Help. Recently my organic traffic has dropped 40%. Any advice / ideas?
-
Lately my organic traffic has dropped significantly as well as my adsense revenue. The moz report says, for example, my traffic is down 40%, but I a still #1 for that keyword.
Also, in the last week, suddenly my number of indexed pages doubled. We had done some page rewriting and maybe messed that up. We've fixed that though. Webmaster tools is still picking up all of our old pages and the new ones.
Background:
- We recently launched our new responsive website in March.
- March income was about the same as February.
- April dropped off suddenly (maybe late march - no sure)
- When we changed site, we did do 301's for all the old pages to the new ones
Any ideas or advice as to why my traffic and revenue has dropped off so sharply? Never submitted questions before - not sure if I am supposed to put urls here so if you just google Home Spelling Words - that's my website. Thanks everyone!!!
-
Kimberly
Here's a little more background straight from Google on "duplicate content" - http://www.thesempost.com/duplicate-content-penalty-exception/
-
Kimberly
You're welcome. To clarify, there is no duplicate content penalty for this. It just means Google can't crawl your site as efficiently and also might not pass link value (page authority) to all the pages as strongly as they might otherwise.
This article is pretty advanced, but explains the idea of crawl optimization really well.
-
I think this is the problem! I checked and found that Google thinks I have double the pages now. Maybe they are thinking I have duplicate content. I will fix this asap. THANK YOU!!!
"Internally, you should also avoid linking to 301 redirects. Link straight to your final URL. For example you link to http://www.homespellingwords.com/About (capitol A) but it redirects to http://www.homespellingwords.com/about (lowercase a). This hurts crawl efficiency and reduces how link authority flows through the site. This happens a LOT on your site, so update all your links,"
-
I agree, Easter weekend was quiet for us as well. Starting to pick up again now though.
-
Hi Kimberly
I don't think Google did anything to purposely hurt the site. The AdWords and Organic search depts are really huge in themselves, and I don't think there is much cross-conversation there. What sort of quality scores are you getting from AdWords for your pages? Are they good?
Bounce rate is a weird metric. A lower bounce rate could be bad too, because users are maybe not easily finding what they want on the landing page and are forced to click around.
Definitely play with the ads. Keep specific notes about what you change and when. And keep in mind, it may take some time (weeks) to reflect in any ranking change.
You should also make a proper 404 page in the template/design of your site - it's just the default server message. These sort of things help show Google you are a responsible site owner
Internally, you should also avoid linking to 301 redirects. Link straight to your final URL. For example you link to http://www.homespellingwords.com/About (capitol A) but it redirects to http://www.homespellingwords.com/about (lowercase a). This hurts crawl efficiency and reduces how link authority flows through the site. This happens a LOT on your site, so update all your links
-
Thanks. That's good information. I have to say, I really dislike the huge ad on the right. I kept getting emails from Google saying that I don't have enough ads and that they should be bigger. So, I gave in and put bigger ads and three per page as they suggested.
I did actually move the main ad down a bit below copy, which it used to be right up top before any copy. I also removed an anchored ad in mobile that sat at the bottom of the page no matter what.
Is it possible that Google asked me to do something (more and bigger ads) and then punished me for it?
My bounce rate is lower than it has ever been so I don't think users are put off. I'm sure some of my problem is ad blockers and lower click through on mobile ads as mobile traffic increases - but that is not my immediate problem - that's a long slow decline of income.
I think I will play with the ads and also see about the new information on adsense about how much ad is visible as I am sure that will have an impact on future revenue too.
-
I agree. I checked and found that I got much less traffic than last year though. Thanks for answering! My traffic really dies on holidays.
-
My initial thought is "ads above the fold". It's hard to tell in Archive.org's archive of your old design, but it looks like ad space increased a lot on the new site? You have the block on the left which kind of interferes with the content, as well as the banner ad on the right which is pretty large (but doesn't distract from the content much).
Plus these ads are not just on the homepage, they are on the inner content pages as well.
They way Matt Cutts explained "ads above the fold" - it's not so much you need to cut down the pixel size of ads, but make sure not ALL your pages have too many ads - so only make a %% of pages on your site have ads, and some not.
I would play with how ads are appearing on the site to begin with.
Your issue does not sound like a migration error, because that is usually immediate. This sounds like something Google takes a little longer to process (page layout / design, user metrics, ads etc).
-
I work for a UK company, and by the looks of things the school holidays and easter played a part in the slight traffic drop for us.
-
I guess that would at least make me feel better in that it's not something I did wrong. Thanks for responding. I feel like my site became invisible. I hope traffic comes back!
-
Thanks for your help. My url is www.HomeSpellingWords.com. I've been tracking my ranks in Moz and it seems like my site is getting a little better every week. However, my page views are steadily dropping, while my rank remains the same or better. The CTR for ads has not changed much. It's almost like I'm ranked but invisible? Anyway, I rank fairly well for many good keywords like spelling words, 1st grade spelling words, 2nd grade...etc and so forth. I've never done any kind of strange link building - was too busy and maybe too lazy.
When I think about this problem, it seems like I'm there (ranked) but invisible???
I need to get an imgur account - will upload images if I can find some that make sense.
-
Interestingly, our site traffic is down ~ 25% in the past 3 weeks as well, with no loss in keyword rankings. We are presently assuming that it has something to do with Google's removal of the separators from between paid ads and organic search results.
Just something to think about ...
-
Hi Kimberly, welcome to the forum, and thanks for your question! Yes, a URL would be very helpful, as would any relevant screenshots of analytics.
Christy
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
-
My PA and DA dropped Higest Rate
hi i got a domain with 49 DA and 36 PA and bought it through namecheap after uploading on their server with https:// after 5 days the site lost its PA and DA now it was 1 PA and 9 DA Could any one tell me what the issue behind this the links is fair and not spam but why the dropping of cause for???
Technical SEO | | gamajunova0 -
Deleting 30,000 pages all at once - good idea or bad idea?
We have 30,000 pages that we want to get rid of. Each product within our database has it's own page. And these particular 30,000 products are not relevant anymore. They have very little content on them and are basically the same exact page but with a few title changes. We no longer want them weighing down our database so we are going to delete them. My question is - should we get rid of them in smaller batches like 2,000 pages at a time, or is it better to get rid of all them in one fell swoop? Which is least likely to raise a flag to Google? Anyone have any experience with this?
Technical SEO | | Viewpoints0 -
Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?
Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | inlinear
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
Holger0 -
Rel=Canonical Help
The site in question is www.example.com/example. The client has added a rel=canonical tag to this page as . In other words, instead of putting the tag on the pages that are not to be canonical and pointing them to this one, they are doing it backwards and putting the same URL as the canonical one as the page they are putting the tag on. They have done this with thousands of pages. I know this is incorrect, but my question is, until the issue is resolved, are these tags hurting them at all just being there?
Technical SEO | | rock220 -
Do trailing / in URLs matter?
I was wondering if search engines see duplicate content on two different URLs if the content is available via www.xyz.com/services or www.xyz,com/services/
Technical SEO | | TheOceanAgency0 -
Where to get expert SEO help?
I joined SEOmoz knowing very little about SEO (it turns out even less than I thought!) I signed up because my business website that had be ranking very well for years made a fast and furious fall to the purgatory of page 2, 3, whatever. We'll I've definitely learned a lot and made a several changes that have helped. Specifically link building (directory submissions) and eliminating duplicate content. But we're still far below where we used to be and I've done everything I can do without making a career change to SEO. I've hired a few offshore SEOs to help but they have all failed to live up to their promises. So, I would love to find a GOOD SEO that can 1. Fix the remaining on-page technical issues in our CMS website (Business Catalyst), and 2. help us develop an SEO strategy for the next year. (I prefer not to post the name of the website for competitive reasons) Our keywords are really not very competitive at all due to the uniqueness of the business. Where should I look for help? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Placeboo0 -
Advice on SEO for videos on a streaming server
I am looking for some advice on video SEO when the video file is housed on a streaming server. An example page is below. The onlyvideo element on the page is a script reading in the filepath to the streaming server so I am not sure what the best course of action is. Currently, none of our videos are indexed. http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/webinars/Making-Agile-Work-for-You.cfm
Technical SEO | | SEI0 -
Redirecting /default to domain ??
Google analytics shows me that this: http://www.quicklearn.com/default.aspx is my "top content page" This page doesn't redirect to my root domain: http://www.quicklearn.com IT tells me that "/default.aspx" can not redirect to my domain. I am told: "You can only redirect deeper into the site." We have had an ongoing issue with duplicate content (that we are in the process of correcting). Anyone with experience in redirecting that can help? Any advice welcome
Technical SEO | | QuickLearnTraining0