Our web site lost ranking on google a couple of years ago. We have done lots of work on it but still can not improve our search ranking. Can anyone give us some advise
-
A couple of years ago the ranking on our site dropped over night. I believe someone working here at the time purchased links about that time. We have been doing lots of work on the site since then to improve it. We can not get our rankings back up on google searches.
Can anyone give us some advise about what to do or where to go for some help that we can trust.
-
"On the category page - we are wondering whether we should also remove the right side menus ?"
Do you mean the left side menus?
If so, I can give you a simple answer and I can give you a more complex answer.
The simple answer is "if you link to categories and sub-categories that are not directly related to the category you are on at that time, it is at least somewhat of a distraction and dilution issue".
The more complex answer is "it depends, and without a full audit, I can't answer that because there are many other factors to consider, some of which are purely User Experience, some are SEO and User Experience, some are crawl allocation related, and some are pure technical considerations".
-
Hi Alan,
Once again thanks for the advise. It makes a lot of sense when I add it to the information I have worked out while trying to improve our site. Also a lot of these menus etc. were added about the time the rankings dropped.
Just a question. I have removed a lot of the unnessary links on the bottom of the pages.
The way our platform works, we have a home page - which I have removed the right side menus and left side.
On the product page we have removed the right side menus etc. also a lot of the left side - just leaving the wish list.
On the category page - we are wondering whether we should also remove the right side menus ?
Regards
Adrienne
-
I am glad to hear you will work through the issues. Be aware that there is no guarantee that these things alone will do the job, however each is an important step in the correct direction.
-
Hi Alan,
Thanks for your advise.
I think most of the things you mentioned were set up by an expert we had working here and also are features of the platform we us.
I am working on removing the excess links at the bottom of the pages, and will work through your other sugestions.
They sound like they will help us.
Thanks
-
Hi
It dropped November 2013.
Regards
-
Hi Rebecca,
Our site dropped ranking November 2013.
Regards
Adrienne
-
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you have problems that you either aren't aware of, or don't realize the impact of.
1. The bottom of the main content area of your home page and your footer are spam central for the keyword stuffing. The range of phrases you use that are obviously intended to boost rankings for specific phrase variations is off the charts severe.
2. The scale of topical dilution on the site is also a concern. Individual product descriptions are almost non-existent. Consider the impact of the left side "link to all the things" content, right side "related" and "recently viewed" widgets, and the lower page "Also viewed" content, (and again, that scary keyword stuffed footer), and the "uniqueness" of that page is seriously questionable and you're forcing Google to struggle to trust uniqueness.
3. The shear number of "categories", plus brand funnels, plus costume "Ideas" funnels, just reinforces to me that it looks like the site is trying to rank for "all the variations" (which that footer screams is actually what you are trying to do).
4. Your "Search" subdomain is typical of now proven to be failed "enhanced automated content" that was supposedly a way to get more search visibility a few years back, and yet where all it does is create more duplicate content mess, since it just links back to the main site and is not actual, best practices SEO.
Those are only the first few things I found in a quick check. There's almost certainly a full range of issues you will likely need to get cleaned up if you really hope to ever see a strong, sustainable organic presence.
-
What month did it drop?
-
Can you be more specific than "a couple of years ago"? It's going to be much easier to narrow down if we know what the search landscape was like, what algo changes were happening at the same tuime, etc.
-
I looked in your back link profile and not many SPAM links are available on the website and SEMRush data tells that the website is ranking for around 1.6k keywords (in AU) which was 490 keywords back in 2013. I understand that you rank for 2k plus keywords back in good days but it seems like you are improving and your strategies are working for you.
In my opinion all you need is to accelerate your efforts and keep working and you will see better rankings in the near future.
In order to tell Google that you are actually working on betterment why not changing your content from time to time on your website (different parts of the website) and get some media links back to your website.
I think it should work.
Hope this helps!
-
BTW: love your website (sorry for off-topic)
-
Thanks,
I will try both of those.
Regards
-
Hi Adrienne,
I would try to use Barracuda's tool: http://barracuda.digital/panguin-tool/
sometimes it gives a clue when exactly the drop has happened (and what update has been near that date).
Also you could check Moz's Updates history: https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
These will help you, if your website has been hit by an algorithmic update.
Let me know if you need further assistance.
Keszi
-
Without seeing the website, content or links to your site it sounds like a penalty.
You can check the drop in your traffic against algorithm changes here https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
Also, it could be the keyword you are ranking for - if you were spamming this or using tactics to rank #1 you may have just been penalized.
Regards,
Jason
-
-
I can try to take a look for you, what is your website?
-
Hi Jason,
Thanks for your response. As far as I know we have no warnings in webmaster tools. I am not sure how to tell which links are damaging. Some have been removed.
We lost about 50% of traffic organic traffic. Our site dropped from 1st page to 3-10 page.
Regards
Adrienne
-
Hi Li,
Do you have any warnings in Webmaster Tools for penalties? Have you removed all the damaging links to your site?
When you say dropped over night, do you mean you lost 90% of traffic or did you lose all traffic from a certain source?
Cheers,
Jason
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
-
Google WMT/search console: Thousands of "Links to your site" even only one back-link from a website.
Hi, I can see in my search console that a website giving thousands of links to my site where hardly only one back-link from one of their page to our page. Why this is happening? Here is screenshot: http://imgur.com/a/VleUf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Can't understand our Ranking; DA, PA and On Page all better than Competiton; Ranking no where
Our rankings are up and down but our domain is clean, DA and PA good
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexSTUDIO18
and there is really in depth content which is all original. We are at a bit of a loss; The site is
http://www.fightstorepro.com I can use the phrase "Boxing Gloves" as an example
http://www.fightstorepro.com/gear/gloves/boxing-gloves.html PA 26 , DA29
Good original content; Video content, On page grade A
Not ranking in top 50 places?? The competitor in Pos4 is not matching our placing Anyone shed any light on this?0 -
Some site's links look different on google search. For example Games.com › Flash games › Decoration games How can we do our url's like this?
For example Games.com › Flash games › Decoration games How can we do our url's like this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lutfigunduz0 -
How can we improve rankings for category pages
Hi Everyone, I have a dog breeder site I'm working on and I was wondering if I could get some tips and ideas on things to do to help the "category" pages rank better in search engines. Let's say I have "xyz" breed category page which has listings of all dog breeders who offer that particular breed, in this case "xyz". I have certain breeder profile listings which rank higher for those terms that the category page should be ranking for. So I'm guessing Google thinks those breeder profile pages are more relevant for those terms. Especially if well optimized. I know thin content may be my problem here, but one of our competitors dominates the rankings for relevant keywords with no content on their category pages. What do you all suggest?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rsanchez0 -
Effect of I-Frame on Google Rank
My commercial real estate web site (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) allows visitors to search for office space listings. The site sources listings through a third party and they are displayed in an i-frame. The i-frame directs visitors to listing pages such as: http://listings.nyc-officespace-leader.com/getspace.mpl?sp_id=A0173921&cust_id=offspldr Atleast 10,000 of these pages have backlinks to my site. My question is the following: Could these tens of thoudands of alpha numeric URLs be detrimental to my sites ranking on Google after the Panda/Penguin updates? SIte traffic dropped from 7,000 per month to about 3,300 after the April Google update. Rewriting content for dozens of pages and adding a blog have only somewhat mitigated the negative effects of Panda/Penguin. Could Google be viewing these links from the third party lisitng provider as a negative when they viewed these links as a plus before? Any downside to removing the third party links and parsing these listings from landlord websited and displaying them as part of my site with their own URL, title tag, description tag? Obviously the new URLS would not be alphanumeric. If these links have not caused the drop in traffic last April, what could be responsible? Thanks in advance for your opinion!!! Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
My site rank is not consistent. Once it at first page , then for the next week it is not found in top 100 position. Again two/ three weeks later it ranked automatically without any work. Why this is happening?
Here's the following are available in my site: robot.txt file is included sitemap available Natural link building going on. in a week total 100 links we are creating. 30 social bookmarks, 30 directory submission, 20 blog comments, 20 forum links All the blog and forum links are from relevant sources. Please help me ..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | coldfireinc0 -
Got a site in Google news, now what do I do?
I have been working on a site for 7 months, publishing articles each day. The site is dedicated to the niche that I am in. It was accepted in to Google news 1 week ago and I am now getting 3 times the amount of traffic. Its great news but I am now wondering how beneficial it is for me. I sell business management advice and really need to generate leads. Thats how I increase my business Any ideas how I could use this Google news site to do this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
Can 404 Errors Be Affecting Rankings
I have a client that we recently (3 months ago) designed, developed, and launch a new site at a "new" domain. We set up redirects from the old domain to the new domain and kept an eye on Google Webmaster Tools to make sure the redirects were working properly. Everything was going great, we maintained and improved the rankings for the first 2 months or so. In late January, I started noticing a great deal of 404 errors in Webmaster Tools for URLs from the new site. None of these URLs were actually on the current site so I asked my client if he had previously used to domain. It just so happens that he used the domain a while back and none of the URLs were ever redirected or removed from the index. I've been setting up redirects for all of the 404s appearing in Webmaster tools but we took a pretty decent hit in rankings for February. Could those errors (72 in total) been partially if not completely responsible for the hit in rankings? All other factors have been constant so that lead me to believe these errors were the culprits.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheOceanAgency0