Whitehat site suffering from drastic & negative Keyword/Phrase Shifts out of the blue!
-
I am the developer for a fairly active website in the education sector that offers around 30 courses and has quite an actively published blog a few times a week and social profiles.
The blog doesn't have comments enabled and the type of visitor that visits is usually looking for lessons or a course.
Over the past year we have had an active input in terms of development to keep the site up to date, fast and following modern best practises. IE SSL certificates, quality content, relevant and high powered backlinks ect...
Around a month ago we got hit by quite a large drop in our ranked keywords / phrases which shocked us somewhat.. we attributed it to googles algorithm change dirtying the waters as it did settle up a couple of weeks later.
However this week we have been smashed again by another large change dropping almost 100 keywords some very large positions.
My question is quite simple(I wish)... What gives?
I don't expect to see drops this large from not doing anything negative and I'm unsure it's an algorithm change as my other clients on Moz don't seem to have suffered either so it's either isolated to this target area or it's an issue with something occurring to or on the site?
-
Snowflake,
When you migrate to HTTP's i believe you have to add the new protocol to Search Console. Google looks at HTTP and HTTPs as 2 different sites, which is why you might be seeing your index count going down under your HTTP account in SC. If you add the HTTPs version of your website to search console, you may see that those pages have been indexed under the HTTPs protocol. Check it out, wait a few weeks and see what happens.
Secure Your Site With HTTPS - Search Console Help
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6073543?hl=en -
That is a very good shout!
-
Thanks Don,
I had read that article initially actually which is why I thought a few weeks was enough for it all to have settled back out but maybe I'm expecting a bit much for a 600 page site.
Many thanks for your help I'll maybe just be patient if there is nothing glaringly wrong
-
Also a quick point, if you still have your Google search console setup for HTTP, even though you use HTTPS now, I'd suggest looking at what is being reported as indexed in there. That maybe the missing link.
Cordialement,
Don
-
So I'm not seeing anything blocking crawling on your site which is good. But I did notice that you have at one time used URL types "http" and "https" which leads me to believe you may have recently switched to HTTPS. In such case you should know that it may take Google sometime to adjust. On a technical level, https and http are 2 different domains.
It is highly likely that Google has index the HTTP version of some of these pages which is why your index count maybe lower then normal for the HTTPS version.
I do see you properly 301 redirected these pages and your sitemaps are reflecting the https as well, if again this was a recent change it just looks like its going to take a bit of time for Google to catch up.
This is worth a quick look, https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6073543?hl=en (scroll to the bottom) and see the section "Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS".
I sent you additional info in PM.
Hope this helps,
Don
-
We did go from http to https about a month ago but we were careful that all the redirects and sitemaps were reflected correctly. I dont think there is an issue with the robots text (it is present and nothing weird blocking).
I'll take a look at those links and send you a pm - many thanks Don
-
Hi,
There are several reasons.
If you have recently changed your url structure. IE (went from using www to not, or https or not, or trailing / or not). In these cases Google could have indexed the pages already under the "other" version.
Google could be having a crawling error, like in a robots.txt or lack there of. Improper canonical tags, blocked access, improper redirects, or a manual penalty.
If you would like to post a link (or pm me) I will take a look and see if I can spot a potential problem for you.
Here are a couple links on Google that should help:
Why Pages Drop From Index
Overview Pages Not Being CrawledHope this helps,
Don
-
Checking Webmaster Tools it looks like Google has unindexed 500 out of our 630 pages in the last 2 weeks.
Is there any reason for why this maybe?
-
Thanks for your input Donford,
I've had a look in OSE again and I can't see any spam links (all the genuine links are rated 0 through to 3) which looks very good. So it doesn't appear to be a negative campaign against me.
I may try Majestic for peace of mind... it makes it even more the stranger that we are being penalised so much
-
Hi Snowflake,
You can use the OSE (Open Site Explorer) here on Moz to check the links they found. You can download that report to CSV to easily sort and see if you have a possible negative campaign running against you.
You could also use, Majestic, or SEMRush. to find more links. Just note there is no tool, free or paid that is going to be able to get all the links pointing to your site.
If you don't find a lot of spam links to your site, chances are there isn't somebody trying to target you with a negative campaign.
Hope it helps,
-
Thanks Eric,
There are a few languages of the site but as far as I'm aware no duplicate content in the same language but I will check with Siteliner just to be sure.
For disavowing backlinks - is this just via webmaster tools you are recommending to do that? If so we haven't done that yet but it seems sensible to try. When I last checked back links there were a few random sites that we certainly hadn't submitted to and looked spammy but when I went onto them we couldn't see our links.
Do you have a recommendation for a better backlink testing tool?
-
I know this is frustrating. There are a few areas that I would look into that could be causing this: duplicate content issues and links. First, look to see if you have any duplicate content issues on the site. There could be a duplicate copy of the site (perhaps a dev version that should not be indexed) or even certain content on your site that's causing issues. You might try Siteliner's crawler to identify if there are any issues you can fix.
Another possible reason is the links to the site. The site could have been hit by negative SEO, and a lot of "low quality" links or off-topic links could be pointing to your site. I've seen this in the past, and the only thing you can do is identify the links and disavow them. Sometimes you can get them removed, but disavowing them should work.
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 forum links are redirecting to high spammy & NSFW sites: Any impact on main website?
Hi all, We have a discussion forum like subdomain.website.com. Some spammers have created many links with our subdomain URL which are redirecting to high spammy and NSFW sites (Not sure how they did). We are trying to stop the redirects. So far many visitors and bots have recorded visits to these spammy sites with our URL. Will this impact our website anyhow ? I noticed that our website spam score has been increased and not sure if this is coincidental or penalized. Ranking even dropped without manual actions. I wonder how much of this subdomain activity will impact main website? Please advise.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz1 -
My site in 2 page
my site in 2 page how can i rank with this keywords in dubai legal translation in Dubai
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | saharali150 -
Should I submit a sitemap for a site with dynamic pages?
I have a coupon website (http://couponeasy.com)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shopperlocal_DM
Being a coupon website, my content is always keeps changing (as new coupons are added and expired deals are removed) automatically. I wish to create a sitemap but I realised that there is not much point in creating a sitemap for all pages as they will be removed sooner or later and/or are canonical. I have about 8-9 pages which are static and hence I can include them in sitemap. Now the question is.... If I create the sitemap for these 9 pages and submit it to google webmaster, will the google crawlers stop indexing other pages? NOTE: I need to create the sitemap for getting expanded sitelinks. http://couponeasy.com/0 -
Overall traffic increasing but specific short tailed keywords decreasing any ideas?
Something very strange has happened regarding my website traffic when making a comparison to the first six months of 2012 and then 2014. Anybody got any ideas? From my Google analytics from 1 January 2014 to 1 July in other words six months my total traffic on my website was 30,209. Not provided source ( what does this mean ? ) was very high at 23,141 but two of the my main short tail keywords I've targeted in the past "Whitby holiday cottages “only equal 254 and "Whitby cottages" was only 176. When I made a comparison with the same time period below in 2012 the website traffic this year as gone up greatly by almost 20000, but the two of my money short tail keywords as gone down greatly! If I compare the same time frame for 2012 the overall traffic was only 13,380. Not provided source was nowhere near as high at only 1836 which is also much less than above in 2014 but the short tail keywords I targeted "Whitby holiday cottages was almost 10 times higher at 2005 and "Whitby cottages “much higher at 613. I ran the questionnaire on http://www.mytrafficdropped.com/quiz/ regarding Panda and particularly Penguin and its association with back links. The article says that Penguin didn't hit the overall keywords, but only specific ones if they been targeted on the following dates the time points of April 24, 2012 and May 25, 2012 which are known Penguin rollout dates. So when I checked the two short tail keywords above for those two dates the figures did seem to drop from 10 hits a day to 5 but then went back up immediately to approximately 10 hits a day during the two-month period which suggested to me that I'd not been hit by Penguin on those dates. So when you look at the comparison the first six months of 2012 and then 2014 there is no doubt that money short tail keywords of dropped off dramatically for me but the overall website traffic has gone up dramatically. Some of the increase in traffic will be down to time and more articles/pages etc.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WhitbyHolidayCottages
The two short tail keywords I mention above I know I've dropped in Google rankings I used to be position three page one and the site is now position 10 so I would assume that's why I've dropped in traffic for those phrases.
Has anybody got any idea what's happened? I can honestly say that I've not noticed it in bookings on the website business seems about the same overall.0 -
Possibilities of Negative Co-Citation and/or Co-Occurrence?
Knowing how co-citation and co-occurrence function, or how we speculate that they function, it seems there could be several ways that competitors could associate negative words and phrases with sites they compete with. This could also be disastrous for reputation management. Someone could associate negative terms about a person or business without linking to them and it could do harm. Does this make sense? Is this possible or are there safe-checks in place?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Does the Traffic boost SEO/SERP ranks?
Hello, I know a guy that sells Organic traffic, bought 10k from him, will this help me to bost google seo ranks? Attached a screenshoot thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 7liberty0 -
Same template site same products but different content?
for the sake of this post I am selling lighters. I have 3 domains small-lighters.com medium-lighter.com large-lighters.com On all of the websites I have the same template same images etc and same products. The only difference is the way the content is worded described etc different bullet points. My domains are all strong keyword domains not spammy and bring in type in traffic. Is it ok to continue in this manner in your opinion?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dynamic080 -
Is it negative to put a backlink into the footer's website of our clients ?
Hello there ! Everything is in the subject of this post but here is the context : we are a web agency and we, among others, build websites for our clients (most of them are shops). Until now, we put a link in their footer, like "developped by MyWebShop". But we don't know if it is bad or not. With only one website we can have like hundred of backlinks at once, but is it good for SEO or not ? Will Google penalize us thinking that is blackhat practices ? Is it better to put our link in the "legal notices" or "disclaimer" part of the websites ? What is the best practice for a lasting SEO ? I hope you understand my question, Thnak you in advance !
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mywebshop0