May last year my sites orgainic listings, and therfore visitors, plumeted. Why?
-
Hello,
May last year my site took a major fall. I am unsure why, and it's time I found out why. Recently I have rebuilt the site from scratch, except for the urls and content, and it's starting to turn back.
What is the best method to go about understanding just what caused the decline? What are the options I have?
See the image for a graph of the all-time traffic. http://i.imgur.com/uL93yPj.png
My website in question is: www.ditalia.com.au
Thanks.
-
Thanks guys, this does seam like a good place to get answers and help in my area of expertise--design and layout.I have had a couple of SEO people work on backlinks and they say they didn't do any black-hat stuff. But, I guess I will find out during this research and fix.
-
Did you get a manual penalty notice in Webmaster Tools?
-
I haven't had any penalty notifications from Google at all. (other than some 404 errors)
-
Have you examined your link profile closely for obvious spammy, dubious, unrelated links?
-
I will check this.
-
Are your inbound links heavy with keyword anchor text?
-
I will check this.
-
Is your textual content unique and give value to your visitor?
-
Yes, every page is unique, however, I have not check for plagiarism--if others have stolen it from us.
-
have you changed your meta content?
-
Only recently when I made the new site--about 4 weeks ago. They weren't change just before May 2012.
-
is the drop relating to certain keywords
-
Pretty much all of them.
MOZ has scanned my site and is displaying data about it now so I will start researching the links, determine their quality, and research how to
Any advice you have would be much appreciated.
-
-
Michael's questions are spot on but based on the timing and a quick glance at your anchor text profile I think it's pretty safe to say you were hit by Penguin. I'd assume there was some shady link building done to your site in the past through a link-blast service or some black-hat SEO.
Your site has a ton of links with the anchor phrasing of "wedding dress" or some variation thereof. I would suggest that you do some research on Penguin penalties and how to clean them up and definitely check Webmaster Tools for penalty notifications.
This is a good community to stay close to throughout this process. There are a ton of helpful people here who can help with questions along the way.
Good luck!
-
It might tie in with either Penguin or Panda updates, although content is Panda and Penguin is links (URLs).
- Did you get a manual penalty notice in Webmaster Tools?
- Have you examined your link profile closely for obvious spammy, dubious, unrelated links?
- Are your inbound links heavy with keyword anchor text?
- Is your textual content unique and give value to your visitor?
- have you changed your meta content?
- is the drop relating to certain keywords
- how have rankings stacked up over the past 2yrs - have they fallen?
You need to examine closely so that all your work doesn't fall flat again.
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
-
Same person on my site, every day, for over 6 months??
I watch my Google analytics real time while I work and for the last 6 months, I've had one person on my site consistently during every Monday to Friday. It's only the home page there go on, it never shows they look anywhere else. But it's starting to concern me a little since it's been going on for so long. Does anyone have an idea what they could be doing? I do my own SEO, there is no one else working on my site. Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | Coppell0 -
Longterm wordpress blog not providing seo benefit to main site - help needed please
Hi I have a bigcommerce ecommerce store, with a Wordpress blog on a subdomain. The store and blog have been active for four years, the blog is regularly updated with original content, has many links to the store, is promoted regularly via my brand's social media channels and mailing list, and has the simplest SEO basics covered via a Yoast SEO plugin. But the store sees very little, if any, SEO benefit from the blog. My question is: based on this information, and the details below, is there an issue with the connection between the blog and main site in SEO terms? And if there is, how can I start fixing it? Further info: 1 In my Moz dashboard for the store site, the blog does not show at all as providing any inbound links or linking domains 2 Google Analytics also shows zero referral traffic to the store site from the blog since April 2015 3 Moz crawl issues is flagging ‘duplicate page content issues’ for pretty much every page of the blog, and the analysis provided suggests this may be related to tags but I have only basic SEO knowledge and am fast getting out of my depth here. 4 I have today altered the settings within the Yoast plugin on the blog to ‘noindex’ for Tags, Meta Robots, based on advice I have found in this section but am already well over my head and unsure even this is correct. An agency have been running SEO for the store since 2012 but since uncovering how little they have done in this time for the money paid, I am now taking matters back into my own hands. However I am on a very steep learning curve and this one is beyond me right now - please does anyone have any suggestions where I can start looking to uncover the root issue? Any guidance or advice would be greatly appreciated Thanks very much and hope to hear from someone!
Reporting & Analytics | | Warren_331 -
How to configure multilingual site in google analytic? Currently showing in Referral Traffic why?
Hello All, Currently my Multilingual site is showing in referral traffic is it because I have not added hreflang tag on site? If yes and if I add the hreflang tag on all sites when where it will show in google analytic traffic from international sites? And what type of configuration required in analytic? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | pragnesh96390 -
No Query parameter for site search
Hi Guys, I have enable site search for analytics a number of times. But this time it's the first time I came across a search with no query parameters. example.com/search/item/searchterm What is the most simple way to approach this? thank you!
Reporting & Analytics | | GetApp0 -
Get a list of robots.txt blocked URL and tell Google to crawl and index it.
Some of my key pages got blocked by robots.txt file and I have made required changes in robots.txt file but how can I get the blocked URL's list. My webmaster page Health>blocked URL's shows only number not the blocked URL's.My first question is from where can I fetch these blocked URL's and how can I get them back in searches, One other interesting point I see is that blocked pages are still showing up in searches.Title is appearing fine but Description shows blocked by robots.txt file. I need urgent recommendation as I do not want to see drop in my traffic any more.
Reporting & Analytics | | csfarnsworth0 -
Is there any way to find out how many people blocked our site in Google?
With it being a factor in Panda, I would like to know what the number is and whether it's high / low compared to other sites etc. I kind of doubt a lot of people would have blocked us, but I'd like to at least be aware of whether that's a problem for us.
Reporting & Analytics | | rango0 -
Google Analytics Title tag vs landing page visitors numbers
Hi folks, Just wondering if anyone has any ideas as to why im getting different results in Google analytics. I'm using the Content Efficiency Analysis Report from http://www.kaushik.net which is absolutely awesome. When I search via my title tag I get 920 Unique Visitors over the month but when I search via the landing page URL with the same title tag I get 28. Any ideas to why their should be such a difference. I've also noticed that on that page i'm also getting a Rel Cononical TRUE using a site crawl. Any ideas are much appreciated
Reporting & Analytics | | acs1110 -
Should we add the city to our keywords for a site that is only local?
This is one of those things I have done for a long time and all of a sudden asked myself was it necessary: For our local clients, we add the city name (Houston, KC, Birmingham) after each keyword. An example would be TestSite.com/big-tester-houston A Title Tag might be Big Tester Houston | Test Site, etc. Where appropriate we do the same with H1 or H2's and occasionally in the content we will use the city name. The thought being that since the site is only for a given city, it will be deemed more relevant than a site from outside.( I understand there are other factors in SEO; this is a specific question around adding the city). Yes, we also optimize with local directories/citation sites. Is this overkill, is it even worthwhile? Is there any evidence one way or another? I would love some strong opinions backed up with something other than anecdotal evidence where possible.
Reporting & Analytics | | RobertFisher0