My Rankings Keep Going Down - Needs some more ideas on why...
-
Hi Everyone,
I have been working on the website www.PetsSpark.com for a while now. I used to be on the first page for many of my keywords, now I am lucky if i am on the 2nd or 3rd. I stopped my SEO efforts for about 3 months while making changes to the website, its whithin these 3 months that I started dropping from the first page.
The biggest thing I notice is the "type" of website now ranking for my main keywords. Mostly Forums, Blogs, or Product Review websites.
Take for instance Dog Tear Stain Remover. I used to rank at about #5 for this keyword and now i rank at #20.
I'm not sure if my loss of ranking is a combination of things like who Google is letting rank now or if there is something wrong on my website, etc.
Can anyone give me a little insight?? Please....
I will also be happy to give more information about what has been going on if needed.
-
I would try to externalize a tremendous amount of your coding and comments within the code. If you can use internal links more effectively to direct your users to the interior pages within the site, also your content isn't organized in a themed website ( with silo structure reflective of the main topics).
I would most certainly, review your on page coding for crawlibility for the spiders. Update your sitemap and organize your content into themes that are cross linking based on the main relevant topic and of course your keywords.
I would also move your content up higher on the page, so it is clear that the text is answering the user query, not just retail website. Review your main competitors who have outranked you in the latest decline, my guess is that your rankings have dropped due to at least two updates from Google. Including the ever popular muffin top.
-
I do audits to help sites determine the reasons for their traffic drops. I'm not sure if it is ok to post a link to my audit information, so the best thing to do would be to contact me by private message and we can talk.
-
We are considering hiring an outside consultant to help on this issue. Is that what you do for a living?
-
This is probably good news then. It means that it is unlikely that an algorithm change is affecting your site. I can't say for certain without having a detailed look at your site and your competitors but it's possible that other sites are just outperforming you. Your niche is a competitive one!
It's interesting that you noticed that forums, blogs and review sites are outranking you. Google has been making changes to reward sites that add significant value when someone is searching for a product and not just using standard product descriptions. I didn't have a thorough look, but a quick search of text from your tear stains page shows me 29 other pages that are using the same description. In order to rank better you may need to create more unique stuff.
It is challenging for stores to rank well these days!
However, there could be other factors, but that is my best guess.
EDIT: I just went back and looked. I didn't realize your whole site was about tear stains. You do have additional information too. Sorry...I don't know the reason for your rankings drop. I wish I had more time to dig into this.
-
I took a look at my organic search visits since March. There is no defining day that the visits dropped. Just a slow progression of fewer and fewer visits from my targeted keywords.
-
Can you pinpoint the day of your traffic drop? Take a look at your organic search traffic. Does it drop on the same day as a Panda update?
-
I just had a quick look on ahrefs.com and your backlinks (well the ones ahrefs have clocked anyway) have dropped by aprox 15% over relatively short timescale (since 20th Jan aprox), but that doesnt really fit your 3 month timescale but thought would mention it just in case
I cant see G+ in your social properties so definately worth developing G+ pers page/authorship and link to your content (if not already) and of course G+ company page and link that to site too
Sorry prob not much help but my 2 cents worth from having very quick look
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
-
Rankings Dropped to Nothing
We're kind of in crisis mode, as our ad revenue is about to take a huge hit. Hoping someone can help me figure out what to do next. Site: https://indoorgardening.com Here's what I did (below) that I think broke things somehow. I'm clearly not an SEO expert but thought I was making things better. And things did improve over the last week or so but then fell apart 2 days ago. 1. Most posts did not have a Yoast focus keyword. I added keyword phrases and used Yoast suggestions to optimize for that and for readability. 2. In some cases I changed post titles to better reflect the keyword phrase. 3. In some cases I changed the slug per Yoast's suggestion and did a 301 redirect from the old slug to the new one. 4. I used Grammarly to fix all spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. 5. Some Yoast-suggested changes that were made: Image alt tags, subheading structures, adding keyword to subheadings, first paragraph, and meta description, changed sentence length for those over 20 words to clean up the text, added transition words where applicable, reworded passive voice sentences, added internal links when needed, eliminated consecutive sentences (first word), improved Flesch reading ease when necessary. 6. I also added or changed Amazon affiliate links where needed and swapped out images when necessary. Results:
Technical SEO | | Jbyron
I started this project about 3 weeks ago. On 11/29 we had one of our highest traffic days, with 1017 hits coming from Google. On 11/30, 257 hits came from Google, and on 12/1, 3 (three!!) hits came from Google. At this point, 82 of 89 posts have a double green "Good" score in Yoast; 6 are "OK" and 1 does not have a focus keyword designated. Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide. -John0 -
Href lang issues - help needed!
Hi, I have an issue with Google indexing the US version of our website rather than the UK version on Google.co.uk. I have added hreflang tags to both sites (https://www.pacapod.com/ and https://us.pacapod.com/), have updated and submitted an XML sitemap for each website and checked that the country targeting in search console is set-up correctly but Google are still indexing the wrong website. I would be grateful for any assistance with this issue. Many thanks Eddie
Technical SEO | | mypetgiftbox0 -
Why is my site ranking so poorly compared to my competition?
I own a car shipping business (www.carshippingcarriers.com) and I was ranking very high last year, but around the end of August our site lost a TON of rank. Afterwards I had my SEO team at the time (no longer working with them) do a complete overhaul of the website (rewrote content, combined many pages together so no duplicate content issue, made it mobile friendly, etc.. Since then we continue to still lose rankings on Google. Yahoo and Bing seem to keep performing decently, but Google we are getting destroyed. I have been a member of Moz for a few months and I have been using the open site to check my competitors and their linking profile. One in particular, www.joescarshipping.com, has been ranking extremely well and the site looks horrible, doesn't have many links, hardly a social media presence, etc.. Compared my my website which has ton of content, articles on our website, social profile is great (tons of Google+ usage), not a ton of links so a decent amount of links, etc.. Why would a company like that be ranking so high while I keep falling? Any advice or reasoning as to what is wrong or what could be done to get better rankings? I am just at my wits end on this matter. 😕
Technical SEO | | Dutko23851 -
Is a micro site the way to go?
Hello, a client has asked us today to quote for how much it would cost them to get a micro site built. A Google employee has told them that because their current URL doesn't include .co.uk or.com it is simply: brandname.word that it will be harder for them to get their website to rank. My understanding is that micro sites aren't a good solution for any problem as Google doesn't like them. Would it be better for them to buy a .co.uk (they are a UK company) url and then redirect the url to their current website or is there a better solution? Many thanks
Technical SEO | | mblsolutions0 -
My rank suddenly drop
Hi before i subscribe for MOZ i have hired a seo expert to do an optimization for my escort website, it was really hard since im not knowledgeable and have no clue about it also my niche is kinda hard as what everyone says. The SEO did a good job ranking my site but in less than 2 weeks my ranking goes down and every time it happen what i do is call him and tell him about the situation and in just few days my rank goes up again and im in page 1 of google. My question is, is that normal? like ranking drop in less than 2 weeks and he could easily rank me up in just few days? I pay just to make sure that im on page 1, so every time he put my site on page 1 i pay for it. Gawd i still have no clue whats going on, i have a lot to learn, black hat, white hat, proper back linking, etc etc so i'd really love to know if its normal cause if it is then no point for me to learn SEO as he is doing job well done. I was just afraid that he is doing this to rip me, not that i dont trust him but you know this days everyone needs something for a living 🙂
Technical SEO | | geefex6nsy0 -
Where am I going wrong?
Hi guys, I am hoping that someone can provide me with some suggestions as to how I can get my site www.purelycaviar.co.uk ranking on both Google and Bing for 'caviar' 'caviar online' 'buy caviar online' and associated phrases that you'd expect people to use when looking to purchase caviar online (in the UK). As it currently stands the site ranks extremely poorly for most associated keywords. The thing is I don;t really have any budget and am feeling a bit overwhelmed with where to start. I am willing to put the time in to understand all this stuff but would love someone to give me a plan of action. Its also worth mentioning that I'm with Shopify so am limited with no server side access. A list of 'To Do's' would be great with an additional list of things which need constant input such as link building and blog posts... Any help massively appreciated!
Technical SEO | | EdwardoUK1 -
Domain targeting advice needed please
I would be interested in hearing the views of other seomozers on this issue please. I have a web server hosted in The Netherlands which I currently host my sites on, it is super fast (16core 24gb ram) and in 8 months has had 4 mins of downtime! On this server I wish to build a couple of ecommerce stores. However this is where my issue lays The first store I launch will be targeted at the UK market, however the domain I wish to use for it is a .com domain which has a moz ranting of about 36 (better than most of my competitors, worse than a few so it's a good headstart). The problem I would then have is a .com domain hosted on a Dutch server targeting UK people. Even if I was to set the webmaster tools location to UK it would not be ideal. Also, when it comes to launching the US site I would then be looking at using a .us domain which is far from ideal The other option I have is to use the .co.uk domain for the UK site but this is new and lack any decent moz score. Given this I am now pondering the following set up....using the .com domain on the Dutch server but putting the UK store in domain.com/UK and the future usa store in domain.com/usa. Would this be the best work around? I could then set the location of folders in the webmaster tools? Also, I plan on using geo redirecting on the domain so if a uk page happens to rank in the USA listings the user gets automatically redirected to the nearest matching product available in their country in the /us/ folder. Would this be easiest to work with on just one domain as it wouldn't technically be redirecting people to another site as per using two domains. Any thoughts would be good. Not even sure I have managed to explain it very clearly hehe
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
Ranking are not correct
Hi, Just a question, On one campaign for example - Vegas Hotel (vegashotel.com.au) Google ranking for **Clubs King Cross **is ZERO on Google AU when really its result 2 on google AU There are tones of other keywords the same 😞 Please let me know why Thanks MOZ Kiddies 😄 Ray
Technical SEO | | kayweb20