Why does Google no longer like our site?
-
Hey guys,
I'm trying to figure out why the traffic and rankings have been plummeting on www.readprint.com. It's a collection of both public domain books and books on Amazon's store. If anyone can offer any pointers as to if it's duplicate content or ???
It used to get 300K visits/mo but has slowly been dropping over the last year.
I appreciate anyone's expertise!
-
Thanks for helping out, guys.
The homepage took the biggest hit (54% drop), but most pages took big hits from a year ago. So I'm assuming it was a site-wide drop in rankings.
When I look at the OSE metrics, it looks like readprint.com should be crushing the competition, but they're now crushing us. That's why I'm so baffled.
Perhaps the competition has more unique content, better layout, better pagespeed? I'll keep looking, but I'm hoping it's something reversible.
Thanks!
-
I had a brief look at your site and the design is very impressive indeed. I do agree with Alan that a lot of the inner pages such as author pages do lack 'unique content'.
For example, I did a Copyscape for the page: http://www.readprint.com/work-439/The-Origin-of-Species-Charles-Darwin and it found 15 same/duplicate copies on the web. I think you could introduce some sort of 'gamification' similarly to SEOMoz's Q&A forum, to get your users/members to write unique relevant content, rather than just asking them to email you.
Also I had a quick look at your website speed, and the 'first load time' is quite long. Is it on a dedicated server? Maybe you should have a look into your hosting provider. Also, you should cache the homepage, as it will improve the load time of your site.
Another question I want to ask is, the drop in traffic, I assume there were many keywords which have dropped in rankings. Were most of these rankings associated with the homepage or inner pages?
Thanks
-
Nice looking site, Colin.
And interesting information.
I really don't know what to make of the "you have stuff that I can find in other places"
A lot of people say that these days, but I think its a copout
If this was valid, then all search engines, other than google should just pack up and dig holes for a living. All book sites should close up and leave it to Amazon. All guitar makers should shut down and leave it to Gibson. Nike should be the only running shoes. All small phone companies should give up.
And Google Plus should close, because, compared to Facebook, it is weak, and a ghost town.
If your site was a perfect clone of another site, it would be a valid argument, but I doubt that is the case (I don't know your niche well enough)
You have GREAT social signals. You even have 82 G+ on the front page. That in itself is huge.
Have you thought about allowing readers to comment? you can use facebook comments. I have no idea if that helps. You really need someone here to comment who has live comments (not facebook )
Do you have internal duplicate pages?
Are you linking out to bad sites?
What does SEOMoz tell you about the site?
It looks like you have no incoming links, but that probably means SEO moz didn't know about you - or my Mozbar is broken
What do Google and Bing Webmaster Tools say?
What do your pages look like to a robot?
-
That's really helpful, Alan.
Thanks!
-
I had a quick look at your Mark Twain page, there is not much on the page that can not be found on many other web sites
http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22was+born+in+Florida%2C+Missouri%2C+of+a+Virginian+family%22&qs=n&form=QBRE&pq=%22was+born+in+florida%2C+missouri%2C+of+a+virginian+family%22&sc=0-0&sp=-1&sk=This is what is called thin content. you need to have plenty of original content to outwiegh the duplicate
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
-
Should you aim for Google to use your meta tags?
When updating meta titles and descriptions, I'm taking note of whether Google is displaying the set tag or changing it to copy from the page. Does this affect the ranking position if Google is having to change the tag? How much should I worry if Google is choosing to change every other page? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Omar_aw0 -
Google Data Highlighter
Hello Mozers! Anyone out there have any experience using the Google data highlighter tool in WMT? I'm just curious if it is something I should be utilizing or should just try to get the same results using microdata markup. I'm not a fan of "tools" per se...I'd rather get my hands dirty. Just looking for any thoughts or experiences in using it.
On-Page Optimization | | adamxj21 -
Should I remove the Jetpack Plugin From A SIte
I dont know if anyone has any experience with the jetpack plugin, but personally I prefer yoast. My point is someones site I am looking at has both Yoast SEO plugin and also Jetpack for wordpress, should I just remove the jetpack as it seems to be a very heavy loading plugin.
On-Page Optimization | | propertyhunter0 -
E-Commerce Site - Duplicate Content
We run an e-commerce site with about 250,000 SKUs. Certain items, such as a micro USB car charger, will be applicable to several different phones. Example: http://www.wirelessemporium.com/p-165787-samsung-galaxy-proclaim-illusion-sch-i110-heavy-duty-car-charger.asp http://www.wirelessemporium.com/p-165856-sony-xperia-ion-4g-lte-att-heavy-duty-car-charger.asp As one can imagine with so many items, unique content for each item description page can be a challenge. What would be the best way to address this on a large scale?
On-Page Optimization | | eugeneku0 -
Do images on a CDN affect my Google Ranking?
I have recently switched my images to a CDN (MaxCDN) and all of the images within my post are now get loaded directly from the CDN. Will this affect my Google ranking? Do Google care if the image is hosted physicaly on the domain?
On-Page Optimization | | Amosnet0 -
Site Redesign: Potential Problems?
We're looking at a cleanup of our site and making our navigation menu simpler and more visual. The problem is there's a massive fear that we will incur some sort of SEO hit at a time when we can ill afford one. The bulk of the changes are around some tertiary pages that have some SEO value but are not primary targets or traffic sources. The pages with content aren't moving URLs or changing, nor is the core content of the site, just the template. The new template, I feel, is easier to navigate and easier to spider (menus are flyout divs with images). So are there any tips or tricks to changing the layout of your site without hurting SEO? Anything we need to avoid?
On-Page Optimization | | Highland0 -
Is my H1 and H2 site structure proper?
If I have an h1 tag on the page that describes the purpose of the page, is it a bad idea to make all of the sub-headings h2 tags? A designer mentioned that it was frowned upon to make all of the secondary headings into h2 tags, or to use CSS to selectively style the heading tags.
On-Page Optimization | | dbuckles0 -
Google Penalty?
What are the characteristics of a Google penalty - i.e. how do you know by looking at the rankings for your keywords? Do all keywords that you had previously ranked for fall from say top 5 to nowhere? Do you disappear from SERP for a branded keyword? Or something else?? Basically how do you know if you have been penalized? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0