Homepage bombed from rankings
-
I'm working on a site that has historically had issues ranking the homepage. We cleaned up some on page issues and then it went into a high and low pattern - page 4 then page 12 etc (was static around page 9 before), settling at page 6.
The link profile was not good and there were a high level of links that should have been no-follow as they were clearly looking paid for - we addressed this along with some other poor links. This effectively dropped ranking down to page 23, but not unexpected considering the very big drop in followed links.
Meanwhile we have embarked on a fresh steady link building strategy with nice clean links, varied anchor text coming from varying DA domains, smattered with a few no-follow links - strongly focussing on being as natural as possible.
At the Penguin update the homepage has totally disappeared. Frustratingly just after the update (same day) we removed a 301ed old domain from the profile. This was the old company URL which we discovered had a lot of spam linking associated with it. An oversight - there were other 301 domains that were removed some time ago which were totally unrelated to the main site and we were told all other domains were simply bought and redirected to stop hijacking - all but this were.
Considering the work we have done would it be good assumption this domain 301 could be the underlying factor? So far organic traffic is steady, in fact a tad up. What would you guys do?
-
The thing is the site is not losing traffic, else I would agree.
Historically the homepage has never ranked well for the main chosen keyword - highest I think is page 2 or 3 previous to migration to Magento when it started to drift. Overall organic traffic to the site has steadily risen since the beginning of 2011 and the homepage is ranking well for some longtail variations of the keyword.
-
I tried salvaging my website. Had I started a new website at the time Penguin 1.0 hit, I'd (still) be profitable today. Each time there was an update, I'd lose 5% to 7% of my traffic so I always thought I'd recover easily... then another 7% and another one and BAM! 30% drop... and then another 30% drop.
Algorythms are not run often enough so you could be waiting 6 months at times to find out if the changes you made to the website will bring it back from the dead. So if it takes 3-4 updates before you finally fix things up, it could easily take 1 to 2 years before you gain back your rankings. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of success stories of websites recovering 100%. It seems those who recover only get about 75% of their traffic back at best in the short term.
If you've been hit that hard, minimize the lost. Do the minimum to keep the website alive while you build a new one.
I've been advised to do that initially but I didn't listen. I should've. It doesn't take that long to rank a new website versus cleaning up an existing one and ranking it again.
Good luck!
-
One thing I have learned is having someone else look at my site, check everything over and over.
Look for...
- Spammy title image tags sometimes forgotten
- Repetitive keywords separated by commas somewhere on the site
Also if you were hit with Penguin 1.0 then really study your home page, Matt Cutts pointed out that 1.0 had primarily had to do with the home page. Whatever that meant....
-
I'm not sure that is a viable option. We have not had a manual penalty and doing all we can to clean up the link profile. It seems to me the 301 redirect was to blame as of course the rubbish it carried was welcomed to the site and in our control. That has been stripped out now. Should we sit and wait for another algorithmic update - continuing with new content and link development?
-
Seems with that much damage you might want to retire the domain
-
...just to add, fresh new content is also regularly going on the site.
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 not ranking because of React.js ?
Hey guys, I'm struggling with this part of my website which uses react.js . My developers used this saying it's much better and much quicker (which I think so too) but we have really low traffic coming from google compared to the other parts of the website (not using react.js). Moz gives me a score of 85% for the page but we get less than 100 visits / day and we were targeting 10.000 visits/day giving the traffic of this section in our competitors website (our whole website has 60.000 visits / day). (Section is online since 3 months now) Can you help me see what is wrong there ? I'm in Belgium so we have the website in 3 languages (FR/NL/EN) but the most important ones are FR & NL. FR : https://gocar.be/fr/prix-voitures-neuves/Audi/A3/A3-Sportback/1-0-TFSI_39CER NL : https://gocar.be/nl/prijzen-nieuwe-wagens/Audi/A3/A3-Sportback/1-0-TFSI_39CER EN : https://gocar.be/en/price-new-cars/Audi/A3/A3-Sportback/1-0-TFSI_39CER Main competitors having a better ranking than us (exemple in FR) : https://www.moniteurautomobile.be/modele--audi--a3/prix.html https://www.vroom.be/fr/prix/audi-a3/citadine-2012/197 Cheers ! Jean-Philippe
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gocar_be0 -
Length for ranking, is it keyword dependant ?
Is the time it takes to rank keyword dependant ? in other word does it take more time for a page to rank on a keyword that has 5000 request a month than for a page to rank on a keyword that has 50 requests a month ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
A single page from site not ranking
Hello, We have a new site launched in March, that is ranking well in search for all of the pages, except one and we don't know why. This page it is optimised exactly the same way like the others, but still doesn't rank in Google. We have verified robots.txt for noffollow, noindex tags, we have verified if it was penalized by Google, but still didn't find nothing. Initially we had another site and was on the topic of this page, but we have redirected it to the new one. In case this old site was anytime in the past penalized by Google, could it be possible that the new page be influenced by this? Also, we have another site that ranks on the first position, that targets the same keywords like the page that does not rank. It was the first site we launched, so it is pretty much old, but we do not have duplicate content on them. Maybe Google doesn't like the fact that both target the same keywords and chooses to display only the old site? Please help us if you have any ideas or have been through such thing. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniela.pirlogea0 -
Homepage disappeared from Google
Hello, Since 2 weeks, our website is losing positions in Google. After years on the first page, we dropped for our main keyword to the 3rd page. Seems that all the positions we lost, were ranking with the homepage. Now, we are on the 3rd page but with a less important page. How is it possible that only the homepage disappeared? Is there any explanation for that? I hope there is an explanation, so we can fix the trouble. Kind regards, Tine
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TineDL0 -
Dramatic Ranking Changes
Hi, My website is ranked on the 2nd page of Google for the /ncr. Last week suddenly it climbed up to the first page and I let my boss know about it with a quite enthusiasm and happiness 🙂 Then my boss didn't look at it on that day and next day our site was on the second page again and still is. Now I kind of lost reputation in the office, and people start questioning my comments. It wasn't a delusion but I would like to know what it was. No one does any SEO for this 10 years old site, and I've just started an SEO campaign about 1,5 months ago. And I really thought this is it, we are on the first page. But now we are back in to the 2nd page. Is waiting for couple days or weeks to Google to settle right approach for such cases? Or it was just a random bounce or coincidence? Never seen such thing, so I'm quite curious about your opinions or experience if you have.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nunobaronio0 -
301 redirect and improved ranking
I was wondering if a 301 redirect will improve my ranking. My subpages use to redirect to my homepage ( all the subpages of my site redirecting to my homepage) and my homepage use to have no redirect from non www.to www. ( other than thru google webmaster tools. I am sure why it was like this for my subpages... I was wondering if I can expect some improvements in ranking now that the redirect goes from the none www. to the www version of each subpage and not to the homepage. By the way what was the issue ( was I telling google ) by re-directing all my subpages to the homepage ? was I making google think that my subpages and my homepage were all the same ? was I sending all the link juice from the subpages to my homepage ? etc... Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
De-listed? What happened? No rankings??
Was ranking on first page for over 80 terms with over 25 in the top 3 and my main keyword was ranked #4...now my twitter account has replaced my website for #4 in the rankings for the main keyword. I now have ZERO Rankings for all keywords for my website. I have no idea what happened. ** Is there anyway for me to check with Google to see why I have been wiped off the map in the search rankings? ** Boo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0 -
Deep Page is Ranking for Main Keyword, But I Want the Home Page to Rank
A deep page is ranking for a competitive and essential keyword, I'd like the home page to rank. The main reasons are probably: This specific page is optimized for just that keyword. Contains keyword in URL I've optimized the home page for this keyword as much as possible without sacrificing the integrity of the home page and the other keywords I need to maintain. My main question is: If I use a 301 redirect on this deep page to the home page, am I risking my current ranking, or will my home page replace it on the SERPs? Thanks so much in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClarityVentures0