80-90% drop in visits after Panda/EMD update - now what?
-
Hi everyone,
Had my first wonderful experience with an algorithm update. Business was doing great - about 90-100 visitors a day down to about 12-15 from Sept 29th to current.
Our domain is www.hamiltonscarservice.com which I don't think exactly qualifies for an exact match but may be close enough (car service is one of our keywords).
I am more likely to think its related to the Panda 20 update. I haven't changed the site at all lately so I was wondering what tips you guys may have going forward.
The site isn't perfectly optimized (which is where you guys come in) but when I first set it up it worked great so I mainly focused on backlinks from that point on. Now evidently this has caught up with me.
Any suggestions are appreciated - thanks!
-
You can actually leave the links in the footer since it's a good way to distribute your page juice, I would recommend just including the location though, you're creating a very high keyword density by repeating "car service" and "nj" so many times on the page. Chatham, Clark, Cranford, etc. No keyword repetition when you do it that way.
I would rewrite the duplicate content on your pages and try to make it a little bit longer.
You've got zipcodes, map, links to close towns, not too bad man. The duplicate content needs to be handled though.
-
So you recommended I remove all footer links to the landing pages.
What about the links to each of the landing pages from the areas served page (http://www.hamiltonscarservice.com/areas-served/index.html)? Should I just link them as a town and leave out the redundant car service portion?
I thought having the urls in this format (matching targeted keywords/content) was suggested as an on-page recommendation?
-
The EMD update should not have effected you. An EMD would be something like www.carservicemanhattan.com. You have a partial-match domain, and since it doesn't sound spammy or point to a spammy page, you aren't what Google has been targeting.
Your problem is duplicate content. You have dozens of pages with the exact same text on them, except for a find-and-replaced city name. That makes Google think your website isn't offering valuable content. Every page on your website should have unique content.
-
Nowadays you can't just spam the URLs and anchor texts with "car service" + location and create tons of pages with identical flimsy content with the exception of swapping you the location name.
Footer links are too spammy too.
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
-
Our site dropped by April 2018 Google update about content relevance: How to recover?
Hi all, After Google's confirmed core update in April 2018, we dropped globally and couldn't able to recover later. We found the update is about the content relevance as officially stated by Google later. We wonder how we are not related in-terms of content being ranking for same keywords over years. And we are expecting to find a solution to this. Are there any standard ways to measure the content relevancy? Please suggest! Thank you
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Have there been any google algorithm updates in the past 2 weeks?
Hi guys - we have noticed a site we work one has taken a hit on its rankings over the past week. We have been through all the usual reason - hacking, duplicate content, back links, other sites copying text etc - but can not find any reason why its rankings have been affected. Has any one else noticed unexplained changes in rankings with sites about a week ago? Thanks in advance! Phil
Algorithm Updates | | Globalgraphics1 -
Have I been Hit by a Penguin? No Warning in Webmaster / Some Pages still Rank
Hi all, I have recently signed up to MOZ as I have seen a large drop in the turnover of a site I work with as well as a slump in visitors. I know part of this slump is the transition from google product search from being free to paid and chewing through our adwords budget quicker. The other part though seems a little more tricky, I have always been under the impression from reading online that an algorithm update would see a site destroyed for most terms and a notification generated in webmaster tools, however the site still seems to still rank for some terms, others however it has fallen off the face of the earth for. As you can see in the attachment webmaster tools is showing much decreased visibility, and MOZ agrees with this. Key terms that have lost rank have done so by around 4-10 positions. The content on the site has all been hand written by myself, however some of the pages are a little "stale" so I am currently running through re-writing every product page on the site (1000 products or so) all my product pages grade a minimum B with 99% A on the Moz page grader. I am keeping my fingers crossed that fresh content should assist in getting google interested again? However my real questions is, Is this Penguin? or is this just stale content? dmDdMr5.jpg pYkzck0.jpg 9f4mgM9.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | speedingorange1 -
[G Penalty?] Significant Traffic Drop From All Sources
My client's traffic started to significantly decrease around Nov 21 (Panda update 22). This includes traffic from all sources - search engines (G, B, & Y!), direct, AND referral. At first we thought it was a G penalty but G answered our reconsideration request by stating that no manual penalty had occured. It could be algo penalty, but again, the site has been hit across all sources. Client has done zero backlinking - it is all natural. No Spam, etc.. All of his on-site SEO is perfect (700+ pages indexed, all unique content, unique title and desc). On Oct 16, he switched from his old URL to a new URL and did proper redirects. (Last year - Dec 2011 - he switched his CMS to Drupal and although there was a temporary decrease in traffic, it showed recovery within a month or so.) He does zero social on his site and he has many ads above the fold. Nevertheless, the traffic decrease is not source specific. In other words, all sources have decreased since Nov 21, 2012 and have not recovered. What is going on? What can be the explanation for decrease in traffic across all sources? This would be easy to answer if it was only Google Organic decrease but since direct and referral have also been hit, we cannot locate the problem. Please share your personal experiences as well as advice on where we should look. Could this be negative SEO? Where would we look? ANY ADVICE IS WELCOME !!!! Every bit counts Thanks!!
Algorithm Updates | | GreenPush0 -
How to deal with EMD penalty?
After some research I would say my site have been hit by an EMD penalty, it seems many other people have faced the same. It would be very useful to know how to deal with this, many topics discuss the reasons behind it, but few have a realistic response for fast action. I am in two minds - one would be to try and improve content etc, but this is subjective and could take any amount of time, or never resolve the issue. The other would be to move the content to a new URL, which poses the question, should I do a 301 redirect, or would this just transfer the penalty? If no redirect, then I am proposing starting fresh - as the sites hit by EMD penalties are deemed 'low quality' this might be the fastest way to recovery. If I move the old content to my established main site as a sub folder, would this cause any problems? Many thanks for people responses.
Algorithm Updates | | Quime1 -
Considering the Panda algorithm updates, would you recommend reducing high amounts of inbound links from a single website?
My website has a significant number of inbound links (1,000+) from a single website, due to a sponsorship level contribution. Both my website and the other are authorities in the industry and in search results (PR of 5). Since even ethical websites can suffer a penalty from each iteration of Panda, I'm considering significantly removing the number of links from this website. Do you think that measurable change would be seen favorably by Google or would the drop in links be detrimental?
Algorithm Updates | | steelintheair0 -
Site-wide Footer Link on Client/Friend Website - Dangerous?
Hi Guys, I've got a friend / client / business associate who's website I helped develop. It's a three letter dot-com, so good trust, and an eCommerce site, so lot's of pages. When I launched my new site about 6 weeks ago I put "Official IT Partner of MySite.com" in the footer. No keywords in the anchor text, just the domain URL... There are no other external links like that on the site whatsoever, and I haven't been hit by Penguin. I'm ranking well for local targeted keywords a few weeks after launch, and traffic continues to increase... I am worried that Google will see this is unnatural, but I've received no warning or experienced any decline in rankings. There's about 2800 pages linking from the site to my site, all in the footer of course. Would it be better to remove the link from the footer and add it just to the home page and a couple of other high authority pages, or should I leave it be. It's not "unnatural", I am affiliated with the site and work in partnership with the site, but it does fit that profile. I'm thinking about removing the footer link and adding a small graphic on the home page of the linking site which links to my root domain, with a couple of broad keyword anchored links in a description underneath that also link to relevant pages on my site... What do you think? 2800 links w/ my URL as anchor text from high Domain Authority / Low Page Authority pages (the homepage and a few other pages have decent authority) to my root domain OR Three different links from one High DA/ High PA homepage (one image alt, two anchored w/ broad keywords) to three different pages on my site. Again, there are no other site-wide external links on the domain, and I'm pretty sure I escaped the Penguin. Looking forward to hearing the different points of view. Thanks, Anthony
Algorithm Updates | | Anthony_NorthSEO2 -
Bing Traffic drop
Anyone notice a drop in Bing traffic on January 26th? Slashed by 50% and holding for the past three weeks. 100% white hat site
Algorithm Updates | | loopyal0