Client's site dropped completely from Google - AGAIN! Please help...
-
ok guys - hoping someone out there can help... (kinda long, but wanted to be sure all the details were out there)
Already had this happen once - even posted in here about it - http://www.seomoz.org/q/client-s-site-dropped-completely-for-all-keywords-but-not-brand-name-not-manual-penalty-help
Guy was a brand new client, all we did was tweak title tags and add a bit of content to his site since most was generic boilerplate text... started on our KW research and competitor research...
in just a week, from title tag and content tweaks alone, he went from ranking on page 4-5 to ranking on page 3-4... then as we sat down to really optimize his site... POOF - he was gone from the Googs...
He only showed up in "site:" searches and for exact matches of his business name - everything else was gone.
Posted in here and on WMT - had several people check it out, both local guys and people from here (thanks to John Doherty for trying!) - but no one could figure out any reason why it would have happened.
We submitted a reconsideration request, explaining that we knew we hadn't violated any quality guidelines, that he had less than 10 backlinks so it couldn't be bad linking, and that we had hardly touched the site. They sent back a canned response a week later that said there was no manual penalty and that we should "check our content" - mysteriously, the site started to show back up in the SERPs that morning (we got the canned response in the afternoon)
There WAS an issue with NAP mismatch on some citations, but we fixed that, and that shouldn't have contributed to complete disappearance anyway.
SO - the site was back, and back at its page 3 or 4 position... we decided to leave it alone for a few days just to be sure we didn't do anything... and then just 6 days later, when we were sitting down to fully optimize the site - POOF - completely gone again.
We do SEO for a lot of different car dealers all over the country, and i know our strategies work. Looking at the competition in his market, he should easily be ranked page 2 or 3 with the very minimal tweaking we did...
AND, since we didn't change anything since he came back, it makes even less sense that he was visible for a week and then gone again.
So, mozzers... Anybody got any ideas? I'm really at a loss here - it makes zero sense that he's completely gone, except for his biz name... if nothing else, he should be ranking for "used cars canton"...
Definitely appreciate any help anyone can offer -
-
just to update everyone...
just like last time, we're "mysteriously" back in the rankings one week to the day after submitting a reconsideration request...
we know it wasn't a manual action, so maybe the reconsideration request pings someone that can fix the algorithmic mistake? not sure... but it's definitely interesting that both times, we're "back" one week after sending in the request...
-
Just wanted to add one more thing too. I know what you are saying about the process of cataloguing inventory amongst car dealers. We have a real estate site and just about everyone in town uses the MLS description for a house. Most of those individual realtor sites that do that don't rank well at all for the individual houses because they are completely duplicated along with hundreds of other sites.
For our listings I write a unique description that only goes on our website and we almost always rank #1 for our own listings.
It's a lot of work though, but if you can set it up so that an employee can write some type of unique description and title for each new vehicle in the inventory it'll really really help. So, if someone's searching for a "Ford Taurus in [yourcity]" you could potentially rank really well if you've got individual descriptions.
That's not connected to your current issue, really though...just a thought...that is, if your client was willing to put the staff-hours into doing that.
-
It's still a possibility even if it isn't affecting your other sites. Google may be looking at the percentage of duplicate content on a site. So, it's possible that your other sites have enough non duplicate stuff to outweigh the duplicates. If you combine the fact that your homepage is duplicated several times on the site plus the inventory pages are duplicated on other sites that might be enough to trigger a duplicate content issue.
If you've fixed the issue with the homepage duplication then you may jump back to the rankings you had. We'll see!
You may want to go into webmaster tools and tell Google to take the urls that were throwing dupes out of the index. That can speed up the process if indeed this is the issue.
-
Thanks Marie -
As far as the dupe content issue on your attached search, that was an issue with the way our devs built our site system - instead of serving up 404 pages, any URL that was hit that didn't exist lead back to the home page...
we just corrected that last week and now have proper 404s...
BUT - every site we host has this same issue, so if that was penalty-worthy, we'd have a lot more sites penalized...
same thing with the dupe content on other sites - in the auto industry, every dealer feeds his inventory out to other websites, so you usually have anywhere from 100-300+ other websites with the same images and vehicle descriptions... not ideal, obviously, but that's now it works in the industry... but again, this happens to every dealer, so if that's what caused his penalty, it should have affected other dealers as well... so we're still stumped...
-
There still is a possibility that duplicate content could be an issue here. When I searched, in quotes, the first two sentences of your home page, here's what I got:
I did the same with your second paragraph and got the same results. So, that means that in Google's eyes, you've got 4 pages on your site with identical content and this could definitely have an effect on your ranking.
I do see you on a search for your site name and brand name, but you're right, I can't see you on a search for your keyword (which I'm assuming is in your title).
The first thing I would do is change up the text on those pages and see if it makes a difference.
Also, as mentioned before, your inventory pages are duplicated across other sites as evidenced here. I would probably noindex those pages.
It's worth a try!
-
YEAH BABY!
-
Google is constantly tweaking - I do not have a single website where half of the keyword rankings don't fluctuate back and forth as you have described. Especially so are those keywords that don't exist on the first two pages. One week we're on page 3 and then "POOF" and vice versa.
Donnie gives you the right advice. Take it and run.
-
The site is relatively new. Ideally I would not focus on his current rankings, I would just continue to build good relevant helpful and authoritative links. The linking profile should mostly anchor in using a brand name or a URL. The internal linking structure should be built keeping the Panda updates (no duplicate content/no attempts to manipulate the search engines) in mind. Also, be sure that when you are checking for these rankings you are doing so from a browser in which you have cleared your browsing history and that you are not logged into any google accounts.
Add Google + buttons to your site.
Add a blog and post something unique (helpful to your users) every week targeting different pages on your site.
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
-
How long does google takes to crawl a single site ?
lately i have been thinking , when a crawler visits an already visited site or indexed site, whats the duration of its scanning?
Algorithm Updates | | Sam09schulz0 -
Google ranking penalty: Limited to specific pages or complete website?
Hi all, Let's say few pages on the website dropped in the rankings due to poor optimisation of the pages or hit by algo updates. Does Google limits the ranking drop only to these pages or the entire website will have any impact? I mean will this cause ranking drop to the homepage for primary keyword? Will Google pose the penalty to other pages in the website if few pages drop in the rankings. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Anyone suspect that a site's total page count affects SEO?
I've been trying to find out the underlying reason why so many websites are ranked higher than mine despite seemingly having far worse links. I've spent a lot of time researching and have read through all the general advice about what could possibly be hurting my site's SEO, from page speed to h1 tags to broken links, and all the various on-page SEO optimization stuff....so the issue here isn't very obvious. From viewing all of my competitors, they seem to have a much higher number of web pages on their sites than mine does. My site currently has 20 pages or so and most of my competitors are well in the hundreds, so I'm wondering if this could potentially be part of the issue here. I know Google has never officially said that page number matters, but does anyone suspect that perhaps page count matters towards SEO and that competing sites with more total pages than you might have an advantage SEOwise?
Algorithm Updates | | ButtaC1 -
Ecommerce SEO help
Hi I'm having difficulty managing our product pages for optimisation, we have over 20,000 products. We do keyword research & optimise product titles/meta of new products - however there's a lot to clean up but we have done a lot. I find we rank/convert better on product pages so they would be great to focus on - however when an old product is discontinued, the page is removed & we lose authority by creating new pages for similar products - does anyone have any ideas for managing this? This is something done automatically on the dev side in France. I then have the issue of trying to rank category pages - these are highly competitive areas competing with big brands. I'm finding it tough to know where to focus, the site is vast and I am the only SEO. I've started looking into low hanging fruit - but these aren't necessarily the areas which bring in much revenue. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
How to you get a company details to appear on the right side of google searches? For example is you type dr martens in google , the search page shows links and then a snippet of the company on the right. Thank you.
For example is you type dr martens in google , the search page shows links and then a snippet of the company on the right. Thank you. https://www.google.com/search?q=dr+martens&oq=dr+martens&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.2176j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8
Algorithm Updates | | vijayvasu0 -
How do I separate 2 Google+ business listings?
Ever since Google Places started merging with Google+, my client's business listing is now showing up in local search results incorrectly under another business name who shares the same address as them. Has anyone else encountered this problem or a way to correct it?
Algorithm Updates | | TheeDigital0 -
Google Update?
We have a website that for the past several weeks has been very consistent at between 13,500 and 14,200 daily visits and this site received 15,600 last Thursday. THIS week, Monday is at 22,200, Tuesday is at 26,200, and at mid-day today (at about our traffic halfway point in the day) we're already at 14,000 today. This was a site that was bringing about 14,000 visits as of May 16th last year and dropped to 11,000 the following week. The traffic to this site this week is so far beyond statistical analysis that there must have been something that happened.
Algorithm Updates | | sourcelinemedia0 -
Google Directory vs DMOZ
What is the difference between the Google Directory and the DMOZ if any?
Algorithm Updates | | BrandonC-2698870