Help! Why are my rankings down?
-
Hi,
Over the last couple of days I have found a HUGE drop in traffic. I checked a lot of our rankings, and we are definitely out of the game for at least a few keywords (not on 1st page). Our ranking has dropped on other keywords. We even dropped to #2 (for the first time ever) for our branded keyword search term.
What happened?! Could it have been the Penguin update, 1 month after it was released?
Help!
-
Is it OK if I just add nofollow tags to my inbound links?
-
Actually, I should add that my network of sites are all hosted in the same place.
If I go through all sites and add a nofollow tag to each link, would this resolve the issue? We haven't had the resources to create unique content for all of our sites just yet.
-
Thanks for your response Peter.
I think I do have a lot of exact match anchored links. Are you referring to in-linking on my website, or external inbound links?
I have a large network of websites (geographical location + industry domain names) which all pretty much have the same content, and the exact same links pointing back to my main site. We haven't had time to go through all of our sites yet because we've put all focus on our main website - which had been seeing tons of progress until Penguin hit!
It looks like it was the penguin update that hit us. Our traffic dropped significantly over the weekend, it was relatively normal for the rest of the month of May.
What can I do at this point?
-
hi there,
It could be penguin.. There was another penguin update a couple of days ago...do you have a lot of exact match anchored links?... more information on it here..http://searchengineland.com/google-pushes-first-penguin-algorithm-update-122518
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
-
Our webpage has been embedded in others website using iframe. Does this hurts us in rankings?
Hi all, One of our partners have embedded our webpage in their website using iframe such a way that anybody can browse to any page of our website from their website. It's said that content in iframes will not get indexed. But when I Google for h1 tag of our embedded webpage, I can see their website in SERP but not ours which is original. How it's been indexed? Is this hurting us in rankings? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Can the disavow tool INCREASE rankings?
Hi Mozzers, I have a new client who has some bad links in their profile that are spammy and should be disavowed. They rank on the first page for some longer tail keywords. However, we're aiming at shorter, well-known keywords where they aren't ranking. Will the disavow tool, alone, have the ability to increase rankings (assuming on-site / off-site signals are better than competition)? Thanks, Cole
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ColeLusby0 -
Competitor ranking well with duplicate content—what are my options?
A competitor is ranking #1 and #3 for a search term (see attached) by publishing two separate sites with the same content. They've modified the title of the page, and serve it in a different design, but are using their branded domain and a keyword-rich domain to gain multiple rankings. This has been going on for years, and I've always told myself that Google would eventually catch it with an algorithm update, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Does anyone know of other options? It doesn't seem like this falls under any of the categories that Google lists on their web spam report page—is there any other way to get bring this up with the powers that be, or is it something that I just have to live with and hope that Google figures out some day? Any advice would help. Thanks! how_to_become_a_home_inspector_-_Google_Search_2015-01-15_18-45-06.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | inxilpro0 -
Do legitimately earned links from unrelated sites help or hurt?
We have a few charity events coming up that have offered to link back to our homepage. While we do genuinely like the charities we are going to sponsor, I'm not sure how those links will look seo-wise. For example, one is for the local high school basketball team and another is for a Pediatric Care Mud Run. To a human, these links make perfect sense, but to a robot, I'm not sure if it differentiates these links from spam/some negative link. Granted, I understand that a small percentage of links probably won't do anything either way, but I'd like to ignore that for the purposes of my question. All things being equal, do links such as these help or hurt? Thanks for your time and insight, Ruben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Redirecting old domains for SEO ranking?
It's been a while since I read anything seriously out of the box on SEO but I thought I would see what others thought of the bold assertions made in this article. Most of it revolves around buying expired domains and using a 301 to point them, and their juice, to new sites. This guy makes a living doing this so he has to know a bit more than the average Joe but I'm wondering where the other shoe is and when it drops.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Highland0 -
Page 1 Ranking - Disappeared!
Hi All We launched our client's website http://rollerbannerscheap.co.uk in January this year. We have been building links making sure we are not over optmising anchor text and only following ethical SEO tactics. Our client's site eventually hit page 1 for it's main key word 'Roller Banner' 1 week ago, the site received impressions/clicks from the SERPS and has started to gain traffic from that particular keyword. I have checked today, and I cannot our client's website URL within the first 10 pages of Google, nevermind on page 1. Our client is currently undercutting competitiors on price, which we stated (the price) in the meta tag. Is it possible other SEOs could de-rank our website? If not, what would be a likely explaination for this occurance? Would just like to add, I recently build a link with anchor text 'Roller Banner Website, but one of my older links uses anchor text 'Roller Banners Cheap Website' - They're not exact match, but could this affect our ranking? Awaiting help Lewis
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SO_UK0 -
Do shady backlinks actually damage ranking?
That is, it looks like a whole bunch of sites got smacked around the penguin/panda updates, but is this by virtue of actually being hurt by google's algorithms, or by virtue of simply not being helped "as much"? That is, was it a matter of the sites just not having any 'quality' backlinks, having relied on things google no longer liked, which would result in not having as much to push them to the top? That is, they would have been in the same position had they not had those shoddy practices? Or was google actively punishing those sites? That is, are they worse off for having those shoddy practices? I guess the reason I ask is I'm somewhat terrified of going "out there" to get backlinks -- worst case scenario: would it just not do much to help, or would it actually hurt? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | yoni450 -
Has anyone ever reported a spammer and actually seen them de-ranked?
I have a few competitors outranking me using black hat SEO. I reported them to Google, and I'm just wondering if Google will even look at it. What has been your experience with this? Has anyone ever gotten results?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | UnderRugSwept1