Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
My Rankings Keep Going Down - Needs some more ideas on why...
-
Hi Everyone,
I have been working on the website www.PetsSpark.com for a while now. I used to be on the first page for many of my keywords, now I am lucky if i am on the 2nd or 3rd. I stopped my SEO efforts for about 3 months while making changes to the website, its whithin these 3 months that I started dropping from the first page.
The biggest thing I notice is the "type" of website now ranking for my main keywords. Mostly Forums, Blogs, or Product Review websites.
Take for instance Dog Tear Stain Remover. I used to rank at about #5 for this keyword and now i rank at #20.
I'm not sure if my loss of ranking is a combination of things like who Google is letting rank now or if there is something wrong on my website, etc.
Can anyone give me a little insight?? Please....
I will also be happy to give more information about what has been going on if needed.
-
I would try to externalize a tremendous amount of your coding and comments within the code. If you can use internal links more effectively to direct your users to the interior pages within the site, also your content isn't organized in a themed website ( with silo structure reflective of the main topics).
I would most certainly, review your on page coding for crawlibility for the spiders. Update your sitemap and organize your content into themes that are cross linking based on the main relevant topic and of course your keywords.
I would also move your content up higher on the page, so it is clear that the text is answering the user query, not just retail website. Review your main competitors who have outranked you in the latest decline, my guess is that your rankings have dropped due to at least two updates from Google. Including the ever popular muffin top.
-
I do audits to help sites determine the reasons for their traffic drops. I'm not sure if it is ok to post a link to my audit information, so the best thing to do would be to contact me by private message and we can talk.
-
We are considering hiring an outside consultant to help on this issue. Is that what you do for a living?
-
This is probably good news then. It means that it is unlikely that an algorithm change is affecting your site. I can't say for certain without having a detailed look at your site and your competitors but it's possible that other sites are just outperforming you. Your niche is a competitive one!
It's interesting that you noticed that forums, blogs and review sites are outranking you. Google has been making changes to reward sites that add significant value when someone is searching for a product and not just using standard product descriptions. I didn't have a thorough look, but a quick search of text from your tear stains page shows me 29 other pages that are using the same description. In order to rank better you may need to create more unique stuff.
It is challenging for stores to rank well these days!
However, there could be other factors, but that is my best guess.
EDIT: I just went back and looked. I didn't realize your whole site was about tear stains. You do have additional information too. Sorry...I don't know the reason for your rankings drop. I wish I had more time to dig into this.
-
I took a look at my organic search visits since March. There is no defining day that the visits dropped. Just a slow progression of fewer and fewer visits from my targeted keywords.
-
Can you pinpoint the day of your traffic drop? Take a look at your organic search traffic. Does it drop on the same day as a Panda update?
-
I just had a quick look on ahrefs.com and your backlinks (well the ones ahrefs have clocked anyway) have dropped by aprox 15% over relatively short timescale (since 20th Jan aprox), but that doesnt really fit your 3 month timescale but thought would mention it just in case
I cant see G+ in your social properties so definately worth developing G+ pers page/authorship and link to your content (if not already) and of course G+ company page and link that to site too
Sorry prob not much help but my 2 cents worth from having very quick look
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
-
Page Rank Flow
I wonder if someone can help me understand clearly page rank flow. If we have a website with a Home page, Services, About and Contact as a very basic website and the page rank will flow to each of those pages from the Home page (i'm not including internal linking between pages or anchor text from the home page content - this is a question purely about home page flow via the main navigation). If the Services page had 3 drop down pages. Would the home page rank also flow to each of these or is it going to the Services page which then distributes it to the three drop down. So instead of Home page rank flowing to 3 pages 33% each - it is flowing to 6 pages 16.6% each. Or is it flowing to 3 pages - 33.3% then the Services pages get a third of 33.3% ->10.1% I know this is simplifying it all a great deal- but it is the basic concept I am trying to grasp on this simple example. Thanks
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Google ranking my site abroad, how to stop?
Hi Mozzers, I have a UK based ecommerce site, that sells only to the UK. Over the last month Google has started ranking my site on foreign flavours of Google, so I keep getting traffic coming to my site from Europe, America and the far east that we could never sell to, and as a result bounce is going up and engagement is going down. They are definitely coming to the site from google searches that relate to my product type, but in regions I do not service. Is there a way to stop google doing this? I have the target set to UK in WMT, but is there anything else I can do? I worried about my UK ranking being damaged by an increasing overall bounce rate. Thanks
Technical SEO | | FDFPres0 -
How long should I keep 301 redirects?
I have modified a the URL structure of a whole section of a website and used mod_rewrite 301 redirect to match the new structure. Now that was around 3 months ago and I was wondering how long should I keep this redirect for? As it is a new website I am quite sure that there are no links around with the old URL structure but still I can see the google bot trying from time to time to access the old URL structure. Shouldn't the google bot learn from this 301 redirect and not go anymore for the old URL?
Technical SEO | | socialtowards0 -
Link Volume - calculate what you need?
Hi everyone, an interesting question here. How do you determien what link volume you should try and get into your website? What analysis do you do to determine the number of links you feel is right to go into a back-link profiel every month? obviously there is no magic number but its an interesting question to know what others do. Obviously you don't want to build too many or too little. If you have been penalised for bad links in the past and are now back on track - how do you calculate the volume? Do you take links dropping out into consideration?
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Bing rank drop off for multiple sites
Hi Mozzers, Seeing some wacky stuff going on on some sites I manage. In more than a few, the ranking on bing has dropped basically overnight from page one spots to not being found on the first 100 positions. Anyone else seeing similar results? Some of the sites are fairly new, some have been around for ages, some are wordpress, some are not. I've been searching for some news of a big change on bing, but keep reading about bing dropping the thin sites during black friday. In one example, I had the site set up in BWT for a while, and had a look at the data. The reports show that the pages are crawled, the index summary shows pages indexed, and there seems to be no crawl errors, but rankings are absolutely gone. Also, I can't see the sites in bing if I search "site:example.com" in bing. Here's 2 examples, the first would make sense since it's pretty thin as I havent added much content yet: http://homewindowtint.org but this one doesn't make sense to me. Sure there's a few errors, but to be dropped like a rock seems weird http://www.ahmedandsukaram.com
Technical SEO | | rosstaylor0 -
How to Resolve Rankings Drop from a DDOS Attack?
Our rankings just plummeted on Tuesday across the board. There was a DDOS attack on Tuesday and since then the rankings went down and have stayed down, even though the DDOS attack has been resolved. Also, this is the 3rd or 4th attack they've encountered this year. How long could this last? How can we deal with this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | poolguy0 -
Sudden ranking drop, no manual action
Sort of a strange situation I'm having and I wanted to see if I could get some thoughts. Here's what has happened... Monday morning, I realized that my website, which had been showing up at the bottom of page 2 for a specific result, had now been demoted to the bottom of page 6 (roughly a 40 spot demotion). No other keyword searches were affected. I immediately figured that this was some sort of keyword-specific penalty that I had incurred. I had done a bit of link building over the weekend (two or three directory type sites and a bio link from a site I contribute to). I also changed some anchor text on another site to match my homepage's title tag (which just so happened to be the exact phrase match I had dropped in) - I assumed this was what got me. I was slowly beginning to climb up the rankings and just got a bit impatient/overzealous. Changed the anchor text back to what it originally was and submitted a reconsideration request on Tuesday. This morning, I get the automated response in Webmaster Tools that no manual action had been taken. So my question is, would this drop have been an automated deal? If that's the case, then it's going to be mighty hard to pinpoint what I did wrong, since there's no way to know when I did whatever it was to cause the drop. Any ideas/thoughts/suggestions to regain my modest original placement?
Technical SEO | | sandlappercreative0 -
How long does it take for rank to return after 301?
Hello all -- just looking for those who have implemented site-wide 301 redirects due to a domain change. I am about 2 weeks into mine and am seeing minimum 5, maximum 21 spot drops in many of my targeted terms. My pages have strong GPR, with most being 3 or higher. Anyone out there been able to track a ballpark of when rank will return? The 301 redirects were implemented correctly, with 1 to 1 setups in most cases. Google has updated the listings with the new domain name, but I'm taking a huge rank hit. Any experience on how long I can expect (I know it's different for every situation) would be great! Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Bandicoot0