Google Update
-
My rank has dropped quite a lot this past week and I can see from the Moz tools that there is an unconfirmed Google update responsible. Is there any information from Moz on this?
-
Hi Marie,
Thanks for taking the time to write up such a lengthy reply. I completely understand that a trained SEO eye is what is needed, which is why I set about training myself, and in the past 4 months have learnt and conducted more beneficial SEO on my site than in its 7 year history. Moz is a great tool for tracking, after conducting my own SEO changes my ranking keywords doubled, and even with this latest drop, are still higher than they have ever been.
My weakness is link building, as opposed to onsite SEO. This is my next area of focus, but without being able to identify what Google has changed it makes it incredibly difficult to make the correct changes. I suppose I can do nothing else but keep searching for my definitive answers and employing them.
Thanks again!
-
There are many different kinds and qualities of site audits. I've seen some expensive site audits that were useless. It frustrates me that some SEO companies are producing these expensive audits that are not helpful at all.
There are good tools out there to cover the basics, but a good SEO audit has to go well beyond what a tool can give you.
When I do a site audit it will take me several weeks to complete it. Seriously...weeks. I'll often discover something that seems off and then go down a rabbit trail for a few days investigating that. I'll agree that tools like Moz and SEMRush are awesome. But a good site audit needs an experienced eye in order to be helpful.
I also think that many SEOs overlook overall site quality when doing an audit. I'm not talking about technical quality, but rather, answering the question, "Is my site truly better than the ones that are ranking above me?" I really think that as Google gets better and better at answering a user's query, the only sites that are going to be ranked well are the ones that truly are better sites...not just the ones with the proper h tags, title tags and url structure.
For example, I recently reviewed a site that ranked #1 for years and then dropped to page 3. He was sure that he was being penalized. When I looked at his site I couldn't figure out how to purchase the product he was selling. There was almost no helpful information on product pages. There was only one stock image of the product. As a user, I would be much more likely to purchase from any of the sites on page 1 than from his site. Those sites had beautiful design, buying guides, easy to understand shopping carts, etc.
A tool won't give you that info.
The problem though is that to have an experienced person who has successfully helped sites recover look at your site, it's going to be expensive.
-
Hi, I use Moz's Campaign's Report and SEMRush for Site Audits. SEMRush's Site Audit is very user-friendly and generates a very useful report. I tend to use that more for technical audits. I'd definitely give that a go. You can get a free trial easily enough. Sign up and they offer you a week's trial fairly quickly.
-
Where is the best place for a site audit in your opinion? I find that every SEO company I approach is ridiculously expensive and do very little work (hence why I do it all myself now). Are there tools for this type of audit?
-
It used to be that when Google updated their algorithms significantly we could say, "Oh! This update targets THIS". In the past, fixes were much easier to address. But now, when Google makes a significant algo update, in most cases there is nothing specific to fix. This is probably the case with the updates that happened this week.
My advice is usually to have a site audit done and to do whatever you can to make your site a better option than your competitors. That's not always easy though.
Also, don't necessarily assume it's due to an algorithm change. If you've made any site changes recently, make sure that those haven't affected the site as well.
-
It appears that there have been two Google algorithm updates, recently: See: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-algorithm-update-23381.html
This might help you connect some dots.
I hope that helps.
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
-
During major update rankings update seem to be on pause ?
Hello, I have read in the past that during a major update google puts all his ressources in the update and it seems that they don't update search results anymore. Has someone noticed that too ? How long does it take for an update to be rolled out fully and have everything get back to normal ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Google blocks certain articles on my website ... !
Hello I have a website with more than 350 unique articles, Most of them are crawled by Google without a problem, but I find out certain articles are never indexed by Google. I tried to rewrite them, adding fresh images and optimizing them but it gets me nowhere. Lately, I rewrite an article of those and tried to (fetch and render) through Google Webmasters, and I found this result, can you tell me if there is anything to do to fix that? BMVh4
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Evcindex0 -
Need to update Google Search Console profile for http to https change. Will a "change of address" option suffice or do we need to create a new GSC profile?
In the past I have seen most clients create new Google Search Profile when they update to a https URL. However a colleague of mine asked if just updating the change of address option will suffice https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106. Would it be best to just update the change of address for the Google Search Console profile to keep the data seamless? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Google is indexing the wrong pages
I have been having problems with Google indexing my website since mid May. I haven't made any changes to my website which is wordpress. I have a page with the title 'Peterborough Cathedral wedding', I search Google for 'wedding Peteborough Cathedral', this is not a competitive search phrase and I'd expect to find my blog post on page one. Instead, half way down page 4 I find Google has indexed www.weddingphotojournalist.co.uk/blog with the title 'wedding photojournalist | Portfolio', what google has indexed is a link to the blog post and not the blog post itself. I repeated this for several other blog posts and keywords and found similar results, most of which don't make any sense at all - A search for 'Menorca wedding photography' used to bring up one of my posts at the top of page one. Now it brings up a post titled 'La Mare wedding photography Jersey" which happens to have a link to the Menorca post at the bottom of the page. A search for 'Broadoaks country house weddng photography' brings up 'weddingphotojournalist | portfolio' which has a link to the Broadoaks post. a search for 'Blake Hall wedding photography' does exactly the same. In this case Google is linking to www.weddingphotojournalist.blog again, this is a page of recent blog posts. Could this be a problem with my sitemap? Or the Yoast SEO plugin? or a problem with my wordpress theme? Or is Google just a bit confused?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | weddingphotojournalist0 -
Does having all client websites on same server/same Google Analytics red flag Google?
If you have several clients, and they are all on the same server, and also under ONE Google Analytics account, will that negatively impact with Google? They all have different content and addresses, some have the same template, but with different images.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BBuck1 -
New Google Update?
Hey guys, So I have noticed a few of my clients rankings drop suddenly as of last week. They went from page 1 to page 4 and I they have been on page 1 for years, it happened around 17/01/2013. Anyone heard anything about a new update? Sample URL & Keyword: http://www.childrensfunkyfurniture.com/childrens-beds Childrens Beds Your help would be appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversiontactics0 -
So What On My Site Is Breaking The Google Guidelines?
I have a site that I'm trying to rank for the Keyword "Jigsaw Puzzles" I was originally ranked around #60 or something around there and then all of a sudden my site stopped ranking for that keyword. (My other keyword rankings stayed) Contacted Google via the site reconsideration and got the general response... So I went through and deleted as many links as I could find that I thought Google may not have liked... heck, I even removed links that I don't think I should have JUST so I could have this fixed. I responded with a list of all links I removed and also any links that I've tried to remove, but couldn't for whatever reasons. They are STILL saying my website is breaking the Google guidelines... mainly around links. Can anyone take a peek at my site and see if there's anything on the site that may be breaking the guidelines? (because I can't) Website in question: http://www.yourjigsawpuzzles.co.uk UPDATE: Just to let everyone know that after multiple reconsideration requests, this penalty has been removed. They stated it was a manual penalty. I tried removing numerous different types of links but they kept saying no, it's still breaking rules. It wasn't until I removed some website directory links that they removed this manual penalty. Thought it would be interesting for some of you guys.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichardTaylor0 -
Help! Why did Google remove my images from their index?
I've been scratching my head over this one for a while now and I can't seem to figure it out. I own a website that is user-generated content. Users submit images to my sites of graphic resources (for designers) that they have created to share with our community. I've been noticing over the past few months that I'm getting completely dominated in Google Images. I used to get a ton of traffic from Google Images, but now I can't find my images anywhere. After diving into Analytics I found this: http://cl.ly/140L2d14040Q1R0W161e and realized sometime about a year ago my image traffic took a dive. We've gone back through all the change logs and can't find where we made any changes to the site structure that could have caused this. We are stumped. Does anyone know of any historical Google updates that could have caused this last year around the end of April 2010? Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shawn810