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Category: Algorithm Updates

Discuss algorithm updates and impacts.


  • After the June Core Algorithim Update, the site suffered a loss of about 30-35% of traffic. My suggestions to try to get traffic back up have been to add metadata (since the majority of our content is lacking it), as well ask linking if possible, adding keywords to alt images, expanding and adding content as it's thin content wise. I know that from a technical standpoint there are a lot of fixes we can implement, but I do not want to suggest anything as we are onboarding an SEO agency soon. Last week, I saw that traffic for the site went back to "normal" for one day and then saw a dip of 30% the next day. Despite my efforts, traffic has been up and down, but the majority of organic traffic has dipped overall this month. I have been told by my company that I am not doing a good job of getting numbers back up, and have been given a warning stating that I need to increase traffic by 25% by the end of the month and keep it steady,  or else. Does anyone have any suggestions? Is it realistic and/or possible to reach that goal?

    | NBJ_SM
    2

  • Hi community, I am just trying to figure out which can be priority in on page, off page and technical SEO. Which one you prefer to go first? Which one is easy to handle? Which one is easy to measure? Your opinions and suggestions please. Expecting more realistic answers rather than usual check list. Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0

  • Hi Guys Is REACT SEO friendly? Has anyone used REACT and what was the results? Or do you recommend something else that is better suited for SEO? Many thanks for your help in advance. Cheers Martin

    | martin1970
    0

  • algorithm updates

    Hello, SEO experts from around the world. We need your help; we have seen massive ranking flux across our website and others. We cannot explain what is causing this ranking flux. The content marketing is top quality, so we don’t know why we are moving from 25 to 50th on Google and sometimes even beyond that. Can any SEO experts explain why our agency is moving so much within Google’s rankings? We don’t know whether to make changes or possibly wait. Any help would be fantastic; thank you all.

    | sarahwalsh
    0

  • I can't find good answers to this question so I'm asking here. Thanks for any help you can give. Most people, 4 out of 5, search for our product using two separate words, while the trademarked name of the product is one word. Think: CleanCar(tm) vs Clean Car. However our product is a leader in the industry so it would be like searching for perhaps "Play Station" vs "Playstation" if people were looking for a gaming console in general. Google separates them in the search volumes so I am assuming it does not see Clean Car in the same way it sees CleanCar. I (obviously) want to rank as highly as possible in both while keeping brand integrity in mind. Should I SEO for just the CleanCar or both? Perhaps using CleanCar in the title and Clean Car in the description? Does Google distinguish? Thanks! bnew

    | mcampanaro
    0

  • lately i have been thinking , when a  crawler visits an already visited site  or indexed site, whats the duration of its scanning?

    | Sam09schulz
    0

  • Hello, how can I discover the Google ranking number for a keyword in Brazil location. I need to know what is the position in Brazil location for the keyword "ligação internacional" in the Google search engine for the webpage www.solaristelecom.com/ligacao-internacional. I tried to use the Moz tools to discover it but only shows that I am not in the top 50, then I want to know where I am, and if I am listed or not. I tried to search it in my browser and didn't show the name of my website. Thank you.

    | lmoraes
    1

  • Hi
    My website is not configured in AMP pages, but it is mobile-friendly.
    Last month, my website was ranked to 10 positions for this keyword (Magento Development Company).
    Sometimes it's showing on 25 positions but not in the top 5 positions. Here is my URL (for analysis):
    https://www.nevinainfotech.com/magento-development-service/
    Would you please explain why my keyword rankings are often not showing in the search listings?
    Would you mind letting me know is there anything I need to change?
    Thank

    | rayabahadur
    0
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  • Hi, I wanted to know whether we can include URLs with search parameters in the sitemap. Currently, we are trying to append structured data for our job listing page. There happens to be a large number of job listings around 1000 pages with unique job-id and location. Should we add these pages in the sitemap or is there any other solution to this? Regards, Tejas

    | tejasbansode
    0

  • How to find low competition niches with good search volume?

    | Asma5
    2

  • On April 10th my organic search clicks dropped 75% overnight. I have never seen anything like it. What Google algorithm change could have caused this? I have no manual actions and my indexed page count is about the same. I have noticed that several queries that I was number one for including my brand have dropped by anywhere from two to ten spots. The brand dropping out of the first spot is what really gets me. There is nothing similar to it at all. My speed score is moderate, so I don't think that is it. My site was down most of the day on the 9th or 10th, but that has never caused a drop in search clicks and the next day they were about the same. I noticed that the CDC now occupies the number one spot for my brand. Even though the exact brand name is nowhere in the text of the CDC page. I think this might be due to Google trying to help official health organizations do better due to COVID19, but the queries I have dropped on have nothing to do with Coronavirus. Also, none of my other sites have seen this type of problem. Only the health site seems affected. I recently did a press release campaign and my link counts are up, so I don't that is it either. The brand page is https://stdcarriers.com and an example of an effected query is Celebrities with STDs.

    | STDCarriers
    0
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  • I'm sure most of you have heard about this startup, RankScience, that has big ambitions to disrupt the SEO industry with their automated (I know I know...the word 'automated' and 'SEO' in the same sentence!!!) optimization software. Their claim is that by running thousands of congruent A/B tests on your site, they can maximize rankings and organic traffic. Initially my thoughts were "oh crap, there goes my (and a lot of other people's) career". But then I started thinking about it a bit more and realized a couple things. First, software can't replace a face-to-face client meeting. Being in an agency world as most of us are, client interactions are vital to a sustained partnership. Second, someone is going to have to understand what this software does, configure it, and monitor it, and I'm ok with that being part of my job if that's how the industry shifts. Third, and most importantly, in theory this software has the capability to reverse engineer search algorithms. If they had the data of 10,000 websites using their platform and are collecting data on what works and what doesn't, it's only a matter of time before they can pick apart the algorithm piece by piece to figure out exactly how it works. Google is obviously not going to like that very much and will almost certainly right the ship. That's my 2 cents, looking forward to what your thoughts are on RankScience and the future of our industry.

    | LoganRay
    2

  • hi, i have recently made sites.google site and submitted to search console but when I copy paste in google , its not appearing

    | alan-shultis
    0

  • HI, i have changed some h1 and h2 , changed and added paragraphs,fixed plagiarism,grammar and added some pics with alt text, I have just done it today, I am ranking on second page QUESTION-1 is it gonna affect my 2 months SEO efforts? QUESTION -2 Do I have to submit sitemap to google again? QUESTION-3 does changing content on the site frequently hurts SEO?

    | Sam09schulz
    0

  • Hi Guys Just curious to hear what you guys do to rank blog posts in the top in Google especially onsite, after the RankBrain update? Do you still use SEO tools to optimize this or are the SEO tools outdated for this? If yes which tools do you use to get success with? Cheers John

    | igniterman75
    1

  • Hello, If I have multiple sub-category of the same name ? does that affect SEO for example I have the following category structure? domain/bmw/series5/2006.html domain/bmw/series5/2007.html .. etc domain/bmw/series3/2007.html domain/bmw/series3/2006.html  ..etc domain/Acura/cl/2006.html domain/Acura/cl/2007.html .. etc I do use canonical url because I may have the same product in multiple categories but my question does google penalize me because I have the same (year) url key for multiple categories  even though I use canonical url ? do I have any advantage in masking them filters vs sub-category from SEO point of view ? specially my goal is to have different meta title and meta description for each sub category ?

    | LKCservicesINC
    0

  • Hi, i am doing Schema and don't know what type of property i should use for treatments like liposuction or botox or stuff like that. Would you use MedicalProcedure Markup? Thanks for helping me.

    | individualmarketing
    0

  • Hello, I would like to know how the changes in domain authority is considered by MOZ? Domain Authority for my this domain https://factohr.com was 14 and it is decreased to 13 in this week. Though i have a very decent and good links going over to all my pages howcome my DA is affected and decreased. As its regularly being updated and has a high quality traffic! i would like to know the reason behind decrement in DA and is there any connection with redirection of .com domain? How can i increase DA for my website?

    | MyMoz7
    10

  • Hi, There is a huge ranking difference between the GSC and browser  for our primary keyword. As per GSC, our ranking is around 15 and when checking on the multiple different incognito browsers it's around 50. How to handle this? Which is the accurate one? Product expert from Google forums claim that what I see on browsers are the personalized results; but I tried on different browsers with different connections. Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0

  • Hello, I'm thinking to extend my website into porn. At the moment there is no pornography on it, although we do talk about sex related topics and products (from dating to tutorials, to toys etc.) Would it be dangerous to keep the porn section on the same domain as the rest? Would this negatively affect my non-porn content as Googlebot would "flag" my website as being pornographic (although only a few pages would be)? Or simply Googlebot would leave the current non-porn pages ranking as they are now, just fine, and plus it would rank the porn pages if they "deserve" to? I hope my question is clear. I don't want to create a subdomain.

    | fabx
    0

  • Hey everyone! I'm having a weird issue that I've never experienced before. For one of my clients, GSC has a complete drop-off in the Performance section. All of the data shows that everything fell flat, or almost completely flat. But in Google Analytics, we have steady results. No huge drop-off in traffic, etc. Do any of you know why GSC would all of a sudden be unable to crawl our site? Or track this data? Let me know what you think! 
    Thanks!

    | TaylorAtVelox
    2

  • In my early 20's I authored an ebook that provides men with natural ways to improve their ahem... "bedroom performance". I'm now in my mid 30s, and while it's not such an enthralling topic, the thing makes me 80 or so bucks a day on good days, and it actually works. I update the blog from time to time and build links to it on occasion from good sources. I've carried my SEO knowledge to a more "reputable" business, but this project is still interesting to me, because it's fully mine. I am more interested in getting it to rank and convert than anything, but following the same techniques that are working to grow the other business, this one continues to tank. Disavow bad links, prune thin content.. no difference. However, one thing I just noticed now are my search queries in the reports. When I first started blogging on this, I was real loose with my tongue, and spoke quite frankly (and dirty to various degrees). I'm much more refined and professional in how I write now. However, the queries I'm ranking for... a lot of d words, c words (in the sex sense)... sounds almost pornographic. Think Google may be seeing this, and putting me lower in rankings or in some sort of lower level category because of it? Heard anything about google penalizing for profanity? I guess in this time of authority and trust, that can hurt both of those... but I wonder if anyone's heard any actual confirmation of this or has any experience with this? Thanks!

    | DavidCapital
    0

  • Hi, We have found that one of our key webpages has been fluctuating between page 2 and page 6 of Google SERP for around 2 weeks. Some days it will be on page 6 in the morning and then page 2 in the afternoon. We have recently updated some copy on the page and wondered if this could be the cause. Has anyone else experienced this? If so how long was it before the page settled? https://www.mrisoftware.com/uk/products/property-management-software/ Thanks.

    | nfrank
    0

  • A content issue that we're experiencing includes duplicate H1 issues within pages in a pagination series (i.e. blog). Does each separate page within the pagination need a unique H1 tag, or, since each page has unique content (different blog snippets on each page), is it safe to disregard this? Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks!

    | BopDesign
    0

  • I'm trying to understand the importance of author bios to Google and its latest algorithms. Some say author bios affect rankings, but others say that has not been specifically stated by Google — but it does affect the user experience. Anyone have input on this? Thanks!

    | SallieJ
    0

  • Hi, My website  is normally on page 2-3 on google consistently. Over the past month it has been appearing and then completely disappearing from the serps. One day it will be on page 2, then the next day completely missing from the serps. When i check the index it seems to be indexed correctly when doing site:mysite.com. I don't understand why this keeps happening, any experience with this issue? It doesn't seem to be a google dance as far as I can tell. When my other sites dance they typically just go up or down a few ranks for a couple weeks until they stabilize. Not completely fall off the search engine.

    | Chris_www
    0

  • Hello I verified my website on Google Search Console and submitted sitemap a long time ago. I have been getting data for impressions, but no clicks. However, Cpanel shows that people have been visiting my website, but Google Search Console does not.  The data do not match up. Would you be able to explain why and what can I do about this? Also, Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest does not identify keywords on my website. Kind regards,
    Igor kRdsaku MFFNnlZ

    | zi9gy
    1

  • I've read some conflicting information on YMYL and EAT.  If the Google Quality Raters are out there reviewing YMYL pages and scoring them on EAT, does that site's score have an impact on that page's/site's ranking?

    | BFMichael
    0

  • We have many products that do not have reviews and are causing warnings in googles microdata. Is there anything you can do for products without a review so you don't get errors for aggregate review or review??

    | jforthofer
    0

  • Hello, Is adding meta keywords still worth doing nowadays? I have been reading and hearing some different opinions about it.  For a ' beginner ' in this field it is hard to find a definite answer to this questions.. Thank you for reading(and answering) my question!

    | EPPD
    0

  • I am tasked with optimizing an existing sites SEO. I have added meta's to all the menu pages, however they have blog section with over 700 posts. How important are meta descriptions when it comes to a websites blog? Do I need to take the time to go through 700+ blog posts and create unique meta descriptions for each one?

    | rburnett
    0

  • What's best for SEO: a folder or no folder? For example: https://domain.com/arizona-dentist/somecontent or just https://domain.com/somecontent. The website has 100+ pages with "dentist" within the content of the somecontent pages, as well as specific pages for /arizona-dentist/. Also, the breadcrumb for the somecontent page would appear something like follows: Arizona Dentist > Some Content ... you can find the somecontent page from the Arizona Dentist page. I didn't include folders in the path because I did not want the url to be too long. In terms of where it is showing up on google search results...it is within the top 3-4 on the first page when searching Arizona dentist come content. The website is pretty organized even without subfolders because it was made using Umbraco. I am wondering if using folders will increase the SEO ranking, or if it really doesn't and could hurt it if paths become too long; especially since it's not doing too bad in the search ranking right now. -Thanks in advance for any help.

    | bellezze
    0

  • So, when I gain a link I always check to see if the page that is linking is in the Google cache. I've noticed recently that more and more pages are actually not showing up in Google's cache, yet still appear in search results. I did read an article from someone whoo works at Google a few weeks back that there is sometimes an error with the cache and occasionally the cache will not display. This week, my own website isn't showing up in the cache yet I'm still ranking in SERP's. I'm not worried about it, mostly whitehat, but has there been any indication that Google are phasing out the ability to check cache's of websites?

    | ThorUK
    0

  • Hey guys, I've been working with some hotels and I feel like there are some specific issues which need special solutions. 
    Maybe some of you also work for hotels and face similar problems. Question 1: Google "forces" 3-packs impressions to OTAs like booking.com via Hotel Ads. You basically have a big blue "book now" button and a small little website button. This ends up basically leading to CTRs below 1% despite a 1-3 Position. Is there any way to improve the organic CTR? Of course we use hotel ads, but they offer bad analytics AND we basically pay for our SEO-Performance. Question 2: Search console doesn't specify wether or not a impression comes from 3-Pack or the rest of the organic results, which basically leads to a  average position which says nothing. It's hard to evaluate the performance of meta-titles and texts, because the ctr is also mixed. What would be a better way to get this data or do you think google will change this in some time (new search console doesn't offer this). Question 3: Hotel Rankings are dominated by OTAs, Meta-Searchers and BIg Chains. Has anyone experience in SEO for smaller, family owned Hotels? Any tricks how to get a steady traffic source outside of brand results? Hope there are some travel experts in here 🙂

    | Maggiathor
    0

  • My Client has a Real Estate directory with many landing pages for specific properties and locations, example: https://www.laguiainmobiliaria.com.mx/casas-en-venta-queretaro/ This landing page is a list of New Houses in Queretaro. The properties appear dynamically, because this landing pages works trough a WP  Query. So the list changes every week. We are preparing each listing to have a Product Markup as trulia. But what would be the appropiate markup for the list of properties? An itemlist markup seems imposible because the list is dynamical, so maybe Markup as an article? in the description: List of houses in Queretaro?

    | Trazo
    1

  • Hi Guys I'm not sure which section this one belongs in as I didn't see a section for domains/tlds. I wanted an opinion on the future of .co domains. We own a gift company (www.xperiencedays.com), as well as a gift recommendation site (www.uniquegifts.net), and invested in a few gift occasion .co domains (www.birthdaygifts.co, christmasgifts.co etc). This was partly because they were cheap and easy to come by, but also with a hope that they soon gain some public recognition. My question therefore is whether anyone within SEOMOZ has an opinion on whether .co will be widely accepted, whether they will (as google claims) be treated as a non-country specific url, and early success stories you know of, and finally whether the recent news from Overstock to rebrand as O.co (http://www.overstock.com/guides/faqs-about-o-co) is the kick start that .co need. I realize that is more than one question

    | bigtimeseo
    2

  • I have started dropping on my rankings - due to lack of time after having a baby. I'm still managing to blog but I'm wondering if I update the content on my pages will that help? All my Meta tags and page descriptions were updated over a year ago - do I need to update these too? We were ranking in the top spots for a good few years, but we're slowly falling 😞 Please give me any advice to keep us from falling even further. I have claimed all my listings, and try to add new links once a month. I share my blog to all social sites and work hard to get Google reviews, we have 53 which is higher than any of our competitors. Any other ideas? Have I missed something that Google is looking for nowadays? Many thanks 🙂

    | Lauren1689
    0

  • Hi, I am currently adding new products to my website and was wondering, should I use our product description (which is keyword optimised) in the meta description for SEO purposes? Or would this be picked up by Google as duplicate content? Thanks in advance.

    | markjoyce
    1

  • Hi all, I'm trying to breakdown some SEO 101 tips and start from scratch. Starting with Keywords! I would like to audit our site for main keywords, grouping them in categories and subcategories. My questions are: 1. Is it possible to see where we rank on google AND search trends of visits to our site?
    2. What is a good method or structure to document (excel?) 
    3. What analysis can be made from finding the results of these keywords and how can I make use of this? As a beginner your help is much appreciated!!

    | Eric_S
    2

  • We have been on the first page of Google for a number of years for search terms including 'SEO Agency', 'SEO Agency London' etc. A few months ago we made some changes to the design of the home page (added a blog feed), and made changes to the website sitemap. Two days ago (two months after last site changes were made) we dropped subsantially in the SERPs for all home page keywords. Where we are found, a date appears before the description in the SERPs, dating February 2012 (which is when we launched the original website). The site has been through a revamp since then, yet it still shows 2012. This has been followed by a few additional strange things, including the sitelinks that Google is choosing to show (which including author bio pages showing in homepage site links), and googling our brand name no longer brings up sitelinks in the SERPs. The problem only affects the home page. All other pages are performing as standard. When Penguin 4.0 came out we saw a noted improvement in our SERP performance, and our backlinks are good and quality, largely from PR efforts. Of course, I would be interested in additional pairs of eyes on the back links to see if anyone thinks that I have missed anything! We have 3 of our senior SEOs working on trying to figure out what is going on and how to resolve it, but I would be very interested if anyone has any thoughts?

    | GoUp
    3

  • Hi Moz community, Backlinks being a major ranking factor, do they must be very recent or fresh to make a ranking difference compared to the backlinks which are years old? We know usually fresh content ranks well, but I wonder how much the fresh/recent backlinks impact in rankings. Do the years old backlinks from related and reputed website have same impact on rankings? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0

  • Hi all, Our log-in page is ranking in SERP instead of homepage and some times both pages rank for the primary keyword we targeted. We have even dropped. I am looking for a solution for this. Three points here to consider is: Our log-in page is the most visited page and landing page on the website. Even there is the primary keyword in this page or not; same scenario continues Log-in page is the first link bots touch when they crawling any page of our website as log-in page is linked on top navigation menu If we move login page to sub-domain, will it works? I am worrying that we loose so much traffic to our website which will be taken away from log-in page sub domain Please guide with your valuable suggestions. Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0

  • Hi all, One of our sub-domains is forums. Our users will be discussing about our product and many related things. But some of the users in forum are adding a lot of spammy content everyday. I just wonder whether this scenario is ruining our ranking efforts of main website? A sub domain with spammy content really kills the ranking of main website? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0

  • Hi all, I just wonder if the back links for different sub domains will be counted and considered to rank the main domain better or they are just limit to sub domain pages? There are many websites which has got multiple sub domains which receive backlinks? So the backlinks to main domain and sub domain weigh same at Google? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0

  • Hi all, I have noticed one page from our competitors' website which has been hardly linked from one internal page. I just would like to know if the page not linked anywhere get indexed by Google or not? Will it be found by Google? What if a page not linked internally but go some backlinks from other websites? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0

  • My client's website does fairly well on mobile in a Google Search. So one day, my client is in a staff meeting and everyone does on search on their phones. The client’s website is nowhere on the 1st three pages. I get a call asking why.  I tell the client that Google has maybe as high as 90% market share on mobile. Of course, their phones have the factory installed Safari and IE.  Client says lots of people don’t change the factory settings on mobile . Question: How do we rate higher on lesser search engines?

    | jgodwin
    0

  • Hi all, We had our help articles on sub-domain help.website.com. Then we moved it to sub directory website.com/help/. We expected ranking improvement of website.com as there is a wide saying of benefiting from sub domain to sub directory migration. We have noticed that ranking improvement of new sub directory pages (website.com/help/) but not for any main website pages (website.com). I presume that link juice from main website has benefited new sub directory pages but main website lost ranking due to the page rank dilution. Do you agree? Any ideas? Thanks

    | vtmoz
    0

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