2012.
-
is the drop relating to certain keywords
-
Pretty much all of them.
MOZ has scanned my site and is displaying data about it now so I will start researching the links, determine their quality, and research how to
Any advice you have would be much appreciated.
-
-
Michael's questions are spot on but based on the timing and a quick glance at your anchor text profile I think it's pretty safe to say you were hit by Penguin. I'd assume there was some shady link building done to your site in the past through a link-blast service or some black-hat SEO.
Your site has a ton of links with the anchor phrasing of "wedding dress" or some variation thereof. I would suggest that you do some research on Penguin penalties and how to clean them up and definitely check Webmaster Tools for penalty notifications.
This is a good community to stay close to throughout this process. There are a ton of helpful people here who can help with questions along the way.
Good luck!
-
It might tie in with either Penguin or Panda updates, although content is Panda and Penguin is links (URLs).
- Did you get a manual penalty notice in Webmaster Tools?
- Have you examined your link profile closely for obvious spammy, dubious, unrelated links?
- Are your inbound links heavy with keyword anchor text?
- Is your textual content unique and give value to your visitor?
- have you changed your meta content?
- is the drop relating to certain keywords
- how have rankings stacked up over the past 2yrs - have they fallen?
You need to examine closely so that all your work doesn't fall flat again.
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
-
I have a WP site which uses categories to display the same content in several locations. Which items should get a canonical tag to avoid a ding for duplicate content?
So...I have a Knowledge Center and press room that pretty much use the same posts. So...technically the content looks like its on several pages because the post shows up on the Category listing page. Do I add a Canonical tag to each individual post...so that it is the only one that is counted? Also...I have a LONG disclaimer that goes at the bottom of most of the posts. would this count as duplicate content? Is there a way to markup a single paragraph to tell the spiders not to crawl it?
Reporting & Analytics | | LindsayiHart0 -
Are these Search Console crawl errors a major concern to new client site?
We recently (4/1) went live with a new site for a client of ours. The client site was originally Point2 before they made the switch to a template site with Real Estate Webmasters. Now when I look into the Search Console I am getting the following Crawl Errors: 111 Server Errors (photos) 104 Soft 404s (blogs, archives, tags) 6,229 Not Found (listings) I have a few questions. The server errors I know not a lot about so I generally ignore. My main concerns are the 404s and not found. The 404s are mostly tags and blog archives which I wonder if I should leave alone or do 301s for each to /blog. For not found, these are all the previous listings from the IDX. My assumption is these will naturally fall away after some time, as the new ones have already indexed. But I wonder what I should be doing here and which will be affecting me. When we launched the new site there was a large spike in clicks ( 250% increase) which has now tapered off to an average of ~85 clicks versus ~160 at time of launch. Not sure if the Crawl Errors have any effect, I'm guessing not so much right now. I'd appreciate your insights Mozzers!
Reporting & Analytics | | localwork0 -
Differences in site search revenue in GA
I just put in a piece of software to replace a really bad built in site search engine on my 3dcart website. Now I am trying to measure the change, but I am having some issues. When I check the ecom data in the conversions section of GA with the built in segment Performed Site Search, I get promising results. Approximately 5% revenue increase over LY. But if we jump to behavior, site search, usage, and then check the visits with site search, I get a decrease by 4%. And the actual revenue is off, by like double (150k compared to 80k) Anyone have any idea why I am getting these results? The site search function is set up. Tracking is enabled, query parameter is keyword and search url is /search.asp?keyword=
Reporting & Analytics | | ShockoeCommerce0 -
Using Site Maps Correctly
Hello I'm looking to submit a sitemap for a post driven site with over 5000 pages. The site hasn't got a sitemap but it is indexed by google - will submitting a sitemap make a difference at this stage? Also, most free sitemap tools only go up to 5000 pages, and I'm thinking I would try a sitemap using a free version of the tool before I buy one - If my site is 5500 pages but I only submit a sitemap for 5000 (I have no control of which pages get included in the sitemap) would this have a negative effect for the pages that didn't get included? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | wearehappymedia0 -
How can we stop Google analytics pulling in data from another site?
We have a few accounts under one Google login. They all have separate Google analytics codes but one of the sites is somehow pulling in some data from another site but the other site has not got the same analytics code on it. Not sure how this is happening and what we can do about this, is it a bug in the Google Analytics system? Any help would be appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | dentaldesign0 -
What determines the page order of site:domain?
Whenever I use site:domain.com to check what's index, it's pretty much always in the same order. I gather from this, the order is not random. I'm also reasonably certainly it isn't related to any page strength signals or ranking results. So, does anyone know why the pages are displayed in the order they are? What information does the order of the pages tell me? Thanks, Ruben
Reporting & Analytics | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Wordpress site with increase number of Crawl(400 response Code) errors in Others section of GWT
I have a wordpress site http://muslim-academy.com/I check in Google Webmasters tool today and I see the increase number of errors in Others area of Google webmaster Tool.The error code is 400http://muslim-academy.com/%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%AE%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%84%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%A6%D9%8A%D8%B3-%D8%AC%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%84-%D8%B9%D8%A8%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%B5%D8%B1-2/%D8%B3%D9%....%3Cbr%20/%3E________________%3Cbr%20/%3E___________%3Ca%20href=?lang=zhOne of the example link of this error.Can you guide me why the number of errors are increasing and how to fix the existing errors.
Reporting & Analytics | | csfarnsworth0 -
Does anyone know of a way to do a profile level filter to exclude all traffic if it enters the site via certain landing pages?
Does anyone know of a way to do a profile level filter to exclude all traffic if it enters the site via certain landing pages? The problem I have is that we have several pages that are served to visitors of numerous other domains but are also served to visitors of our site. We end up with inflated Google Analytics numbers because people are viewing these pages from our partners' domains but never actually entering our site. I've made an advanced segment that serves the purpose but I'd really like to filter it at the profile level so the numbers across the board are more accurate without having to apply an advanced segment to every report. The advanced segment excludes visits that hit these pages as landing pages but includes visits where people have come from other pages on our domain. I know that you can do profile filters to exclude visits to pages or directories entirely but is there a way to filter them only if they are a landing pages? Any other creative thoughts? Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | ATIseo0