Can You Help Explain This Nightmare Screenshot from Google Webmaster Tools?
-
Your Next Dress (http://dress.yournextshoes.com/) has been performing poorly in search for a long time.
My theory is that Google's algorithm somehow thinks our content is poor, and that we're not ranking for that reason. While we have deleted hundreds of blog posts and improved plenty of others, our SEO has continued to tank and recently reached zero. We do not have a manual penalty of any kind, though I've tried to disavow dubious looking links just in case.
Is there anything that I am missing?
-
Can you give us more information about Google "forgetting" your pages? I'm not very clear on your answer here.
-
The first glaring problem I see that could have caused this penalty is the shared header navigation across all subdomains. Each subdomain should have main navigation to it's own pages - you have a shared nav on all sites that is interconnecting all sites like crazy, and also sending the crawler everywhere.
-
I would look at where you have links coming from. Not saying you did this, but a lot of ecom sites do a lot of link submissions in an attempt to rank. That big of a drop, that fast propbably means they didn't like your link profile. Google does not have to assign you a penalty just to drop your rankings in the toilet. Sometimes, they just look at what you have, determine it does not fit within their newly established quality guidelines as well as the next guy, and poof you are on page 10.
Most likely your anlytics are working , and you are really seeing this drop. Here is what I would do to start with:
1. Look at the linking domains and manually go and check the pagerank of the linking sites. If they are zero, or godforbid they redirect you to another domain, disavow. You can also search manually for the linking site in google. If it doesnt appear when searching for them by name, Google most likely doesnt want you to find them for good reason.
2. Check to make sure all the blog pages have been properly redirected, or removed from Google. You state that you have removed 100's of pages from the blog, but have these been removed or requested for these to be removed form Google's index?
3. Check the redirect functions on your subdomain. Make sure that the home page of tyour subdomain cannot be accessed on any other URL of your site. This can be a tricky thing to get right, and I have seen many sites take a dive due to unintentional duplicate pages due to a subdomain.
That should get you off to a good start
-
Jane, good answer. Your Next Dress could definitely benefit from more backlinks. But I don't think a lack of backlinks is the reason why we're being penalized by Google.
Anyway, you can see my other query on "windy skirt", which we used to rank for. Now all the top 18 search results are Youtube videos, which at least explains why we're not ranking for that query.
-
Hi there,
Although tied to the parent domain as a subdomain, this subdomain on its own has very few inbound links from third parties. OSE sees only 7 linking domains that are not Your Next Shoes. For a subdomain (which does not traditionally inherit terribly much authority from its parent domain), this is quite low. Although it does not explain a sudden drop (unless Google considered it to be ranking unfairly before, e.g. because links from the parent were counting as impartial inbound links when they should not be), general poor performance might be because of a low number of linking sites when compared to competitors.
-
Thank you for the responses. Google is actually crawling our site quite frequently, and there seems to be no problem. I guess we're just stuck in the dark on this one.
-
You tried to see the graph of cached pages? Maybe google "forgot" your pages and if they doesn't have pages, then, also doesn't send search.
I think you can send a new sitemap, then, review all 404 errors google are returning (if you have), and use siteexplorer to analize your links in search of possible spam links.
-
When you see a sudden, large drop in traffic, it typically means one of two things:
1. You messed up your website somehow (maybe your home page is taking forever to load or it is returning a 404 for some reason)
2. Google hit you with a penalty
Based on the information here and here, it seems that there was an algorithm update around June 28. There isn't much more specific information.
If you haven't received any notifications of manual penalties, then you probably have an algorithmic one. So, I'd keep checking your website and backlinks for thin or duplicated content, over-optimized anchor text, links from dubious places, keyword spamming, or any other similar things. Good luck!
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
-
Any Idea who i can contact at Google Finance?
Hi Everyone, I run a popular news site and we are already working with Yahoo Finance, CNN, USA Today, CNBC, etc...
Content Development | | fattestcat
The one site we really also want to start working with is Google Finance - but there is no way as far as i can see of getting in touch with them. Our content is the best in our sector and every news site we pitch we almost always start a relationship with - i just need an in. Does anyone know who to contact or how to get in touch with them? Thanks for any advice. James0 -
Can We Publish Duplicate Content on Multi Regional Website / Blogs?
Today, I was reading Google's official article on Multi Regional website and use of duplicate content. Right now, We are working on 4 different blogs for following regions. And, We're writing unique content for each blog. But, I am thinking to use one content / subject for all 4 region blogs. USA: http://www.bannerbuzz.com/blog/ UK: http://www.bannerbuzz.co.uk/blog/ AUS: http://www.bannerbuzz.com.au/blog/ CA: http://www.bannerbuzz.ca/blog/ Let me give you very clear ideas on it. Recently, We have published one article on USA website. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/blog/choosing-the-right-banner-for-your-advertisement/ And, We want to publish this article / blog on UK, AUS & CA blog without making any changes. I have read following paragraph on Google's official guidelines and It's inspire me to make it happen. Which is best solution for it? Websites that provide content for different regions and in different languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar but available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries. While we strongly recommend that you provide unique content for each different group of users, we understand that this may not always be possible. There is generally no need to "hide" the duplicates by disallowing crawling in a robots.txt file or by using a "noindex" robots meta tag. However, if you're providing the same content to the same users on different URLs (for instance, if both example.de/ and example.com/de/ show German language content for users in Germany), you should pick a preferred version and redirect (or use the rel=canonical link element) appropriately. In addition, you should follow the guidelines on rel-alternate-hreflang to make sure that the correct language or regional URL is served to searchers.
Content Development | | CommercePundit0 -
Does Google Dislike Slideshows?
I've noticed a recent drop in organic traffic and a slight dip in rankings. When I looked at who replaced us in the top spots, I noticed text heavy, in depth articles. We produce many articles in the slideshow format. Do you think this is the reason our rankings dropped?
Content Development | | TMI.com0 -
I work on a uk decorating website with five of our own bloggers all of which reside on the home page of the website on their own separete blogging urls as sub domains - is this a good idea or would google not like this from an seo point of view?
Should blogs that are part of an overall content site be on separate sites and link in or is it ok to promote them as content on the home page of the site and take users off to their own url to view the site. Is this good practise for seo?
Content Development | | Pday0 -
What is the BEST way to find guest blog? Use Google under the blog tab??
I want to post articles and get backlink. What is the best practice for finding guest blog? Thank you, BigBlaze
Content Development | | BigBlaze2050 -
Does a Google Map on the contact page help with SEO?
In regards to ranking organically for local search results (not google places), I'm wondering if there is any benefit to having a Google Map on my Contact page with our location pinned? If so, how important do you think it is?
Content Development | | pharcydeabc0 -
How can I rank using translated content?
My friend has a website with similar content to mine, in a different language however. He has allowed me to translate his content if I link to it every post (can be nofollow). Does Google penalize me for clearly translated content? How can I make sure it ranks well? BTW, if I convince him that I don't link to him, is it better SEO-wise? Best,
Content Development | | kikocherman
Cherman0 -
Google Site Search
Hi, I was just wondering if anyone had used Google Site Search before and what they thought of it? http://www.google.com/sitesearch/ It seems quite expensive for just returning your own pages but would be interested to find out more. Thanks
Content Development | | ASOS0