Identifying why my site has a penalty
-
Hi,
My site has been hit with a google penalty of some sort, but it doesn't coincide with a penguin or panda update. I have attached a graph of my visits that demonstrates this.
I have been working on my SEO since the latter part of last year and have been seeing good results, then all of a sudden my search referrals dropped by 70%.
Can anyone advise on what it could be?
Thanks!
Will
-
Great. Just audit it, fix problems, audit again, write more great content and give it time. Even if you fix the problem (assuming it was an onsite problem) it may take some time for Google to show the love agian.
-
Oh okay! That makes sense. Found a few issues with my php rules that automatically write links on a few of my contents pages.
I've learned some valuable tips here, such a fantastic help. I'm going to get the new site up in a week or two and we'll see if things change.
I'll keep you updated!
-
Ok so. If a bit of content resides at /bikes/mountain-bikes/ and the menulink I use is /bikes/mountain-bikes/ I'll get a status code 200. There is no added delay, no page rank lost, 200 == OK. The menu link points directly to the destination content.
Now lets say you've decided to change the location of that content to /bikes/mountain-bikes/index.html.
You do the 301 redirects on from the old url to the new one, THEN you need to update your links to reflect the new location so you're not just pointing at 301 redirects.
-
Thanks for the table of links. I'll see to it.
I'll work on the code on the new version of the site, seems pointless to do it now.
I've installed the plugin. How do I change the status code of a page? I don't really understand how it can be anything but 200, as if i'm viewing it it's obviously there! I thought 301's pushed the user to the 200 version of the page and only existed temporarily in the browser? Obviously I'm wrong, perhaps you could explain it for me?
Cheers for the screaming frog tool, looks great.
-
Did you change them. The scan I just did doesn't show them.... Maybe your host was getting funky or something lol.
Get this and click the links on your site. You want to link to status code 200, not 301
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/server-status-code-inspec/bmngiaijlojlejaiijgedgejgcdnjnpk
I wouldn't de-index them, I havent found a legitimate reason to de-index anything since 2005, but im a programmer and normally don't need to patch things. You could probably quickly fix them just by adding some content/images.
im going to private msg you another spreadsheet. this should show you source+destination of your 404's and 301's.
btw, the spider im using is Screaming Frog, its the best I've found.
-
Just checked the 418's and they do seem to be already re-directed with 301's, or are actually in place. What would be the protocol here?
-
Got your message, thank you. What tool did you completed the crawl with? I'm sort of disappointed this stuff didn't come up in my seomoz weekly scans.
A few questions;
- How do i know where the 301's are being sent from? So in a this chain of events...
Link on a page on my site > routed via a 301 > landing on the desired page
... how do I find the first step in the process? the table you sent me seems to point out only the middle step.
- Yes the 'about us' and 'contact us' pages are weak. I'm building a new version of the site as we speak and will take care of it then. In the mean time, if i no-index them is that as good as getting rid of them?
I will now sort the 404's and 418's. Without wanting to sound like a broken record; thanks again! Do let me know if there is anything I can do in return once we've got to the bottom of this.
Will
-
private messaged you a google doc of the crawl. Looks like pages that no longer exist, they need 301's.
-
Wow, thanks for all this. It's late now in the UK so I'll check it out tomorrow.
Cheers
p.s. Where are my 418's coming from!?!
-
My crawl finished. You also have a bunch of status 418 "I'm a teapot" status codes. IDK what this is so I looked it up.
Per wikipedia:
418 I'm a teapot (RFC 2324)This code was defined in 1998 as one of the traditional IETF April Fools' jokes, in RFC 2324, Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol, and is not expected to be implemented by actual HTTP servers.
-
-
You'd think so, but 1) we cant fully trust everything Google says and 2) it could have been something that the algorithm progressively finds and penalizes.
Its possible that this is not related to links or content.
Take care of your RCS and make it awesome (real company shtuff)
About us (under construction content, not good)
Contact us (weak and thin, include social
FAQ
Terms and Conditions (404 error on your site!). I once broke all my footer links on a blog that was getting 5k/day and it slammed me down to 600/day nearly instantaneously. Ive seen other sites with 404 errors survive and even Cutts has downplayed the issue of 404 errors, but I believe any 404 can be indicative of a bad user experience. Scan your site for 404s and fix them all.
Also, many of your internal links appear to be pointing to 301 redirects. Update your links to point to the status 200 status code (directly to the destination, not through 301)
In just a quick overview, the above are my notes. This isnt a detailed audit, but you should scan your site for 404 errors and fix them, get your RCS stuff in order and conduct a full site review looking for anything that may be frowned upon by google.
-
Thanks devknob,
In answer to your questions;
-
it is across all organic traffic and all keywords to my entire site
-
the content on my site is fairly squeaky clean. I've been using the seomoz pro-tool to keep it in check. I use yoast seo for wordpress to handle my canonicals and employ no dodgy js hiding techniques. I did not remove content.
-
I haven't been buying links. I do have 20,000+ sitewide links coming from bikingbis.com and 12,000 sitewide links coming from citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/. The ones from bikingbis have been removed and have requested removal of the other. Anchor text is varied and is mainly branded keywords
My question is though, if it's a bad backlink problem, wouldn't it coincide with a panda or penguin update?
Thanks again
Will
-
-
Check your analytics
- Is it a specific group of keywords?
- Is it organic traffic at all?
- Is it traffic to specific page or pages?
Check your website.
- Are your link canonicals setup CORRECTLY?
- Do you have content that is hidden via css/javascript and has no mechanism for unhiding?
- Have you changed alot of links recently and not performed 301 redirects?
- Do you have good content, title tags and meta descriptions?
- Did you remove content
Check your links
- Have you been buying links? Check your backlink profile using opensite explorer. Is there any unusual activity here?
- Is your anchor text varied?
Have you gotten a notice in Google Webmasters tools?
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
-
Too many dofollow links = penalty?
Hi. I currently have 150 backlinks, 90% of them are dofollow, while only 10% are nofollow. I recently hit position #10 for my main keyword, but now it is dropped to #16 and a lot of related keywords are gone. So I have a few questions: 1. Was my website penalized for having an unnatural backlink profile (too many dofollow links), or maybe this drop in positions is just a temporary, natural thing? 2. Isn’t it too late for making the backlink profile look more natural by building more nofollow backlinks and making it 50%/50%? Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NathalieBr0 -
Moz was unable to crawl your site? Redirect Loop issue
Moz was unable to crawl your site on Jul 25, 2017. I am getting this message for my site: It says "unable to access your homepage due to a redirect loop. https://kuzyklaw.com/ Site is working fine and last crawled on 22nd July. I am not sure why this issue is coming. When I checked the website in Chrome extension it saysThe server has previously indicated this domain should always be accessed via HTTPS (HSTS Protocol). Chrome has cached this internally, and did not connect to any server for this redirect. Chrome reports this redirect as a "307 Internal Redirect" however this probably would have been a "301 Permanent redirect" originally. You can verify this by clearing your browser cache and visiting the original URL again. Not sure if this is actual issue, This is migrated on Https just 5 days ago so may be it will resolved automatically. Not sure, can anybody from Moz team help me with this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CustomCreatives0 -
Spam signals from old company site are hurting new company site, but we can't undo the redirect.
My client was forced to change its domain name last year (long story). We were largely able to regain our organic rankings via 301-redirects. Recently, the rankings for the new domain have begun to plummet. Nothing specific took place that could have caused any ranking declines on the new site. However, when we analyze links to the OLD site, we are seeing a lot of link spam being built to that old domain over recent weeks and months. We have no idea where these are coming from but they appear to be negatively impacting our new site. We cannot dismantle the redirects as the old site has hundreds, if not thousands, of quality links pointing to it, and many customers are accustomed to going to that home page. So those redirects need to stay in place. We have already disavowed all the spam we have found on the old Search Console. We are continuing to do so as we find new spam links. But what are we supposed to do about this spam negatively impacting our new site? FYI we have not received any messages in the search console.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | FPD_NYC1 -
Links Identified in WMT not on Webpages
Hi, We're currently reviewing one of our clients backlinks in Google Webmaster Tools, Majestic & OSE as we can see many toxic links. However we cannot find the links on the webpages that are listed on Google WMT. We have searched through the website along with checking through the source code. Should we still disavow the domain? Thanks, Edd
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tomcraig860 -
I have plenty of backlinks but the site does not seem to come up on Google`s first page.
My site has been jumping up and down for many months now. but it never stays on Google first page. I have plenty of back-links, shared content on social media. But what could i be doing wrong? any help will be appreciated. Content is legit. I have recently added some internal links is this might be the cause? Please help .
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | samafaq0 -
80% of traffic lost over night, Google Penalty?
Hi all.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Hemjakt
I have a website called Hemjakt (http://www.hemjakt.se/) which is a search engine for real estate currently only available on the Swedish market. The application crawl real estate websites and collect all estates on a single searchable application. The site has been released for a few months and have seen a steady growth since release, increasing by 20% weekly up to ~900 visitors per day. 3 days ago, over night, I lost 80% of my traffic. Instead of 900 visitors per day I'm at ~100 visitors per day and when I search for long, specific queries such as "Åsgatan 15, Villa 12 rum i Alsike, Knivsta" ( <adress><house type=""><rooms><area> <city>), I'm now only found on the fifth page. I suspect that I have become a subject of a Google Penalty. How to get out of this mess?</city></rooms></house></adress> Just like all search engines or applications, I do crawl other websites and scrape their content. My content is ~90% unique from the source material and I do add user value by giving them the possibility to compare houses, get ton of more data to compare pricing and history, giving them extra functionalities that source site do not offer and so on. My analytics data show good user engagement. Here is one example of a Source page and a page at my site:
Source: http://www.hemnet.se/bostad/villa-12rum-alsike-knivsta-kommun-asgatan-15-6200964
My Site: http://www.hemjakt.se/bostad/55860-asgatan-15/ So: How do I actually confirm that this is the reason I lost my traffic? When I search for my branded query, I still get result. Also I'm still indexed by Google. If I am penalized. I'm not attempting to do anything Black Hat and I really believe that the app gives a lot of value to the users. What tweaks or suggestions do you have to changes of the application, to be able to continue running the service in a way that Google is fine with?0 -
My site www.sriindustries.com dropped to back page penguin 2.1
My website penguin 2.1 dropped back to page 5 and beyond, can you help me to come out from this ? My head is breaking, also I would like to know how to be on top for local business search (maps)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | synchronyinfo0 -
Victim of Negative SEO - Can I Redirect the Attacked Page to an External Site?
My site has been a victim of Negative SEO. During the course of 3 weeks, I have received over 3000 new backlinks from 200 referring domains (based on Ahref report). All links are pointing to just 1 page (all other pages within the site are unaffected). I have already disavowed as many links as possible from Ahref report, but is that all I can do? What if I continue to receive bad backlinks? I'm thinking of permanently redirecting the affected page to an external website (a dummy site), and hope that all the juice from the bad backlinks will be transferred to that site. Do you think this would be a good practice? I don't care much about keeping the affected page on my site, but I want to make sure the bad backlinks don't affect the entire site. The bad backlinks started to come in around 3 weeks ago and the rankings haven't been affected yet. The backlinks are targeting one single keyword and are mostly comment backlinks and trackbacks. Would appreciate any suggestions 🙂 Howard
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | howardd0