Relevant site outranked by powerful un-relevant sites
-
One of my clients has a site in a niche market, and has been ranking well for years.
Since the Penguin algorithm changes his site dropped and 4-5 other sites came out of nowhere to take to top spots. These are very large sites, but they are not really reliant to the search terms. Sure, they sell one or two of the niche products, but our site is dedicated to those products.
The site has been updated since I took over on the site, and is well SEOed.
The site in question still ranks 1st for the keywords in every other search engine imaginable.
Has anyone else encountered this? If so, how did you combat it?
-
Sorry Doug, I should have said that there were two drops, one for Panda, and then one for Penguin, with one coming in Mid-Feb and one Mid-April. Panda was a large drop, then as the site was recovering slightly it got hit with the Penguin update.
The competitors are mainly Amazon and eBay. Both sell the products, but only sporadically and don't have them in any number.
The client has dropped on the 4 big keywords from 1st-2nd position, to 5th-7th. Not a massive drop by any means, but in a market so small it has had a huge effect.
The rest of the site’s rankings did drop, but they have recovered since then.
The backlinks are not overly impressive, but nothing too alarming. There have been no warnings in Webmaster Tools, nevertheless, I have been working on the link profile and trying to add variety.
After originally thinking this was the cause I have begun to reconsider, and in my digging found several faults on-page. I fixed most of these when I first got to work on the site, such as the internal linking and general optimization. There was also a spammy element to the internal linking which I got rid of.
Fixing the internal linking didn’t have the desired effect, so I have re-approached that and changed it further. I also found an issue with the CMS in which it was generating a series of duplicated page titles (that mirrored the index page due to an error in the CMS to the lower pages). This would fit with the Panda change and the aim to reduce duplicates. This month, I have eliminated these, cleaned up the internal linking further and looked to vary the link profile (I'm hoping this will fix the issue, I just need to wait until it gets indexed).
Also, as an experiment, I made a series of HTML pages (not in the CMS) to test the site. These ranked well within a month, and have continued to grow since then.
Another issue the site has is the site itself. The code is outdated and messy with inline CSS and Java (some of which seems redundant) that all make the code to content ration something to be desired. I’m wondering if this could be a cause. The CMS has a penchant for duplication and the ‘readable’ code is not very clean, dates, filled with redundant code and is old.
Thanks
-
I've encountered some very diverse serp results where niche terms are very niche and there isn't the search volume to out there and/or lots of alternative markets using the same terms to mean different things, but I guess it depends what you mean by not relevant to the search terms. If they're selling the niche products that's kinda relevant?
The first step to recovery must be to understand the problem.
Do you know why you got hit by Penguin? Are you sure it's Penguin that's caused the drop (when did it happen)? What does your back link profile look like? Have you had any warnings in Google Webmaster Tools?
How far has your client dropped? Are they in the index at all? Where are they ranking for other keywords - is it the same story?
Here's some penguin related SEOmoz blog posts:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/recovering-from-the-penguin-update-a-true-story
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-wpmuorg-recovered-from-the-penguin-update
So, first I'd confirm that it was Penguin and then try and see just how big a hole you're in! 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
-
Which is the best way to rank a site?
Hi, I have been working on SEO for a long time, recently I started a new site where I was aiming to rank different niches but I am stuck. First I covered some keywords related to sports then I shifted the niche to hunting. My idea was to cover a niche fully then move on to the 2nd so the authority of the site can also help rank the 2nd niche but the problem is I am unable to rank my site. Should I be considering only a very specific niche site or should I continue doing all the stuff on the same site. Please checkout my site ReviewsCase.com and let me know. And if has also done the same please let me know.
Algorithm Updates | | seoasikhan20 -
Placement of /p/ in URL structure for ecommerce site product URLs
Hi, We're a discussion about how to structure a clients ecommerce site product page URLs where 12345 represent the product SKU/number: https://domain.com/Item--i-12345 https://domain.com/product-name/p/12345 https://domain.com/p/12345 It's a toss up between the second and the third URL, but the SEO company is saying the third is best because of the placement with the /p/ and creating a silo for "products" that help search engines recognize it is a product. Does anyone have thoughts on this? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | AliMac260 -
Site refuses to improve rankings. Can someone else put a set of eyes on this for me and see what I am missing?
Hello! We've been successful with over 40 clients and getting them to great results in our industry, insurance. We recently acquired a new client who had an existing website with prior SEO results a very spammy blog and many spammy links. We've removed many of the blog articles and links using the Google Disavow Tool We've been monitoring this site in a campaign on Moz, but we're seeing zero improvement week to week. Can someone put another set of eyes on this and see if we're simply just missing something? Results for all 30 of our tracked keywords, zero are in the top 50! I would guess this was an algorithm penalty, but it has been 3 months now since we've made the changes and nothing is changing... not even a little bit! Any help/suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated. Thank you and enjoy Labor Day weekend!
Algorithm Updates | | Tosten0 -
Does Site Size Influence Rank?
The Scenario:
Algorithm Updates | | kchandler
Currently one of my clients has 7-8 products that they sell on their website. For each product they have two different pages one with the product info and one with a video demo. So the pages began to split their authority as they began receiving new links. Since only one of the two pages for each product rank i suggested that we combine the two and redirect the video page to the product page to increases it's authority and rank. The Clients Response:
After explaining my reasoning and next steps the client mentioned that he thought a site's size was a ranking factor. I had never heard of this before so i told them i would do some research to prove my point, after a little digging around i am now even more confused. http://www.seroundtable.com/google-size-ranking-17044.html http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4591155.htm The Question:
Does a websites size/amount of content indexed in Google actually effect your sites ability to rank? I look forward to everyones feedback, thanks Kyle1 -
SEO ANALYSIS ON A NEW SITE
Hi just would like if anyone could help me in provide some seo analysis on a new website http://www.ppilegalservices.co.uk/ main keyword is mis-sold ppi Its a very competitive keyword but not being able to come on google result in long tail keywords as well, Just got ranked on brand keywords like PPI LEGAL Services. Also running out of ideas as to how to create quality content any tips please? many thanks
Algorithm Updates | | conversiontactics0 -
How Do I Make My Google SERP "SiteLinks" more relevant?
I have a shopping website with thousands of products, and the sitelinks that google has chosen for me (for a long time) are random product pages, which makes no sense to me. I do not emphasize those products on the home page, and I have a sitemap that clearly lists the directory of all the categories. I also added a "nofollow" attribute to almost every link on the home page that is not important. These products in the site links seem completely random and there isnt even a sitelink for "about" or any of the footer content! What gives? Also, my sitelinks never updated to the new, better version. Any suggestions?
Algorithm Updates | | cDNAInteractive0 -
Google's reaction to site updates
Hi, Is it safe to assume as soon as Google indexes updates I've made to my site that any ranking changes the updates effected will happen at that same time, or is there ever a lag time before these changes ( if any ) take effect?
Algorithm Updates | | minutiae0 -
Which is better for SEO. 1 big site or a number of smaller sites.
Hello , I am about to create a website with product reviews for a certain niche. What i want to know: Is it better for me to have a site with all reviews , like nicheproductsreviews.com and then have nicheproductsreviews.com/product-one-review.html and nicheproductsreviews.com/product-two-review.html or buy multiple domains to have product name in the domain name, like product-one-review.com and product-two-review.com As far as I understand, first approach consolidates all pages on the same site , consolidating all the link juice to it. However, second approach lets me have the product name in the main domain URL. Which way is better for SEO and why?
Algorithm Updates | | voitenkos0