Subtle On-site Factors That Could Cause a Penalty
-
It looks like we have the same penalties on more than one ecommerce site.
What subtle on-site factors can contribute to non-manual penalty, specifically rankings slowly going down for all short tail keywords? And what does it take to pull yourself out of these penalties?
-
Hi again,
This could be dampening Google's view of the site, but I would be interested to see what the link building and other promotional activity of your competitors looks like. DA might not have caught up with what they're doing yet, but the subtle improvements are enough to make the "playing field" a little tougher for you.
When you're being slowly out-done, I'd definitely recommend making sure the site is absolutely perfect from an on-page point of view. If you suspect you're keyword stuffing at all, resolve that and tidy up any other house keeping issues you come across. I don't think that would be enough to take a site from top 3 rankings to page 2, but it won't help if there are other competitive aspects you are being beaten on.
Forgive me for linking to my own post, but I wrote about competitive link analysis a few years ago and it might be helpful if you're looking at what others are doing as far as links go: http://www.ayima.com/seo-knowledge/competitive-backlink-analysis.html
-
You're right, it's not a penalty. Rankings have been slowly dropping over the past 8 months. Many keywords have gone from the top 3 to the second page. Our DA is as strong as the top sites.
I'm wondering if slight keyword stuffing (repeating a keyword once or twice in the title and h1 on a few pages like a title that says "Running Shoes, Walking Shoes" when the page is about all types of shoes) and other on-site factors could be causing this.
-
Hi there,
For sites whose rankings are slowly going down, I would be very hesitant to use the term penalty. Penalties usually result in large, noticeable drops - more than 10 places lost at once and huge percentages of traffic gone "overnight". If several sites are losing one or two positions a week, it is more likely that competitor activity is taking place at a higher rate or quality.
There are a myriad of things competitors could be doing to slowly push ahead - the usual suspect is better / more link building: competing is not about matching competitors link for links, but rather:
- Acquiring links at a faster rate
- Acquiring more relevant links
- Acquiring better-quality links (a BBC link as opposed to a link from a hobby blogger, etc.)
If link activity isn't the answer, so many other reasons can account for slow drops. Pagination issues resulting in duplicate content may not be enough for Google to outright penalise a site using its Panda algorithm, but they could be enough to make a site look like it was lower-quality and didn't deserve to rank as well as a tidy, well-optimised site.
Heavy "mentions" from around the web (e.g. the Telegraph mentioning a company 10 times in one month without linking to it) are positive signals, as is heavy social media activity and interaction.
What is the rate at which these sites lose rankings? I'd like to know a little more about how quickly they're dropping in order to think more about the "penalty" potential.
Thanks,
Jane
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
-
Want to remove a large amount of links from spam sites. SEO company says we will lose a lot of link juice?
Hi, We have a lot of links that have a spam score above 30% and 60%. I don't know if someone has spammed our website. However our SEO company has said we should remove these carefully over a period of 3 months while they add new good links. I don't quite trust this advice. Are they trying to get more business?? They have put doubt in our mind. Can anyone please shed any light on this?? Thank you
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | YvonneDupree0 -
Does ID's in URL is good for SEO? Will SEO Submissions sites allow such urls submissions?
Example url: http://public.beta.travelyaari.com/vrl-travels-13555-online It's our sites beta URL, We are going to implement it for our site. After implementation, it will be live on travelyaari.com like this - "https://www.travelyaari.com/vrl-travels-13555-online". We have added the keywords etc in the URL "VRL Travels". But the problems is, there are multiple VRL travels available, so we made it unique with a unique id in URL - "13555". So that we can exactly get to know which VRL Travels and it is also a solution for url duplication. Also from users / SEO point of view, the url has readable texts/keywords - "vrl travels online". Can some Moz experts suggest me whether it will affect SEO performance in any manner? SEO Submissions sites will accept this URL? Meanwhile, I had tried submitting this URL to Reddit etc. It got accepted.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobinJA0 -
Besides description and design optimization, is there any other main factor that we can influence to get better App Store rankings?
Hi there! I do love SEO, the cracking Web Search engine, but when it comes to other Google's search engines like Youtube and Apps Store it's an unknown field for me.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Gaston Riera
So, i'm diving into App Store Optimization, ASO. This is my question: Besides the text and the design in the description of the app, is there any other factor that we can manipulate or influence?(such as linkbuilding, social media or alien magic hehe). Thanks a lot!
GR.0 -
Clean-up Question after a wordpress site Hack added pages with external links from a massive link wheel?
Hey All, Thought I would throw this out to ensure I am dotting my "i's" and crossing my "t's"..... Client WordPress site was hacked injected 3-4 pages that cross linked to hundreds (affiliate junk spam link wheel). Pages were removed, 3rd party cleared all malware/viruses. Heavy duty firewall and security monitoring are in place. Hacked pages are now showing as 404. No penalties, ranking issues....If anything there was a temporary BOOST in rankings due to the large link-wheel type net that the pages were receiving....That has since leveled out rankings. I guess my question is, in your opinion is it best to let those pages 404, I am noticing a large amount of links going to them from all over the world from this large link net that was built. I find the temptation to 301 re-direct deleted pages to the homepage difficult...lol..{the temptation is REAL}. Is there anything I am missing? Any other steps that YOU would take? I am assuming letting those pages 404 would be the best bet, as in time they will roll off index.... Thank you in advance, I appreciate any feedback or opinions....
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Anthony_Howard0 -
Advice needed! How to clear a website of a Wordpress Spam Link Injection Google penalty?
Hi Guys, I am currently working on website that has been penalised by Google for a spam link injection. The website was hacked and 17,000 hidden links were injected. All the links have been removed and the site has subsequently been redesigned and re-built. That was the easy part 🙂 The problems comes when I look on Webmaster. Google is showing 1000's of internal spam links to the homepage and other pages within the site. These pages do not actually exist as they were cleared along with all the other spam links. I do believe though this is causing problems with the websites rankings. Certain pages are not ranking on Google and the homepage keyword rankings are fluctuating massively. I have reviewed the website's external links and these are all fine. Does anyone have any experience of this and can provide any recommendations / advice for clearing the site from Google penalty? Thanks, Duncan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
80% of traffic lost over night, Google Penalty?
Hi all.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Hemjakt
I have a website called Hemjakt (http://www.hemjakt.se/) which is a search engine for real estate currently only available on the Swedish market. The application crawl real estate websites and collect all estates on a single searchable application. The site has been released for a few months and have seen a steady growth since release, increasing by 20% weekly up to ~900 visitors per day. 3 days ago, over night, I lost 80% of my traffic. Instead of 900 visitors per day I'm at ~100 visitors per day and when I search for long, specific queries such as "Åsgatan 15, Villa 12 rum i Alsike, Knivsta" ( <adress><house type=""><rooms><area> <city>), I'm now only found on the fifth page. I suspect that I have become a subject of a Google Penalty. How to get out of this mess?</city></rooms></house></adress> Just like all search engines or applications, I do crawl other websites and scrape their content. My content is ~90% unique from the source material and I do add user value by giving them the possibility to compare houses, get ton of more data to compare pricing and history, giving them extra functionalities that source site do not offer and so on. My analytics data show good user engagement. Here is one example of a Source page and a page at my site:
Source: http://www.hemnet.se/bostad/villa-12rum-alsike-knivsta-kommun-asgatan-15-6200964
My Site: http://www.hemjakt.se/bostad/55860-asgatan-15/ So: How do I actually confirm that this is the reason I lost my traffic? When I search for my branded query, I still get result. Also I'm still indexed by Google. If I am penalized. I'm not attempting to do anything Black Hat and I really believe that the app gives a lot of value to the users. What tweaks or suggestions do you have to changes of the application, to be able to continue running the service in a way that Google is fine with?0 -
Can anyone tell me why this site ranks so well?
Site in question: cellphoneshop.net From what I can tell from their link profile, the links they garner don't appear to be particularly high value but they dominate organic listings for my vertical (cell phone accessories), esp. in the last 2-3 months when Google was supposedly increasing the quality of their search results. Can anyone tell me why in particular this site ranks so well for competitive short and long tail terms?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eugeneku0 -
Competitors have local "mirror" sites
I have noticed that some of my competitors have set up "mirror" homepages set up for different counties, towns, or suburbs. In one case the mirror homepages are virtually identical escept for the title and in the other case about half of the content id duplicate and the other half is different. both of these competors have excellent rankings and traffic. I am surprised about these results, does anyone care to comment about it and is this a grey hat technique that is likely to be penalized eventually. thx Diogenes
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | diogenes0