New content cause for drop? Still showing old cache though...
-
About 10 days ago I added about 750 words of new text to a homepage as it was simply a sign up landing page and rather sparse. I presumed that by adding content it would help google understand the content of the site as it is a single page on the root domain (as soon as users sign up they go to a subdomain). Yesterday though the site recieved a huge drop in traffic and now recieves almost no organic traffic at all from google. I've done the obvious like checked WMT for messages but I'm not sure as to what caused the drop. As far as I'm aware there were no confirmed google updates on 7/6/13.
The strange thing is that when I check the google cache its about 3 weeks old so I'm guessing google is using the old cache to reference my site content against search queries. Does that mean the changes I made are not the cause for the drop in rankings? The title tag however has changed when the site is showin in the SERPS. How can that be if google has an old cache?
-
Samuel, I'd like to start over fresh in answering your question because there are too many thoughts going on here at once. Let's start with the obvious: Can you provide a link so we can have a look at the content you wrote? It is possible that you have crossed some sort of content overoptimization threshold if it seems to be keyword-stuffed.
Regarding timing, Google has a lot of databases and they don't all update simultaneously. It isn't uncommon for the title tag to update in the SERPs before the page content updates in the cached snapshot. Furthermore, algorithmic calculations, including whether or not to apply a filter or penalty, do not always happen at the same speed that indexation happens.
All of this is to say that just because a drop in traffic happened after you updated content doesn't mean the content was the cause of that drop. Post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) is a logical fallacy. But there does seem to be a strong temporal correlation so it is the obvious place to start ---> Can you share a link to the content?
-
Hi Sam, Here is info about this from Matt Cutts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MswMYk05tk&feature=youtu.be
I hope this helps,
use Google Web master tools fech as a google bot then add to index all links
Hope this help,
Tom
-
I only added the subdomain yesterday with a wordpress blog. The main site is html only. The rankings drop were before I added the blog on the subdomain.How I instruct google to recoginise the subdomain as part of the main domain. Is that what you're saying?
Thanks.
-
Please accept my apology I'm doing this on a cell phone and trying to Doug in a couple other things.
It is definitely because you are using a subdomain is your master site like www.
and if you were to change that then you'll will lose Rank Unless you instruct Google to recognize the root domain as part of the same URL as the sub domain the site is subject to being treated as a new URL with out the subdomain for what ever you use as subdomain this case www. Or not maybe? Regardless what you done is tell Google that this URL is not on the fully qualified domain name which could include www. .is no longer your homepage so it gave it what it we give any brand-new website homepage you need to add the subdomain then it should work.
If you use OSE on a subdomain like test. Example.com it is going to be less powerful check using Moz rank, trustUntil google is made to understand that this is part of the fully qualified domain and simply there to be part of the FQDN and put to index and treat it like its part of the Subdomain that was ranking well already it will not rank just like
I would not want to use some of my subdomain that I use for other purposes like video.Example.com domain it gets low rank It's not relative content wise to my primary domain.
There are exceptions with content delivery networks ranking very well
So
Please do not confuse what I said about CDN being bad for ranking at all. CDN's help rank and having a subdomain that is a CDN.Example.com will. Help rank your site very highly depending on the CDN and the cookie configuration it gets much more technical regardless I am not saying anything negative about CDN's and ranking it is simply a popular way of creating a subdomain and will most likely boost your ranking I was just using it as an example as it is a very popular way of adding a subdomain
all the best,
tom
-
Sorry your home page is a sign up only page?
And the news homepage coming up the root domain then you made a change to the structure of it which I'm sure was indexed by Google. Or should be if it's not. It sounds to me as if you should tell Google Webmaster tools that your homepage is a gateway and you do not consider it your actual homepage or to the traditional thing it allows sign-ups along with creating content
-
3 week old cache could be nothing or could be slow server and bad site design java, too many links on pages , PageRank you can do wonders with a site audit and a fast host what type of website EG WordPress , just HTML who do you host with?
-
In google Use site: then whatever your new page is not just your home page to see if its been indexed. If not fetch it in GWT.
Your server sends the changes to your site changes they will show up when the DNS + server say not google.
Google will then index as it likes.
If you took a loos I would look at what you added.
Audit the page then the site.Some change is normal use Moz with
authority tools or SERPS.com to see SERPS changes.Use Moz tools with http://marketing.grader.com
To see what you can do to better your site.
Hope this was of help,
Thomas
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
-
Create 100% new content in existing page/URL?
We have about 30 pages of content that we are hiding from the website as these articles had some issues. If these pages ranked well, would you recommend that the new content is written within these pages? Meaning, we would replace the content that's in those pages with the same topic and keywords. Or do you think it's best to start a new page instead?
On-Page Optimization | | kvillalobos0 -
Delete or not delete outdated content
Hi there!
On-Page Optimization | | Enrico_Cassinelli
We run a website about a region in Italy, the Langhe area, where we write about wine and food, local culture, and we give touristic informations. The website also sports a nice events calendar: in 4 years we (and our users) loaded more than 5700 events. Now, we're starting to have some troubles managing this database. The database related to events is huge both in file size and number of rows. There are a lot of images that eat up disk space, and also it's becoming difficult to manage all the data in our backend. Also, a lot of users are entering the website by landing on outdated events. I was wondering if it could be a good idea to delete events older than 6 months: the idea was to keep only the most important and yearly recurring events (which we can update each year with fresh information), and trash everything else. This of course means that 404 errors will increase, and also that our content will gettin thinner, but at the same time we'll have a more manageable database, and the content will be more relevant and "clean". What do you think? thank you 🙂 Best0 -
Should I change PDF content?
Hi everybody, My Website is ranking well for several keywords and long-tail keywords. However, all these visits are going directly to some .PDF guides that exist on our products and information on industry sectors the company is based around. I feel the PDF's are bad simply because they dont offer easy interaction with the rest of the website. I am considering making each PDF into a webpage but am not 100% sure of the pro's and cons of doing so. I will still need to the PDF's accessible for user to download but don't want my new webpages to get tagged as duplicate content. Is it possible to,
On-Page Optimization | | ATP
1 - change the PDF's so they send any link authority to the new webpage
2 - make google aware that I want the webpage not the PDF to be the "ranking" page What is the likely hood of destroying my rank for these keywords on the PDF by making these changes and then not being able to rank the webpage for the same keywords? It would be pointless if I just lost all the traffic lol.0 -
URL for a new website
Hi, I am creating a new website for a client. Is it best to include the keywords from the most common search in the domain name, they would like: forenamesurname.com but should I be recommending: weddingmakeupbyforename.com Does it make much difference to search rankings if the keyword is in the domain name? Thanks v much
On-Page Optimization | | danieldunn100 -
Duplicate content because of content scrapping - please help
We manage brands websites in a very competitive industry that have thousands of affiliate links We see that more and more websites (mainly affiliates websites) are scrapping our brand websites content and it generate many duplicate content (but most of them link to us back with an affiliate link). Our brand websites still rank for any sentence in brackets you search in Google, Will this duplicate content hurt our brand websites ? If yes, should we take some preventive actions ? We are not able to add ongoing UGC or additional text to all our duplicate content and trying to stop those websites of stealing our content is like playing cat and mouse... Thanks for your advices
On-Page Optimization | | Tit0 -
What do you do with old web pages?
I have a wordpress blog that I've made a ton of changes to. I have about a dozen pages on it that have old information or I no longer have a use for. In retrospect, I probably should have used the old pages for new content instead of building new pages. Should I just leave them on the site with no links to them, should I mark them as noindex, or should I delete them? I think some of the old pages could be completing with my new pages for ranking due to similar content. Website is: http://continuumweddings.com if you'd like to check out my site. Thanks, Melissa
On-Page Optimization | | mrsmelmitch0 -
Duplicate Product BUT Unique Content -- any issues?
We have the situation where a group of products fit into 2 different categories and also serve different purposes (to the customer). Essentially, we want to have the same product duplicated on the site, but with unique content and it would even have a slightly different product name. Some specifications would be redundant, but the core content would be different. Any issues?
On-Page Optimization | | SEOPA1 -
Do product pages need unique content or does having duplcate content hurt on those pages?
We are adding product rapidly to our website but this requires allowing duplicate to exist on our product pages of furniture-online.com. From an SEO standpoint do we need to make this content unique for each product. Since we aren't link building to specific product pages and we don't anticipate product pages being found in a search result, are we ok leaving the duplicate content in place and spending our dollars elsewhere?
On-Page Optimization | | gallreddy0