New more "helpful" internal linking causing SERP & traffic drop?
-
Still dealing with the weird traffic drop on my website.
I have removed a bunch of old links from a defunct blog, 301 thin pages, added text to remaining pages.
I'm still stumped.
So awhile ago I freshened up my website and thought I was "helping people" by making sure they could CONTACT the studio more easily... I added more links to the "contact page" I thought this would help conversions...This changed the number of links to my entire site....Would this be the problem with my ranking/traffic drop?
-
I saw that video, yes it is a good one.
Interesting theory about the new "spam search queries" I can see that might be an issue with some sites, I'm not sure it is with mine.
There is something called "pink filter" that I have heard of that if google determines your website to be porn, it will not allow it when safesearch is on.
According to theory if I have not been hit by the "pink filter" I am not labeled porn and should not have my rankings dropped. It does look like Google is changing, I'll keep this in mind.
-
Well said! That's exactly what I was thinking and hoping... That if my idea is not the problem, maybe a real geek with chime in and fix it. Anyway, here goes...
There has been some new additions to Google's algo announced just a few days ago. Emphasis on "Announced", who know but Matt Cutts on how long it has actually been active, right?
They (Google) have started targeting anything that "they consider" bad, misused, search terms. Two such terms are "PayDay Loans" and anything that "They Consider" to be of a Pornographic nature.
Although your site is a classy photo studio for private "Intimate" photography and not a porn site, it does have semantic terms on the site that "They May Consider" worth lowering just a little.
Below is a link from which I got this info and formed this theory. This is probably not the problem since I'm not a big-shot and no big-shots have mentioned it, or they "have" mentioned it but found out to not be the issue. But I'm having fun with the exchange and hope to learn more myself... Just like you said above.
Here's the link (I hope)
-Gary.
Oops! I meant to add this quote from the page,
Google has officially launched a new search update to target “spammy queries” such as [payday loan], pornographic and other heavily spammed queries
-
Geek away....
If this was a simple problem with one simple answer I would have fixed it 4 months ago
I've had lots of suggestions and lots of bits of help.
I'm always glad for more, if your suggestion does not work, someone will pipe in and we all learn from it.
Here is another thread that has more data too to help you out.
http://moz.com/community/q/web-traffic-tanked-not-penguin-nor-panda-i-am-stumped
What do you see?
-
Sorry to see your rankings going down. It's obviously not the "shake down" thing I was referring to. However...
I looked at your site after looking at your graph and think I may have found something that could possibly be a contributing factor to your rankings issue.
In my home town I'm a seo big-fish, but here on "The Moz", I'm just a wee lil minnow, so I do not claim to be an SEO Jeenyus outside my physical area. That being said,
Do you mind if I share with you what I think I see to be a possible issue? I don't want to offend you or anyone by coming across as a self proclaimed super-geek, this is why I'm asking.
-Gary.
-
Fascinating theory, but this has been a slow steady decline since March.
Not an instant drop.
Here is an awesome graph of Jan to now.
http://www.bayareaboudoir.com/capture2.jpg
I erased all my stats Jan 1st from previous years.
But they had been slowly climbing.
-
I admit that I don't know your whole situation. But based on my own experience with Local SEO I can say this...
I can very often count on Google to Severely Drop the ranking of the site and or the individual site-page shortly after I do a medium to large amount of SEO Tweaking on the given client site.
Personally I call this "The Google SEO Shake Down" (not sure where I got that term). I don't know if they do this on purpose, but it is predictable like clock-work, so I can only assume there really is something to this "Google SEO Shake Down" idea.
This DROP In Ranking only lasts a few days to a week or so (for me so far).
If your ranking problem has been less than two or three weeks, I would suggest to just stop all your activity and play the waiting game with Google for 5 days to as much as 3 weeks (usually 4 to 7 days, but does vary). If this is the "SEO Shake Down", your site will pop right back up. However, if this has been going on for over 3 weeks, I'd think there is a more serious problem.
Parting Thought:
I frame this "SEO Shake Down" in my own mind like this... Google does this in order to see if there is an SEO spammer that may panic and throw a bunch of spammy SEO tactics at the site. This has worked well for me so far without fail! When I see a big dip in ranking just after doing some SEO tweaking I WILL always stop and wait... So far, the rankings have always came back.
I hope this helps to shine just a little more light on your situation. No one has taught me this, I'm only speaking from my own personal experience alone. But since this so far has been absolutely 100% predictable, I figured it wouldn't hurt to share.
-Gary.
Up Date: I forgot to mention that the "SEO Tweaking" mentioned above is "On-Page" SEO only. OFF-SITE back linking may be a different beast all together! Cool?
-
Update:
I just went through and fixed the last of the 404 errors with 301.
I also changed the internal linking structure to have more links going to the home page and not to the contact page.
I hope this helps.
I'd love some more input on this issue.
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
-
Website Redesign & Ensuring Minimal Traffic/Rankings Lost
Hi there, We have undergone a website redesign (mycompany.com) and our site is ready to go live however the new website is built on a different platform so all of our blog pages will not be copied over - to avoid a large web developer expense. So our intention is to then leave all the blog pages as (on the old web design) but move it to the domain blog.mycompany.com with 301 redirects inserted on mycompany.com for each blog post pointing to the corresponding blog.mycompany.com. Is there anything else we should do to ensure minimal traffic/rankings are lost? Thank you so much for your help.
Web Design | | amitbroide0 -
What’s the best tool to visualize internal link structure and relationships between pages on a single site?
I‘d like to review the internal linking structure on my site. Is there a tool that can visualize the relationships between all of the pages within my site?
Web Design | | QBSEO0 -
Needs clarification: How "Disallow: /" works?
Hi all, I need clarification on this. I have noticed we have given "Disallow: /" in one of our sub-directory beside homepage. So, how it going to work now? Will this "Disallow: /" at sub-directory level going to disallow only that directory or entire website? If it is going to work for entire website; we have already given one more Disallow: / at homepage level blocking few folders. How it is going to handle with two Disallow: / commands? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Do more links from sub-domains to domain (website) hurt rankings?
Hi all, If there are multiple sub-domains like abc.website.com, 123.website.com, etc...and if the top pages of website are linked from multiple sub-domains via top menu or footer links; will this hurts? Will too much interlinking of few top pages of a website from it's sub-domains dilute link juice? How many links ideally we can add to website from a sub-domain? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Site is getting crushed by spam traffic and Google Webmaster Tools giving crawl warnings. Also...
Currently hosting a site I'm planning on moving to a new server ASAP, 301 redirecting and have a domain that has nice authority and very old. On the current site I need to clean up the blog. I have a few questions actually.... 1. I'd like to remove most of the blog articles as I want the new site to be very high quality, but isn't it dangerous to do a 301 redirect to the same page for all these articles? 2. I want to focus on the new site as the current site has too many issues but still managing to hang in their. is highly outdated yet I don't want to spend a ton of time on the site before the 301 redirect. With the Pigeon and Panda 4.0 rumors being released soon, I want to get the new site completed ASAP. Do you think it's better if I fix the 3. Would removing cloudflare make things better or worse with the crashing of my site due to high traffic (mainly spam on the blog.) 4. My best article by far is outdated, but should I waste time updating it before redirecting or should I just get the new site going? I did way too many guest posts thinking content is king, but at least checked the outgoing links Domain Auth, Page Auth, and MozTrust in OSE, but first off I'm going to remove a page that mentions I'm looking for guest bloggers. I tried to keep the posts relevant but at the time you could get away with 5. Anything I can do to slow down these spammers on Wordpress? I noticed most of them are checking for vulnerabilities but I'm keeping it up to date, have caching setup. Thanks!
Web Design | | eugenecomputergeeks0 -
Why aren't Images in G+ product page posts showing up in SERPs for brand searches?
Before 1-2 weeks ago, our G+ posts containing links to our product pages would show up in in SERPs (when searching for our brand name) with a thumbnail of the product image. Now, they do not (see image below for visual). Our tech team confirmed there hasn't been any coding change that might be to blame and I see that this isn't happening to other sites. Any idea what may be the problem here? tcnhLgy
Web Design | | znotes0 -
Adobe "Muse" on SEO?
Anyone ever had any experience with this tool? Any feedback on how adobe muse does with SEO and markup is appreciated! update 1: Really? nobody has any comment on this?
Web Design | | Raydon0 -
Best strategy for multiple internal links
We have a website that has a whole heap of internal links. After re-structuring the footer links to the main categories we are now looking at the best way to display the internal links from each category (approx 20-50 links from each). At present they are simply listed on the corresponding category page, however this doesnt look great so we want to display them in a way that is user friendly and also seo friendly. Any suggestions and examples appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Web Design | | Silkstream0