My site was number 1 for competetive keyword on Google now completely gone- what should I do?
-
WHat is the best way to determine if I have somehow been delisted from Google?
-
xx
-
There are many variables with comparing your old site to the new one. Ideally you simply leave the old site up and can compare it both visually and by crawling it with the new one, assuming this was a simple change of hosts.
Regarding checking links, there are many services and none of them are comprehensive. They all work by various methods of crawling the web which is tens of millions of websites with trillions of pages. If you want the most comprehensive report you can combine the following tools:
Google, Bing, OSE, Raven, Majestic and AHREFs. Each of these tools will miss some links captured by the other tools. It's the nature of trying to collect data on such a large data source that is in a constant state of change.
-
Wow thanks for the great responses - it is really appreciated
I think I may see something that may affected this. When I do back link check there are NONE. I just purchased and moved this site to my hosting about 2 weeks ago.
I am thinking the backlink pages that had been put there by the former owner were not moved over properly by my web guy.
I am waiting for our webmaster to start working (he is in Vietnam) tio make sure the site was copied over exactly.
can you recommend
a. a software or method to determine if a site has been copied exactly as it was at the former hosting
b. the most reliable back link check service
THANKS AGAIN!
-
Wow thanks for the great responses - it is really appreciated
I think I may see something that may affected this. When I do back link check there are NONE. I just purchased and moved this site to my hosting about 2 weeks ago.
I am waiting for our webmaster to start working (he is in Vietnam) tio make sure the site was copied over exactly.
Can anyone recommmend
a. a software or method to determine if a site has been copied exactly as it was at the former hosting
b. the most reliable back link check service
THANKS AGAIN!
-
There are many possibilities. The best best would be having a SEO consultant experienced with diagnosing penalties take a look at your site. If you wish to try and resolve the issue here are the first steps:
-
Are there any other keywords affected?
-
Have their been any changes made to the page which was the target URL for that keyword? Have their been any other changes made on your site related to that keyword? For example, adding a new article or page using that keyword?
-
What changes have been made on your site in the past 60 days? Include any coding changes, hosting changes, Google Analytics or WMT changes, etc.
-
Have you, or anyone on your behalf (employee, SEO consultant, web developer, etc) violated any of Google's Guidelines? Built manipulative links, hide keywords using CSS tricks, etc.
-
-
Don't be too quick to think the worst.
Recently one of my clients changed their geo settings they ranked but not in the UK.
Send me the URL and the target keyword and I will take a quick look.
Justin
-
Perhaps your link building company got a lot of spammy links with that exact anchor test and now Google is responding in kind. Find these links and try to get rid of them or work on getting quality links to counteract the spammy links.
-
Just yesterday.
It was #1 for a long time prior now it s not in the first 6 pages. It is still indexed via site:URL but it not where it has been for a many months even years
-
Google makes around 50 changes to their algorithm each month. Any one of the changes could have negatively impacted your site. Most commonly, one of the bigger changes such as Panda or Penguin is involved, but that is not always the case.
The site search mentioned by Crimson will indicate whether or not you have been removed from Google's index, but that is rarely the case.
Diagnosing penalties can be quite complex. If you can take a look at your Google Analytics and determine the exact date your traffic dropped on the given keyword, that information could be helpful.
-
You can do a 'site:yoururl' search in Google to see if your pages are still indexed. If you feel you may have received a penalty then a full site audit wil be necessary.
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
-
Splitting One Site Into Two Sites Best Practices Needed
Okay, working with a large site that, for business reasons beyond organic search, wants to split an existing site in two. So, the old domain name stays and a new one is born with some of the content from the old site, along with some new content of its own. The general idea, for more than just search reasons, is that it makes both the old site and new sites more purely about their respective subject matter. The existing content on the old site that is becoming part of the new site will be 301'd to the new site's domain. So, the old site will have a lot of 301s and links to the new site. No links coming back from the new site to the old site anticipated at this time. Would like any and all insights into any potential pitfalls and best practices for this to come off as well as it can under the circumstances. For instance, should all those links from the old site to the new site be nofollowed, kind of like a non-editorial link to an affiliate or advertiser? Is there weirdness for Google in 301ing to a new domain from some, but not all, content of the old site. Would you individually submit requests to remove from index for the hundreds and hundreds of old site pages moving to the new site or just figure that the 301 will eventually take care of that? Is there substantial organic search risk of any kind to the old site, beyond the obvious of just not having those pages to produce any more? Anything else? Any ideas about how long the new site can expect to wander the wilderness of no organic search traffic? The old site has a 45 domain authority. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Merging Two Unrelated Sites into a Third Site
We have a new client interested in possibly merging 2 sites into one under the brand of a new parent company. Here's a breakdown of the scenario..... BrandA.com sells a variety of B2B widget-services via their online store. BrandB.com sells a variety of B2B thing-a-majig products and services (some of them large in size) not sold through an online store. These are sold more consultatively via a sales team. The new parent company, BrandA-B.com is considering combining the two sites under the new brand parent company domain. The Widget-services and Thing-A-Majigs have very little similarity or purchase crossover; so just because you're interested in one doesn't make you a good candidate for the other. We feel pretty confident that we can round-up all the necessary pages and inbound links to do proper transitioning to a new, separate third domain though we're not in agreement that this is the best course of action. Currently the individual brand sites are fairly well known in their industry and each ranks fairly well for a variety of important terms though there is room for improvement and each site has good links with the exception of the new site which has considerably fewer. BrandA.com DA = 73 - 19 years old
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OPM
BrandB.com DA = 55 - 18 years old
BrandA-B.com DA = 40 - 1 year old Our SEO team members have opinions on what the potential outcome(s) of this would be but are wondering what the community here thinks. Will the combining of the sites cause a dilution of the topics of the two sites and hurt rankings? Will the combining of the domain authority help one set part of the business but hurt the other? What do you think? What would you do?0 -
Why is my m-dot site outranking my main site in SERPs?
My client has a WP site and a Duda mobile site that we inherited. For some reason their m-dot site is ranking on P1 of Google for their top KWs instead of the main site which is much more robust. The main site might rank beyond page 5 when the generic home page for their m-dot site appears on P1. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Etna0 -
What happens when I redirect an entire site to an established page on another site?
Hi There, I have a website which is dedicated to selling ONE product (in different forms) or my main brand site. It is branded similarly, targets similar keywords, and gets some traffic which convert to leads. Additionally, the auxiliary site has a Google Rank 2 in its own right. I am thinking of consolidating this "auxillary" site to the specific product page on my main site. The reason I am considering doing this is to give a "boost" to the main product page on our main site which has many core keywords sitting with SERP ranking of between 11-20 (so not in first 10) Because this auxiliary site it gets traffic and leads in its own right, I don't want this to be to the detriment of my leads overall. Question is - if I 301 redirect the entire domain from my auxillary site to the equivalent product on my main site am I likely to see a large "boost" to that product page? (i.e. will I likely see my ranking rise from 11 - 20 significantly)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | love-seo-goodness0 -
Google shortens title tag for certain keywords
A friend of mine runs a website over at http://www.web-design-herefordshire.co.uk/ The keywords he is targeting web design hereford and web design herefordshire. When you search these terms (he's found on page 3 on google.co.uk) his title tag is shortened to web design hereford, Does google shorten these when the keyword being searched is the keyword in the domain? I've seen it on a few others.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasonwdexter0 -
Wordtracker vs Google Keyword Tool
When I find keyword opportunities in Wordtracker, I'll sometimes run them through Adwords Keyword tool only to find that Google says these keywords have 0 search volume. Would you use these keywords even though Google says users aren't searching for them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Do sites with a small number of content pages get penalized by Google?
If my site has just five content pages, instead of 25 or 50, then will it get penalized by Google for a given moderately competitive keyword?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RightDirection0