Sudden Drop in Rankings/Traffic/Organic Impressions Without a Penalty
-
Hi Moz community!
I have a question about a local client in Raleigh, NC - http://paragonbuildinggroup.com
This client came to us from another agency who had previously not done such a great job with the design/development of the site, or with the marketing of it, so we are somewhat limited in terms of what we can do on design, user experience, etc. But, the SEO is all still easy to tweak and we've been working on it for some time now.
As of July 5th, their keyword rankings have dropped dramatically (we're talking from first page rankings to nothing, according to Authority Labs), and they've fallen completely off the map in the SERPs. Their local listing doesn't appear in search results anymore, and WMT is showing a drastic drop in impressions (from 457 on July 3rd to 92 on July 5th). There have been no manual penalties on the site, no recent major development work done, and from what I can see, no signs of hacking and no bad backlinks. The only thing I can see is that Mozcast showed an 83 degree day with some clouds and rain on July 5th, the day that our rankings dropped off, but I can't find any documentation showing what might have changed.
Any insight as to what might be going on? I'm completely stumped!
-
I did not go thru your entire list of links but I checked on BuiderDirectory.com and it costs money to be included in their directory. How is that not the same as buying links? Shouldn't this be a violation of Google's policy as well?
-
All great suggestions - thank you!! We're working with the associations that the client is accredited with at the moment to try to build some quality links. Branching out on top of that seems to be the right move to make at this point now, too.
-
I am not huge on directories but here are some you should go for - I am sure there are more:
http://www.thebluebook.com/
http://www.homeadvisor.com/
http://www.nahb.org/
http://www.epa.gov/radon/rrnc/directory.html
http://www.builderdirectory.com/ -
I am guessing the algorithmic penalty. Don't change your plans, just jump on them. Content and good, relevant links. I would also break up that interlinking if actually working on the other websites isn't something you are being paid to do. Separate from them, rewrite the content on the website that is your main focus and start working on links (clients, material vendors - anything relevant you can get quickly).
-
That's great feedback, and the content is definitely something that is on our radar to work on. We did inherit access to all of the company's sites, but this Building Group site is our main focus. Unfortunately, the client doesn't have the budget right now for us to combine all services into one mother site (as much as we would like to!!), so we are doing what we can with the way that things are set up between the various sites right now.
Content is definitely actionable - and I appreciate you taking the time to take a glance over things! Backlinks are another action item we have on our list. This change just came about so suddenly that it's really thrown us on the work we've had planned.
-
Question - when you took them over did you get all three websites?
paragonbuildinggroup.com/, paragonroofinggroup.com and paragonpaintinggroup.com
There is some pretty bad duplicate content between the building group site and the roofing group site and with the sites interlinking as they do, I would say Google noticed pretty quick.
I know you are limited as to what can be done but I would say explain to your client that each website needs to have content relevant only to what that particular website is offering - no duplicate content. If the building website wants to touch on roofing then link to the other website - that is fine. Honestly, I would personally rather see all of this put together on one website with different sections for the different services - then the other domain names could just 301 to the relevant sections of the mother website. Also - links. the building group website needs them badly. As far as what happened - there is no way to be 100% sure but I am guessing an algorithmic penalty - the way the three websites (that I found, there could be more) are set up could certainly look like an attempt to manipulate search results to the algorithms. Honestly... it probably was an attempt to manipulate search results, an attempt by the last vendor. Not a penalty for the duplicate content, mind you - but the duplicate content and interlinking etc... were probably signals that all added up to "hey, these websites are not following guide lines" this was just a quick look though - I could be wrong.
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
-
301 Redirect and SEO Rankings
I recently restructured my webpage URL's (about 300 ~ 75% of my total website) to make the URL paths more SEO friendly. Within a few hours of restructuring the pages, I did a 301 redirect to my old URL's and pointed them to the new pages. I have seen ~ 50% drop in organic traffic. I started the restructuring exercise 14 days ago and finished it a few hours back. I have 3 questions: How long will it take for me to recover my old traffic. Will I recover most of it or some of it? Due to a glitch in the specified path, some old URL's were wrongly redirected (this happened with 9 pages to be exact). I will explain exactly what happened: www.redirct.com/superseonow1 ---- redirected to ---- www.redirectnow.com/seonow1 **/superseonow was 301 redirected to /seonow. After 3 days I realize that /superseonow1 was actually /supernow1. The same thing happened to 9 pages - /superseonow2, /superseonow3 ..... ** I have removed all the wrong redirects. When I tried to enter the correct (old) paths now and 301 redirect them to the new paths, the page was not found using the old paths. Should I redirect the old paths to the New ones even now? 3. Finally, in how much time after you change the page structure should you use the 301 redirect. Since I had two different teams working on this job, there could have been up to a 24 hour gap between the redirection.
On-Page Optimization | | rajatsharma0 -
Why Is this Website Not Ranking?
HI There - I have been working on this site: http://limohireauckland.co.nz - primarily for our keyword phrase 'limo hire Auckland' - I am running a campaign for this site from the Pro tools and using the pon-page report card this url achieves an A grade for that particular phrase. The client is working on links in the local community etc but we are not appearing in the SERPS at all for most of the phrases we are optimising for. There has recently been a huge redesign on the site (approx 6 weeks ago) and the old content was not great. Am I missing something really glaringly obvious? Or am I being too impatient?
On-Page Optimization | | AllieMc0 -
How to improve On-Page Grades for Top Ranking Pages
please help me - i dont know or understand how to improve on-Page Grades for Top Ranking Pages
On-Page Optimization | | pwwukpw0 -
Do images on a CDN affect my Google Ranking?
I have recently switched my images to a CDN (MaxCDN) and all of the images within my post are now get loaded directly from the CDN. Will this affect my Google ranking? Do Google care if the image is hosted physicaly on the domain?
On-Page Optimization | | Amosnet0 -
Does microformats improve my ranking?
Hi, does Mircofromats like schema.org improve my ranking? If so, just because my products are listed in google/products? Regard
On-Page Optimization | | censeo0 -
Can Anyone Explain Ranking Drop?!?
Good Morning, I'm hoping someone out there can try and help me figure out what has caused my site to drop from #6 to #10 to #14 and now #19 for my main keyword.. ( My Site is : http://goo.gl/JgK1e ) I am convinced that my site has the best/most unique content in this niche. Every other site uses the same manufacturer descriptions and info and i have added text to certain pages to try and give them more unique content. I believe that my site is very easy to use and navigate, and should be considered a great user experience... Any guidance or help would be greatly appreciated.... Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Prime850 -
SEO Change/Version Control
Hi. Can anyone suggest apps that might be applied for SEO change/version control? I've tried using Excel and Word in the past but both fall short when dealing with multiple client sites. Nothing suitable pops up so far. Specifically I want to be able to log any on-page changes that might impact SEO for historical analysis and possible roll-back (manual) eg change date, page title, headings, url, anchor text, alt image txt, body copy etc. The ability to have one view that can be filtered in various ways including by client and by url would be ideal. Maybe this is something SEOmoz is considering for Pro campaign management? Surely there's demand... Thanks Andy
On-Page Optimization | | Bluesnapper0 -
How do I check how a competitor ranks in the UK vs. US?
In building my strategy I want to check how well my competitors rank in country specific searches, for example in Canada or the UK vs. the US. Can someone help me by pointing me in the right direction? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | jclubb0