My pages are absolutely plummeting. HELP!
-
Hi all,
Several of my pages have absolutely tanked in the past fortnight, and I've no idea why. One of them, according to Moz, has a Page Optimisation Score of 96, and it's dropped from 10th to 20th. Our DA is lower than our competitors, but still, that's a substantial drop. Sadly, this has been replicated across the site.
Any suggestions?
Cheers,
Rhys
-
Thanks, Stevie. Apparently, there's been a 'phantom' update which I suspect is the culprit...
-
Oh, and I just spotted that you have the same text in 2 x H1's and the title, It just might make a difference if you either change the second H1 to a variant if possible, and make it an H2 OR probably better, just lose the h1 tag on the logo completely. You never know
I'd also be inclined to make the title longer, you've plenty of space for a few related keywords or a call to action
-
Hi Rhys,
I'll be honest with you, I usually deal with relatively small businesses, so am probably not the best person for this one. It's mobile friendly (responsive), so that's not the issue. It doesn't have SSL, so that could be a factor, I'm sure I remember Google saying they'd be giving a boost to secure sites early this year.
Yours is an authority site in itself, so I doubt a few links either way would make a diffference either. Theres also plenty of text which I assume is unique. I appreciate that you may not have control over the whole site, so could it be that the general site navigation changed somewhere further up and inadvertantly pushed you deeper into the site as a whole (i.e. more clicks from the homepage)?
-
Hi Stevie,
This is the course page in question, but this is only one of a number of pages that have dropped.
It's not great in mobile, but speed isn't an issue, but more to do with how it reacts to mobile.
http://www.swansea.ac.uk/undergraduate/courses/medicine/bscbiochemistry/
But this is the page which has an optimisation score of 96. Not really sure what else I can do.
Our domain did drop by 2 in the latest update a fortnight ago, but then again, so did many of our competitors.
Cheers,
Rhys
-
Hi Rhys,
Without your url it's impossible to take an educated guess I'm afraid. Google are constantly tweaking things so if it's only Google not any other SE's it could well be an algorithm adjustment, assuming you've not changed anything yourself. You can check that in your Moz account if you're tracking any other SE's (I always keep a non Google one in there myself for that exact reason).
If your site doesn't have SSL and the sites that rose above you generally do, perhaps it was that, or if not mobile friendly, they could have put more emphasis on it? My blind guess is they're the two likely culprits at the moment. But it could be something as simple as you dropped a high authority link, if there weren't many to start with, or one of soooooo many other factors.
-
Hi Stevie,
Thanks for the link; I don't think it's that because we don't have any pop-ups or ads. Individual pages have just plummeted, one dropped 81% in a week. Any other ideas? There's not much left for me to optimise, so I don't see how I can regain my first-page positions.
Cheers,
Rhys
-
Complete stab in the dark not knowing what your url is, but there was an update around that time, see if it applies to you: https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
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
-
Multiple service area pages that rank well. However the primary keyword page tends to bounce around between the pages. How can I stabalise the ranking to the primary page
We have multiple service area pages attached to the primary keyword for the site which arent in the navigation and we have the primary page which is in the navigation. Currently Google is choosing different service area pages to rank for the primary keyword so the rankings bounce around a lot for the keyword when it doesn't have a service area target in it. Eg work shirts vs work shirts brisbane.
Local Website Optimization | | jonathan.k0 -
SERP: From page 4 to page 1 to page 4 again -_- ...
Hi there Moz Amigos! So I have this Website: campmusicaladagio.com Right now, our main target keyword is "camp de jour gatineau". The website was on WIX before. So, I created the worpress version and redirected the domain name to the new hosting server (outside of WIX). So before doing the changes, the website was on page 4... After the changes, it went in 1 week on page 1 (lol, WIX sucks so much). After 3 weeks on page 1, it went on page 4 again... I am so confused XD like what the hell happen... Any ideas?
Local Website Optimization | | Gab-SEO0 -
Need Awesome Examples of Well-Designed Service & Product Pages
I'm looking for some examples of really well built product/service pages that have great conversion points on them. I find most small businesses do a terrible job at highlighting their features & benefits (the "why") for their services and wanted some inspiration from those that are doing a fabulous job.
Local Website Optimization | | JoyHawkins0 -
Do location pages boost the homepage?
Google has stated that businesses should spend time creating location pages for the various service areas that businesses operate in. What I want to know is, it is equally about boosting the relevance of the site as a whole, as well as ranking that individual page in the local area. Does Google take into account the fact that you have the location page and reward the homepage by favoring it more in that local area, or is it simply about ranking an individual page in each town/city?
Local Website Optimization | | OliverNeely2 -
Structuring URLs of profile pages
First of all, I want to thank everyone for the feedback that I received on the first question. My next question has to do with the URL structure of personal trainer profiles pages on www.rightfitpersonaltraining.com. Currently, the structure of each trainer profile page is "www.rightfitpersonaltraining.com/personal-trainers/trainer/" and at the end I manually add the trainer's "city-firstname-lastinitial". Would it be to my benefit to have the developers change the structure so that the trainer profile URLs are "www.rightfitpersonaltraining.com/city-personal-trainers/trainername"? That way, each trainer profile would link directly to the trainer's city page as opposed to the general "personal-trainers" page. I don't mind paying a little extra to go back into the site to make these changes, as I think they would benefit the search ranking for each city page.
Local Website Optimization | | mkornbl20 -
How best to clean up doorway pages. 301 them or follow no index ?
Hi Mozzers, I have what is classed as doorway pages on my website. These have historically been location specific landing pages for some of our categories but from speaking to a number of different webmasters , then general consensus is that they are not in google guidelines so I will be getting punished by having them. My options are : I can 301 the pages back to their original category pages . This will conserve some link juice to pass back to the respective category page. I can set these as Follow No index. Not sure what will happen here with regards to link value etc. What would be best ?... Some of the pages do currently rank "fairly well" for some of the locations so I am getting traffic from them but I also know I will be getting a algorithmic penalty for having them so how best I clean these up ?. Also , by cleaning up the site structure , would I see any benefit here ? or will I have to wait for a new panda update/ refresh ? I thought the panda refresh won't use a new dataset thanks Pete
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Are there any suggestions when you completly redesign your web page keeping the same domain but change the host? I want it to go smoothly and want to avoid the rankings we already have including sub pages.
I am currently having our website completely redone by a design company. Are there any suggestions on this process as to not lose the rankings we currently have for our site? The domain will remain the same however we are planning on changing our host. We also have a good amount of sub domains that the web company will not be changing for us.
Local Website Optimization | | molchman0 -
Local Business Schema Markup on every page?
Hello, I have two questions..if someone could shed some light on the topic, I would be so very grateful! 1. I am still making my way through how schema is employed, and as I can tell, it is much more specific (and therefore relevant) in its details than using the data highlighter tool. Is this true? 2. Most of my clients' sites have a footer with the local business info included on every page of their site (address and phone). This said, I have been using the structured data markup helper to add local business schema to home page, and then including the footer markup in the footer file so that every page benefits from the local business markup. Is this incorrect to use it for every page? Also, I noticed that by just using the footer markup for the rest of the pages in the site, I am missing data that was included when I manually went through the index page (i.e. image, url, name of business). Could someone tell me if it is advisable and worth it to manually markup every page for the local business schema or if that should just be used for certain pages such as location, contact us, and/or index? Any tips or help would be greatly appreciated!!! Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | lfrazer0