How to Recover from the Exact Match Domain Update last weekend?
-
Hi,
Our main website a geo exact match city dot com domain which is 18 years old got all its rankings washed away from top ten to 300th to 400th position plus on Google.
We are still top 10 on Yahoo and Bing for the City term.
The site is Dmoz listed , has quality updated daily content and no paid advertising or links of any kind.
I joined seomoz today and noticed I via the page optimiser that the main keyword for the city which is the exact match domain was over optimised but its hard to talk about events and news in a city without mentioning the citys name lol
Looking at the backlinks in the open site explorer tool I noticed alot of spammy links from chinese website and weird domains that were not related and am beginning to think I was the victim of a negative seo campaign.
I submitted a re-consideration request with Google and they replied in the space of a few days saying that it was not a manual penalty and that it was down to there algorithm changing or perhaps I changed cms or made changes.
There was no unatural links warning either.
Funny thing is the website is wordpress based and we changed to a new theme 2 weeks ago and also moved to a new server.
Just wondering people views on what my next move shoud be to try and regain our rankings on Google
I already toned down the use of the city keyword on the homepage.
Regards
Tom
-
Vladimir,
in regards of redirecting 301. Which 301 do we set, temporary or permanent 301?
Thanks,
George.
-
Mabe it wasn't an EMD update, there was Penguin refresh on October 5th so it may be the reason of ranking decrease. You should review webmaster guidelines to see if you made bad links.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
However, if you are sure it was an EMD update you can do this:
-
Buy new domain
-
Do 301 redirect from old to new domain (that will redirect all your backlinks)
-
Do normal redirect (that will redirect traffic)
-
Login to Google Webmaster Tools and find option to move site to other domain
-
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
-
Wordpress Redirect Loop on domain name
Hi hopefully someone can help - pulling my hair out - can't seem to find where this redirect is coming from. Curently there is a redirect from http://bimi to https://bimi then to our real domain https://www.bimi But I can't find it - I have checked through hta access file, through YOAST redirects - any suggestions from anyone who has has this before in wordpress? | http://bimi.co | 23 | 0 | 3 | |
Technical SEO | | KellyDSD86
| | | Associated Pages | |
| | | https://bimi.co/ | 23 | 1 | | |
| | | Office Furniture Online | The UK's major Office Furniture Retailer | BiMi.cohttps://www.bimi.co/ | HTA access says the following - I have googled to see whether its causing it but none the wiser! BEGIN LSCACHE LITESPEED WP CACHE PLUGIN - Do not edit the contents of this block! <ifmodule litespeed="">RewriteEngine on
CacheLookup on
RewriteRule .* - [E=Cache-Control:no-autoflush]
RewriteRule ^min/\w+.(css|js) - [E=cache-control:no-vary] marker CACHE RESOURCE start RewriteRule wp-content/./[^/](responsive|css|js|dynamic|loader|fonts).php - [E=cache-control:max-age=3600] marker CACHE RESOURCE end marker FAVICON start RewriteRule favicon.ico$ - [E=cache-control:max-age=86400] marker FAVICON end ###</ifmodule> LITESPEED WP CACHE PLUGIN - Do not edit the contents of this block! END LSCACHE BEGIN NON_LSCACHE LITESPEED WP CACHE PLUGIN - Do not edit the contents of this block! marker MINIFY start <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)/min/(\w+).(css|js)$
RewriteCond %1/wp-content/cache/$2/$1.$2 -f
RewriteRule min/(\w+).(css|js) wp-content/cache/$2/$1.$2 [L]</ifmodule> marker MINIFY end LITESPEED WP CACHE PLUGIN - Do not edit the contents of this block! END NON_LSCACHE BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress0 -
Different Domains on Same IP
Hello I'm just wondering how much of a difference it makes having links to a site from 2 separate domains that are on the same IP, compared to if the domains were on separate IPs? Thank you! Sam
Technical SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
My Last Question Regarding URLs - I Promise...
Hello I've recently asked the community which urls would be best for a company with a variety of wood flooring products. This question relates to "keywords" within the url which relates to each and every product. Which would you choose, 1. a or b? 2. a or b? 1. - Product: CIRO a. www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-flooring/rustic-oak-ciro - Keyword Match, YES. "Rustic Oak Flooring" b. www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-flooring/ciro - Keyword Match, NO. "Rustic Oak Flooring" 2. - Product: VOGUE a. www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-flooring/prefinished-oak-vogue - Keyword Match, YES. "Pr_efinished Oak Flooring"_ b. www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-flooring/vogue - Keyword Match, NO. "Pr_efinished Oak Flooring"_ Although seemingly a basic part of SEO, I find myself revisiting this question time and time again - what is really better for SEO? Shorter URL's or "slightly" longer to achieve keyword match? _After researching many keywords which we have chosen to use as part of this project, it seems to have any chance of ranking on the first page, the key word (or part of the keyword) must appear within the url. _ I would like to get some "extra" clarification. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | GaryVictory0 -
Why are my changes not being updated?
Last week, I was notified of having a lot of duplicated title pages. I've recently made the changes on my website with unique content. I went back on MOZ this morning, and I'm still notified with the same problems. However, when I check the back end of that specific page, I see the changes already made. My question is, why are my changes not being updated in MOZ? Does it take awhile for MOZ to recognize this or am I missing a step?
Technical SEO | | ckroaster0 -
TLD as part of word in domain name?
What is best practice regarding domain names? Assuming I would target the keyword "example" examp.le or example.com I guess the latter is preferable, what could be the issues with the first option? /Lars Eriksson
Technical SEO | | LarsEriksson0 -
Redirect Multiple Domains
This is a follow-up question from one posted earlier this month. I can't linked to that because it's a private question so I'm trying to summarize it below. We have a number of domains – about 20 - (e.g. www.propertysharp.com) that point to our main domain ip adress (www.propertyshark.com) and share the same content. This is no black-hat strategy whatsoever, the domains were acquired several years ago in order to help people who mistyped the websites url to reach their desired destination. The question was whether to redirect them to our main domain or not. Pros were the reportedly millions of incoming links from these domains - cons was the fact that lots of issues regarding duplicate content could arise and we actually saw lots of some pages from these domains ranking in the search engines. We were recommended to redirect them, but to take it gradually. I have a simple question - what does gradually mean - one domain per week, per month?
Technical SEO | | propertyshark0 -
Two spelling of a domain
I have a customer with two spellings of their domain name. I set up an account for spelling A and forwarded all the email boxes to spelling B becuase people tend to remember spelling A more of the time. Spelling B is the real web site. I also want any www. traffic for spelling A to go to spelling B so I used this .htaccess file in the root of spelling A Options +Indexes +FollowSymLinks
Technical SEO | | freestone
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.B.com/$1 [R=301,L] I use to just forward A to B from the registrar but made this change to allow for email spelled either way. My question is does this create a duplicate site issue for the bots? Is this in anyway an SEO negative and if so is there a better way to do this. Thanks jw0 -
301 redirect from domain to home.aspx
We have been asked to look at a website and have found a 301 redirect from the domain www.domain.com to www.domain.com/home.aspx. Why would someone do this, this way round? We can't think of a good reason and are wondering if we have overlooked something? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | travelinnovations0