What Happend To My Ranks? Began Dec 22 - detailed Info Inside
-
I have a .co.uk domain that was setup in November 2009 and it has always done pretty will in the SERPS. In Oct-Dec last year I could literally publish a post and be on the first page for a keyword with no backlinks at all.
All of my posts/pages feature-
100% unique content (min 500 words)
Imagery
Embeded video which is part of a video sitemap
External links
keyword density between 2 and 4
keyword in first paragraph bolded
Title tags are written like KEYWORD - Title, eg BLUE WIDGETS - What You Need To KnowThen this happened- http://i53.tinypic.com/2a62fb8.jpg
On december 22nd - december 24th i see a sharp decline in traffic, and then a further decline december 31st - Jan 1st?On that graph I have marked out changes I have made to the site. The bottom bar that was deployed on Nov 30th was simply a floating price comparison bar stuck to the bottom of pages.
Other than that change, nothing else had changed on the site during that period.
Here's what I have done so far to try and fix things-
Optimized load time (now 2.5 seconds)
Deployed MaxCDN content delivery network
Removed some pages which were similar, but 100% unique (unlock pages on graph)
Change H2 tags to H1 (previously there were no H1 tags)
Removed the bottom bar on nov 30th
reduced price compare results to 3 from 10
Ran a broken link check
Noindex/Follow 2nd pages of tag/categories pages
Improved blog posting rates to at least twice a dayI have 100% indexation rate across the site, an average load time of 2.5 seconds. I've tried everything I can think of, and can't seem to pin point the issue and after 5 months of trying to get it fixed I think an outside view is needed!
So what happened at Google mid-end december?
Any advice/thoughts/feedback is greatly appreciated, thanks for your time.
-
Hi Ryan,
I have posted the stats for that further down in this thread
-
Today all my rankings have reappeard!
I have done some analysis of the top 3 competitors for 4 keywords in my niche looking at onsite and offsite factors and comparing them to my page which can be seen here https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AsI-kgMI5Y7qdHhrSDdZUEY0aVJhT2ZZamZwN2lwOXc&hl=en&authkey=CP7Zo7QC
That actually throws up some quite interesting results! Are my pages over optimized?
-
Yes you can postt url
-
Update: As of this morning (UK morning) nearly all of my remaining ranks have disappeared whilst doing a check with Market Samurai and confirming this with manual searches.
-
Hi,
Are we ok to post URL's here? Some forums frown upon this.
THe new design was much cleaner and lightweight. I was careful to make sure I copied the site structure/internal linking across with the new design. However a new plugin doubled the load time on the blog which is where we see the drop after the new design deployment.
-
HI Ryan,
Firstly, the post you have linked is a great resource and I shall take a closer look at that today. Takes a while for my brain to get going in the morning Although my previous analysis has shown that no specific keywords were affected and it was sitewide but your approach to analysis might find something.
I have considered pushing some adwords/yahoo/bing campaigns to help recover some traffic as earnings have taken a serious hit recently. In fact this month I expect living expense to outweight earnings.
I will have a hard time doing a year on year analysis as this time last year the site was only 6 months old and only ranking for a couple of terms.
-
Hi,
Well the WTF is to indicate where the drop occured and never recovered from. I expect drops at that time of the year because people have other things to do, but I would expect to recover shortly after in my niche once everyone has got over their hangovers
The new design was simpler and cleaner with minimal use of imagery. I was careful to replicate the site structure (eg archives in same place etc) but the reason it bombed is because load time shot up from about 5 seconds to 12 seconds thanks to a dodgy plugin.
Since then i have done a lot of load time optimization
Looking at analytics, the rankings dropped across the whole site and not a specific area of the site.
The competition pretty much looks the same, although there is one site that is literally a list of about 100 affiliate links and no unique content which consistenly ranks well across this niche for some reason.
-
At xmass visits usally drop. so it is hard to tell when your problems actualy start. but it guess it is your new design that is causing problems.
Can we see url, be good to see old and new design
-
My sites take a big hit at Christmas!
-
I chuckled when I saw us respond to this simultaneously with, "Christmas, duh."
Matthew, to help clarify things you'll want to look at ranking differences and exactly what keywords are/were doing well and what ones are/were not doing well now. This post doesn't reference any of that.
I've frequently been referencing this SEOmoz post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-powerful-analytics-tip-every-website-should-employ as a great practice to go through in your analytics to give you a better idea of what's going on, and giving yourself actionable goals.
-
I agree... in a lot of sectors, just one site, kicking your butt, can damage your traffic badly.
-
There's always a decline on Christmas and New Years as people typically tend to unplug on those days, especially if you're B2B or running a commerce site. The bad news is that you didn't climb back up to previous levels, but you're still not comparing year over year. I'd go to Google Trends, and plug in several years of competitors and some of your top performing keywords to give yourself a better idea of seasonal tendencies.
After you get a solid idea of those swings and figure out which competitors got a boost when you got the boot I'd do site audits on those successful competitors as well as some of the people currently beating you in the SERPs to figure out if there are ways you can improve your content and links.
Finally, I'd look into social media and advertising solutions that could help me boost traffic or natural linking as well as directing some qualified traffic to a few different types of landing pages in order to maximize conversions.
-
So what happened at Google mid-end december?
WTF? in red on your chart looks like Christmas and New Years to me.
Beyond that it looks like you put out a new design and it bombed. Without seeing before and after there is not much we can do but guess.
What can you tell from analytics? Did a competitor start beating you? Rankings drop on one portion of your site. You have access to a lot of information that you have not shared here.
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
-
Internal pages ranking over the homepage: How to optimise to rank better at Google?
Hi, We have experienced a shift in SERP from internal pages ranking over website homepage for more than a year. Previously website homepages used to rank for the primary keyword like moz.com for "SEO". Now we can see that internal pages like moz.com/learn/seo/what-is-seo been ranking for the primary keyword "SEO". Google is picking up these "what is ABC" pages than the homepage. All our competitor sites are ranking with these internal pages which are about "what is (primary keyword)". We do have the same internal pages "what is....", but this pages is not ranking; only our homepage is ranking. Moreover we dropped more than 15 positions after this shift in SERP. How to diagnose this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Delay between being indexed and ranking for new pages.
I've noticed with the last few pages i've built that there's a delay between them being indexed and them actually ranking. Anyone else finding that? And why is it like that? Not much of an issue as they tend to pop up after a week or so, but I am curious. Isaac.
Algorithm Updates | | isaac6630 -
Best approach to ranking locally
Hello, What are the best approaches to ranking locally. Ie a user in Dallas googles "mechanics" and local results return. I understand Google+ local pages to be an important factor for the location based listings on maps. What about about location specific pages on the site? Meaning if we have a page on the site talking about areas we serve in Dallas. Other suggestions?
Algorithm Updates | | CallRingTalk0 -
How much is Page Rank really worth?
We are in a position to purchase a domain, made of relevant keywords to our company with a current page ranking of 4 for their home page. However in looking at their analytics and other information they do not do well on significant keywords and have very low site traffic. In fact they do very, very poorly. With their high page ranking would it be relatively easy to conduct a successful SEO campaign on the domain if we were to take it over as our own and attempt to climb in the SERP's? I know Page Rank doesn't mean everything when it comes to your ranking, but 4 is relatively high in our field, so I don't really understand why they do so poorly when it comes to their actual rankings on key words.
Algorithm Updates | | absoauto0 -
Does anyone know if Google ranks a responsive site, or a specific mobile site higher than each other?
I have heard that Google favors specific .m sites overs responsive designs in it's rankings. Does anyone know if this is true? And, if there is any supporting information. I have been in contact with our account team at Google but haven't had a response on this as yet. I appreciate any help on this. Cheers!
Algorithm Updates | | Fasthosts0 -
How to Recover Ranking from Latest Google Panda and EMD Update?
We have 7 websites with the exact match domains. Our Website has been affected by Google recently updated (Panda and EMD Update). we don't want to do any changes in our existing domains. What should we do? So, What is the exact solution for that. Help Us out! Website Names: http://www.hamptoninndenverairport.com http://www.wingatehotelcolumbia.com http://www.fairfieldinnhotelaurora.com http://www.hamptoninnhotelcrestwood.com http://www.laquintahoteldavenport.com http://www.redroofinnhotelcedarrapids.com http://www.hamptoninnhotelcarolstream.com Thanks in advance.
Algorithm Updates | | CommercePundit1 -
Poor rankings in Bing/Yahoo
Hello, A site I'm working on ranks well in Google, but does poorly in Bing/Yahoo. Is there anything I should look at? Thanks,
Algorithm Updates | | PLP0 -
Food for thought: The Penguin Catch-22
I've been reading about and helping a lot of people who were hit by the Penguin update over the last couple of days, and the update seems to be accomplishing what Google intended it to accomplish... it's scaring people straight. I've picked up two new clients this week who now only want to practice "Good SEO" and "Do it the right way." This is a good thing for me and for the quality of the net, don't get me wrong. It does make me a little nervous though that the SEO industry is going to be tarnished a bit. Google is making a pretty clear statement with Penguin, which I think boils down to "Don't do anything other than create good content, provide accurate descriptions, and establish good connections to SEO your site... or beware ." (other than technical stuff - 301/ canonical / crawler management / etc). So riddle me this Batman... As a proud Journeyman, how is the followed backlink on my SEOMoz profile page going to appear to Google? This is an SEO site with SEO content and SEO tools and SEO in the URL. The site listed below the first followed URL on my profile is an SEO site that's in development. So there's a link to my site and every bit of context around it screams SEO. But... it is a very nice link indeed, I really do like it, and this is a white-hat kind of place. Do you think Google will start penalizing sites with inbound links from pages that are related to SEO, even if the page promotes respectable tactics? If so, I'll be having nightmares about a very round Danny DeVito with a pointy nose and creepy hands chasing me through the sewers for weeks to come...
Algorithm Updates | | Anthony_NorthSEO1