Rank drop in June
-
Since fixing a major duplicate content issue in Dec 2012, our traffic saw steady and dramatic growth through the summer. It has started to settle down now and rankings have started to decline. I have a bad feeling that something is wrong but for the life of me I cannot figure it out. Our Moz rank is pretty high but some of our biggest keywords have gone from #2 to #9 in a fairly short time period which makes me very nervous. I am not even sure where to look at this point.
Any suggestions are welcomed as I am kind of at a loss now but worry I am missing something basic.
-
I am not sure if anyone uses CloudFlare, but I think it may be to blame. After doing some research, I believe it may be hurting my rankings as it slow TTFB. Just took it off of my blog. I will let you know if things return to normal.
-
Sounds like the trust of the domain has been downgraded slightly. What are these big keywords your concerned about? I have a few golf blogs myself.
-
As for the Menus, I left of "golf" to save space and figured google can figure our we are golf as that word is used about a gazillion times in our site.
I would try Robert's suggestion. I would add that word a couple times in the key places that he suggests. Those are high caliber ammunition.... and cut back a few of the gazillion others.
-
Given the quality of site, make small changes over time. Do not go crazy out of fear of dropping.
These are the words of a confident and experienced General.
In one of my retail niches, in late June, I saw what appeared to me as rankings boosts for manufacturers and big brand sites.
Manufacturers moved up (probably because their name is mentioned repeatedly on every retail site), even though small specialty sites have greater product breadth (they sell all of the widgets made by several manufacturers) and they also have greater content depth than all of the manufacturers combined.
Big brands who sell one or two widgets moved up, even though lots of small expert sites have greater content area expertise, staff who are available by email or phone, and sell every widget made by every manufacturer.
My personal analysis is... there is nothing wrong with my site... something is wrong with Google. Carry on!
-
Thanks for the feedback. I feel like our on page SEO is pretty good. I recently decided to have index my categories (and have written unique descriptions for them). I always fear that I have done something wrong. I have a few posts that have ranked very well and deliver lots of traffic but have fallen off recently and I don't know why. Maybe it is just natural?
I never really can get my head around Canonical so I am in constant fear I have done something wrong. I trust Yoast SEO is handling it correctly.
As for the Menus, I left of "golf" to save space and figured google can figure our we are golf as that word is used about a gazillion times in our site.
I wish I had a more specific question but honestly I just am wondering why we went from 20% monthly traffic growth to slight decline even though our content has increased regularly.
-
Adam,
I went to your site and I think it is a good site and you are regularly posting, etc. (I thought I would see it static based on what you said; good job). You could use an H1 about Golf Equipment on the home page since that is what you seem to be about. I am not suggesting this, but at some point you may want to look at url structure re what you are. When you use terms like product-review as opposed to golf-product-reviews or golf-equipment-reviews, you are cheating yourself a bit. Same is true with Title Tags, etc. I don't like to see sites fail to take advantage of what they are.
In your menus have Golf Company Reviews, Improve Your Golf Game etc. as opposed to generics.
As to your dropping a bit, do not get too aggressive over it. Look at traffic and ranking and see if there is a corollary and which way it points. I would not be surprised to see you move up at this point even without change. Given the quality of site, make small changes over time. Do not go crazy out of fear of dropping.
Best
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
-
Content change and variations in ranking
Hello, I have create a new webpage and asked google in the webmaster tool to crawl it. Within minutes it is ranked at a certain spot. I did make changes to it to increase the ranking and right away I could see variations in ranking either up or down ? I have done the same same thing for a page that has been existing on my website for many years. I changed the content, asked the webmaster tool to re-crawl it. It got the new content within minutes but the ranking doesn't seem to change. Maybe my content isn't good enough but I doubt. Could it be that on old pages it takes a couple weeks to see ranking changes whereas on new page it is instantaneous. Has anyone experienced something similar ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Canonical - unexpected page ranking
We are getting good ranking for an unexpected page, rathewr than the one we were trying to get ranking for. Should we put a canonical on the 'unexpected page' to the page we would like to receive the ranking for - or do we risk losing the ranking? Any suggestions welcomed. Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Substance-create0 -
Help! Rankings dropping after optimising
I have been using MOZ a lot, in the past I have always been able to optimise a website enough to rank well in my local areas, but lately every time I optimise a website based on MOZ recommendations the rankings are just dropping and dropping... I haven't focused any efforts on backlinks, but a few sites have gone from the first page of SERP to 2nd and continue to drop... I have 2 example sites: https://www.documentmanagementsoftware.com.au/ - optimised for "Document Management Software" - was initially ranked no.7 in google AU, now it is no.16 after my efforts. http://www.tmphysio.com.au/ - optimised for "canberra physiotherapy" - was no.6 now it is dropping to no.9 after 'optimisation' Any help or insights would be extremely helpful as I feel hopeless!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thinkLukeSEO0 -
Preserving rankings after migration
I have acquired new a client who wants to migrate to a new platform. He also wants a 100% guarantee we maintain he Google search rankings. How realistic is this? Anyone got a checklist they can recommend?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
Rankings dropped off a cliff. Webmaster tools message: No manual spam actions found. Now what?
A week ago my rankings for http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com (some adult content) dropped and I'm now getting now impressions. I submitted a reconsideration request as I was sure I hadn't violated any rules and today the reply was that no manual spam actions were found. Te email goes onto say there are a variety of other things that could affect rankings such as site architecture, not being able to crawl and algo changes. As far as I'm aware all these issues are fine. I'm not aware of any algo updates last weekend. my question is what can I do now? I need to get my rankings back but there's nothing wrong with my site or practices.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Sudden drop in ranking for major search terms
Site bumpbabyandbeyond com au. Help! We have been operating for six years and had steadily built up our ranking for major terms like maternity clothes, maternity clothing, maternity wear, reaching highs of 6, 8 and 10 respectively for AU sites AU wide about six months ago that we have steadily maintained. All of a sudden we have dropped away. A week ago I noticed we had dropped from 6 to 12 for maternity clothes. This morning we are 21! I can't see any obvious reason for this, but believe the eCommerce module of our inventory/pos software has had a recent update - I'm awaiting answers on this. We haven't actively had anyone link building or working on SEO after being badly bitten and shelling out a small fortune for an AU company to do very little over six months - rankings improved rapidly when I sacked them and did some on page minor work myself. But I don't have the time or knowledge to look after the seo, and am on the hunt for reputable white hat assistance. Is there anything obviously wrong that I need to fix ASAP? Any help would be much appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | catfree0 -
Home Page Rankings Drop
Hi all we have being working with a small local client in the last few weeks getting good rankings using onsite op, and business listings we have been getting good ranking ie top 15 then today we drop right out the top 50, after completing manual checks i see the keywords as all related | glasgow catering | Not in Top 50 | down > 42 | |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Will_Craig
| catering glasgow | Not in Top 50 | down > 41 | |
| glasgow caterers | Not in Top 50 | down > 39 | |
| caterers in glasgow | Not in Top 50 | down > 37 | |
| caterers glasgow | Not in Top 50 | down > 32 | Also when completing manual checks on the above keywords, the home page is not ranking what so ever, infact its missing i went 300 results deep and cant find it, other inner pages rank but not the home. The only other recent change is that we now have a listing under the Google maps section of the homepage on page 1 any advice www.georgieporgies.co.uk0 -
Suddenr Ranking Drop
Hello all . Im experiencing a sudden ranking drop for one of my websites . Keyword = Green Tea Search Engine = google.lk URL = www.eswaran.com/greenTea.html This page was at 7th on 1st page . Since coupe of weeks back its moving backwards . I didn't even do any link building for this page other than doing little changes to titles tags . What would be the reason for such a issue ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Osanda0