Rankings gone, no WMT errors, help!
-
Hi,
Client Google rankings have been seriously hit. We have done everything we know of to see why this is the case, and there is no obvious explanation. The client dominated search terms, and are no down on page 7/8 for these search terms. There are no errors in WMT, so we can not resubmit for reconsideration. This is a genuine client and their business has been seriously affected. Can anybody offer help?
Thanks in advance!
-
Hello Roadjan,
The site has very low domain authority without many external links. Some of those external links appeared to be paid advertisements, or links on network sites owned by the company, such as the ones in the sidebar of Restful Cottage Holidays with the picture of the moving truck that links to the site. This should be a nofollowed link. Otherwise, the links look fine - you just need more of them, which you might get by promoting your existing content with content amplification Services like Outbrain or on native ad platforms like Facebook. Or you may have to produce featured content that is worth sharing and linking to, such as moving calculators to estimate the size of the van you might need based on the square footage of your home and how much "stuff" is in it (minimal, moderate, cramped...) that needs to be moved to the new location. I'm sure you have all kinds of ideas about content, but the important thing is not to just publish it on your site and let it sit there because nobody is going to find it. You have to create stellar content and then go out and promote it.
I don't think you should be disallowing your disclaimer, cookie policy, accessibility and privacy policy pages. Google likes to see these to know you area legitimate business. However, you could block your /thank_you page.
Your /get-a-quote/ pages are fairly thin. I would either beef up the content on those pages or block them from being indexed using a robots noindex, follow meta tag on those pages.
/moving-to-cyprus-1 Should be a testimonial not a news item or blog post.
moving-with-work-to-europe Seems like it's more about external elevator usage than the title of the article. I just don't think someone arriving from search engines after searching for "Moving with work to Europe" is going to be happy with the content they find on that page. I don't see the purpose of this type of content other than to target keywords or fill out the news section.
The same goes for many of the other pages in the news section. They aren't "news" so much as either quick blog posts about a job, or information that would work better on one of the other pages, like the "Moving Overseas" section.
If Whois info is correct and this site was created in 2007 and updated again in 2012 your issue may have to do mostly with domain authority due to very few high quality backlinks. I would create tools for the the moving industry, and related industries, to use on your site. Also consider partnering with various government organizations, such as the Tourism board for your area, to publish unique information about the area and entice people to move there. This could result in some nice links from the partner and local news if done well.
I don't think you have a "penalty". You just need better content and some earned, high-quality links. Good luck!
-
Hi, current status is still unanswered, some good and helpful advice, but seeking more help.
Many thanks
-
Send me the URL if someone else hasn't already gotten back to you via PM. I can have a look for you. Either way, please let us know the current status of this question.
-
If there is no message in WMT then you can bet it was an algorithm penalty. Start with Panda for content and Penguin for links. You may have accidentally triggered something.
-
Got it. I've sent u a reply.
Cheers.
-
Hey roadjan!
If you'd like, shoot me the URL in a PM also and I'll take a look for you.
-
Hi, sent you a PM with it.
-
Can you share the URL ?
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
-
Divi Help!
I've added our phone number and email address in the header settings in Divi. For whatever reason, when I'm editing the header elements I can see it, but when I view the website it's not showing... I cannot figure out what the issue is. I've never run into it before. Also, the menu looks different, it does not match what it shows in the header elements edit area vs live site. XLRpuxghzHUN LxPX4iND6B 2ekykrCH7Pn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LindsayE0 -
301 redirect impact on ranking
If Website A is ranking 19th position in Google for a specific keyword, and Website B is ranking 30th position for the same keyword, What would be impact after 301 redirect? Will Website A drop to 30th position because of 301 or existing position would improve because of link juice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | riyaaaz0 -
Fix Google Index error
I changed my blog URL structure Can Someone please let me how to solve this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael.Leonard0 -
Highly Related, But Not Ranking
Hi Everyone! I'm doing a bit of research on a domain and I've come across something really odd. Doing a search for "asset based lending software" (not with the quotes), www.case.net doesn't show up anywhere in the first 100 results. However, at the bottom of the results in the "Searches related to asset based lending software" section, it lists "computer software enterprises inc" as the 2nd item (the company associated with www.case.net). Any ideas here? NdsoeNn.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | QueTech0 -
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 -
VisitSweden indexing error
Hi all Just got a new site up about weekend travel for VisitSweden, the official tourism office of Sweden. Everything went just fine except som issues with indexing. The site can be found here at weekend.visitsweden.com/no/ For some weird reason the "frontpage" of the site does not get indexed. What I have done myself to find the issue: Added sitemaps.xml Configured and added site to webmaster tools Checked 301s so they are not faulty By doing a simple site:weekend.visitsweden.com/no/ you can see that the frontpage is simple not in the index. Also by doing a cache:weekend.visitsweden.com/no/ I see that Google tries to index the page without the trailing /no/ for some reason. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://weekend.visitsweden.com/no/ Any smart ideas to get this fixed or where to start looking? All help greatly appreciated Kind regards Fredrik
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Resultify0 -
Not ranking in Google - why???
This will be a bit long, so please bare with me. I have a client in the auto parts industry who wants to rank their homepage for 13 different keywords. We are ranked first page for all keywords in Yahoo! Mexico and Bing Mexico, but not ranking first page at all in Google Mexico. My client's competitor, however, is clearly outranking my client in Google. When comparing both pages, my client's, while not 100% optimized, looks better optimized than their competitor's. Looking at all metrics using Moz, SEMRush, ahrefs, etc... my client's site looks MUCH better on all fronts. I know ranking a single homepage for more than 10 keywords is a difficult task. Our competitor is however, ranking for them, so it's not impossible. The keywords are not even that competitive according to Moz's analysis. I decided to create an optimized page for each keyword to try to rank these pages, but still my client wants the homepage to rank (again, if the competitor is ranking, then it's possible to do this) and I am afraid these pages I created could result in keyword cannibalization ultimately affecting the homepage's possibility to rank. My client had a previous SEO agency working for them and basically all they did was create fake blogs and have lots of keyword rich links directed to the site's homepage. I got the complete link profile from several tools and submitted a disavow requests for as many fishy links I could find, but that hasn't shown any results so far. Note: when looking at the competitor link profile, they have basically just a few links and no external links of real value whatsoever. My client is obviously very frustrated, and so am I. In my SEO experience, it shouldn't be such a difficult task to accomplish, however nothing seems to work even though everything seems to point that my client should rank higher. So now I'm running out of ideas regarding what to do with this site. Any insight you could provide would be SO helpful to me and my client. If needed I can provide my client's homepage URL and also their competitors homepage for you to review. i can also give you any extra information you need. Thanks a lot!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EduardoRuiz0 -
Big 301 Redirect Help!
Hey guys I need a little help with setting up a big 301. Background: It's a bit of a mess as the old site is a total mess after being online for 10 years plus. It has html and php pages, and a mod rewrite to redirect old html links to the newer php version of those pages. It's now moving to a new site and as the domain name and URL structure has changed we can't use any fancy regex and have to do a page to page redirect. There are 1500 pages to redirect. However, the old site has thousands of linking root domains, and some of these are to the old html pages (which currently redirect to the php pages) and some to the newer php pages. Question: My initial plan was to leave the mod rewrite and only redirect the php pages. That means 1500 individual redirects instead of 3000 if I individually redirect both the php and html pages. I'm not sure what's best to be honest. We don't really want multiple hops in the redirect (html>php>new site), but surely 1500 redirects is better than 3000! Does anyone have any advice on which option may be best, or even a better option? Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HarveyP0