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
-
Site´s Architecture - Categories . What´s the best in my case?
My Dear friends of MOZ, I´ve got you a case that has been driving me crazy for 2 weeks, Im doing an SEO audit for big brand that sells electronics. Since they sell all kind of electronics, and are very popular the site is quite big and has several categories. Now...Im working particularly in a kind of micro-site that sells two kind of products that are very similar but not the same. Lets say in this site they are selling super-light-weight-Laptops and tablets, so if you look the site its a Laptop/Tablet site. But the site is not under a laptop/tablet directory, some pages are under laptop and others in Tablet directory . For example : Home page URL: /light-laptops/home.asp ; Products general page page URL is light-pads/products.asp ; and each single product page is under laptops or pads according the type of product. From my point of view, they should create a new directory called /light-laptops-pads/ and single directories for products, and case studies, etc.. Since they want to show both products together when you click in products (off course they will be creating sub-directories for the two types of products). At the begining I thought they were really mistaken, but now that I see that all light-pad content is in one folder and light-laptops content is in another, and the site jumps from one category to the other I am a little bit confused. PLEASE HELP ME PD: I want to make clear that general categories like products, case studies , contact us, solutions pages are in some cases under /light-pad/ directory and in other cases under /light-laptops / directory PLEASE PARDON MY ENGLISH!
Algorithm Updates | | facupp10 -
How do I figure out what's wrong with my site?
I'm fairly new to SEO and can't pinpoint what's wrong with my site...I feel so lost. I am working on revamping www.RiverValleyGroup.com and can't figure out why it's not ranking for keywords. These keywords include 'Louisville homes', 'Homes for sale in Louisville KY', etc. Any suggestions? I write new blog posts everyday so I feel there's no shortage of fresh content. I'm signed up with Moz Analytics and Google analytics
Algorithm Updates | | gohawks77900 -
New site or subdomain
what are pros and cons of launching a new product site as opposed to placing it under a subdomain of the company site? will the new site be placed in the google sandbox? the main goal is to provide credibility for the product, and by placing it under the company site that has been live for over 10 years. It is not a consumer product - more dealers. So people would be pushed to the site or find it through the brochure.
Algorithm Updates | | bakergraphix_yahoo.com0 -
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 -
How on earth is a site with ONE LINK ranking so well for a competitive keyword?
Ok, so I'm sure you get the gist of what I'm asking about in my question. The query is 'diy kitchens' in Google UK and the website is kitchens4diy[dot]com - which is ranking in third from my viewing. The thing is, the site has just ONE BACKLINK and has done for a good while. Yet, it's ranking really well. What gives?
Algorithm Updates | | Webrevolve0 -
Why some sites doesn't get ranked in Google but in Bing and Yahoo
Few of my sites e.g. Business-Training-Schools.com and Ultrasoundtechnicians.com doesnt get much visits from Google but these sites get top ranked in Bing and Yahoo. I have tried searching for answer to these question but i did not find anything convincing.
Algorithm Updates | | HQP2 -
What to do with eCommerce site with color variations of the same product?
On our eCommerce website we sell products that each have about 20 color variations. When the site was built each color variation was added individually instead as a single product with a configurable color option. Would it be best to combine the different variations into a single product with a configurable drop down menu for color or to leave as is? I am worried the search engines see the individual product pages for each color as duplicate content. What are your thoughts on how Zappos handles color variations? On the category page they display each color variation as an individual product but when the product is clicked it goes to a single product page with the different configurable color variations. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | jchosler1 -
Youtube dofollow link to web site
Is there still a dofollow link back from a youtube channel to your web site? I filled in the site url in the profile, which in my understanding used to be the single dofollow link back to your web site. However, when I view the page source for the youtube channel it shows up as a nofollow link. Also, in OSE the link does not appear. Has this changed or am I just not doing this correctly?
Algorithm Updates | | uwaim20120