Traffic dropping after blog was added...
-
We have a major client that gets over a thousand organic visits per day. They also self manage an adwords campaign that generates a few thousand clicks a day. Lat summer they got a new website with a blog. The blog has a couple of teaser paragraphs on the home page with the new blog posts, in addition to lots of static text about the items sold on the site. What has happened is, our organic traffic has changed form the main keywords of what the site sells, to things talked about in the blog. Traffic hasn’t dropped dramatically, but we have lost all our big keywords, for example, a keyword that was generating 40 organic clicks per day a year ago we receive no traffic for now, and much more obscure keyword combinations from the blog are being picked up. Is it the addition of the blog that is causing this problem, or the blog teasers that are on the home page of the site? We like the traffic from the blog terms, but we would like our former main keyword traffic back as well, how can we accomplish this, and what do you think has occurred here? Thanks for your help.
-
Thanks for your replies. I do not know what they were ranking for their main keywords a year ago because I wasnt working on the account back then and dont have any webposition reports from that time. I do have analytics for back then and can see they were getting like 40 click thrus a day for each exact keyword and now there are basically none for those keywords. Interestingly, according to webposition, they are on the second page of google now for these really huge high traffic keywords, but the same keywords on webmasters tools show low impressions and a position of 380. The top keywords shown on webmasters tools are all much more obscure terms from the blog. Webmaster tools also shows 400 not founds and 70,000 pages restricted by robots text. I addressed these issues with our programmer in early January and he said the robots was as it should be and the not founds were taken care of but doesnt look like anythings changed. Basically the only keywords the site is getting click thrus thru search on are much more obscure things that are mentioned in different blog posts. For example, it would be like my site used to get traffic for "custom motorcycles" (just an example)but now if I have a blog post for brown leather motorcycle seat, we'll get a handful of click thrus for something like that but we have lost all the heavy hitting keywords.
No site map on WT but if you google site: it shows 32,000 pages. Thanks again. -
I vote up for keyword cannibalization. They should also check their Webmaster panel to see which pages get more link love than the others.
-
It's a little tough without looking at all the details, but here are my thoughts/suggestions.
Missing Old Pages - This may be happening because of a new design/CMS. I see this a lot when clients go for a new, WordPress site. It's a great idea, but they neglect to implement 301 redirects for all those old pages that had rankings, etc.
Check your 404 errors/Google Webmaster Crawl errors. You might find a bunch of pages that are being linked to, were updated with a new URL structure and now result in an error. You might find that setting up the 301s does the trick (give it a couple weeks once you're done).
Check for keyword cannibalization - See if the keywords you were targeting on those "main" pages are also being targeted on those blog posts. Might need to clean that up a little; ensure that each page has unique info/focus/titles, etc.
It is possible that the links to those posts is spreading your link juice a little too thinly, but I wouldn't jump to that conclusion just yet. I only say it because a year is a long time, and you could have tons of posts that are drawing from that link juice.
-
I can't tell you what is wrong. But if you answer these questions you might figure it out.
we have lost all our big keywords, for example, a keyword that was generating 40 organic clicks per day a year ago we receive no traffic for now,
Did your rankings drop for these keywords?
Last summer they got a new website with a blog.
Did they change the page URLS of mess up the page optimization?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Google June Core update massive drop in visibility and rank
Following Google Core update in June, I noticed that some websites has seen small improvements or stayed on same positions in SERPs, but our website received nearly 60% visibility drop. Now, after two weeks, some keywords shows "slight" improvement, while majority of keywords still sits on quite low places in searches. Even others big brands got hit after update, but some competitors didn't and overtook our positions. Anyone else noticed any patterns after update and can share some thoughts? Thank you.
Algorithm Updates | | Optimal_Strategies1 -
Increase of non-relevant back-links drop page ranking?
Hi community, Let's say there is a page with 50 back-links where 40 are non-relevant back-links and only 10 are relevant in-terms of content around the link, etc....Will these non-relevant back-links impact the ranking of the page by diluting the back-link profile? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Ranking dropped with no page changes
My rank for a keyword went from ranking #1 to #22. The page grade for this keyword is A, there was no site structure changes. The only thing I can see is that tumblr and reddit and other sources are now listed for this keyword and it's difficulty went from the mid-low teens to 28%. However, even given that, I do not a see a reason for this keyword alone to fall so far. It was giving us a ton of traffic, in fact, most of our organic search results came from this term for nearly two months. And 2 weeks ago for no reason, we were pushed to page 3. Has anyone else had similar experiences how do you counter it, and what can we do?
Algorithm Updates | | mozmemberanon0 -
Our company is mentioned on some high-traffic, authoritative sites and some of our products are linked as well. If we link to those pages, does it affect our SEO? How can we take advantage of those mentions?
I heard that if you link to another site, when Google indexes your site, they crawl that page that is referenced. By whatever metrics they use, if that site has your name or a link to your site, Google would rank it higher. I am not sure how true that is, but what value does another site mentioned our site have on our SEO?
Algorithm Updates | | JonathonOhayon1 -
Two months - No Articles or Post Published in our blog. Moz shows less organic traffic.
Two months - No Articles or Post Published in our blog. Moz shows less organic traffic. i know i could not write - i was sick. organic search and keyword also. total pageviews dropped. DA increased by +3 and then -1 in last update. What should i do.
Algorithm Updates | | Esaky0 -
Organic Traffic dropped 50%. Anyone want to have a stab at why? (URL listed)
Just curious what the pro's on here think is the reason why our site got hammered recently. The URL is www.jobshadow.com. We've got gobs of quality content that had been ranking for quite a few keywords. Even one from Rand himself http://www.jobshadow.com/interview-with-seo-and-seomoz-founder-rand-fishkin/ Rankings for even the exact match domain keyword 'Job Shadow' have been pummeled. Anyway, we've got a pretty solid link profile I would think. We also have a very high user time on the site, thus suggesting the organic traffic was engaged when Google ranked us for those keywords. We have lots of unsolicited inbound links and even recent ones from PBS. I'm not really sure what it takes to please the "machine" at this point. Curious as to what everyone here thinks.
Algorithm Updates | | arkana0 -
Organic Traffic Stagnant
Our automobile portal is the leading in Pakistan and we are there for almost 10 years now, we already rank in top 3 keywords ( top 1 on most of them ) but our search traffic has become stagnant, we have tried to optimize for keywords that google search tool show has more traffic and we have gained ranking in most of them but still our search traffic isnt showing any much increase. Is it possible that we have already got all the juice and there arent much people who are searching auto related keywords or what can we do to increase organic traffic? Work on long tail keywords? Whats next?
Algorithm Updates | | razasaeed0 -
How to increase my traffic?
I've performed countless SEO tactics, post tons of unique content. social bookmark tons of it. Facebook, Twitter, etc. Implement new sections to my site all the time in the past month I've implemented a dating site and a discussion forum. Yet my traffic pretty much always stays the same. We are at a level where our site is now the best place on the web to find disability news, and I can't really think of how else to improve it without simply having it more active. Is my niche just too small? http://ablemagazine.co.uk
Algorithm Updates | | craven220