Site with no ads hit by Page Layout update?
-
Hi there!
Can a site that has no ads on it be hit by Google's latest Page Layout update? Can it be hit for just one or two keywords?
My site (www.ink2paper.com) has a decline in Google organic traffic in early Feb so my suspicion is the Page Layout update. However I have no ads on the site.
Digging into GWMT I find that it is only one or 2 keywords that seems to have taken a dive, mainly [photo paper]. I used to get around 80 imps a day for this term. Then on 6 Feb it was down to 50; 7 Feb = 34; 8 Feb just 4 impressions! I got a spike back at usual levels on 10 & 11 Feb, but since then it has been back down to only 5 or so impressions a day.
[photographic paper] took a small hit at the start of February, but has nose dived since the start of April.
The homepage performs well for Google organic traffic - low bounce (22%) and good ecom conversion rate (14%) - although this is likely to be largely branded traffic. I feel my site is a 'good' result for the search term [photo paper], although there is always room for improvement of course!
Any suggestions as to why Google has stopped showing my site for these keywords? All help is greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Simon -
No problem Simon - hope it all gets sorted
-Andy
-
Thanks William! Thanks Andy!
It is very easy to look to a Google update whenever something happens with traffic. On this occasion the Page Layout update times with a drop in ranking for these keywords - I've slipped off the bottom of page 1. Thanks for reminding me to look closer to home in the first instance - indeed it looks like the drop in rank is the more likely cause of the drop in traffic.
Andy - thanks for the point about the login link as well. Alas I inherited the site when I bought the company and it is not something that the makers of the platform want to change. I will drop them another line about it though.
Thanks for helping!
Cheers,
Simon -
Unrelated to rankings, I would not be wanting the login URL to the site so easily accessible Simon. I would look to change this - it will be much better hidden from view.
As for what has happened, I would be very surprised if this was anything to do with page layout, but looking away from analytics, how are your positions in the SERPs? Are you seeing a drop of just a few places, or a number of pages?
-Andy
-
I wouldn't attribute this to a page layout penalty.
Make sure to keep track of your rankings, so you can check to see if there was a dip in ranks that correlates with the dip in traffic. Keep in mind the ranks do fluctuate, especially if someone else is actively focuses on the terms.
This could very well be other people gaining ranks above you, or search volume being a little low for a bit. The data isn't large enough to determine trends. A few dozen impressions here and there could be anything. Take larger time-spans of data to determine trends to figure out why things are happening, but this isn't a display penalty in my opinion.
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
-
Ecommerce web design read more toggle vs menu link on home page and product pages
Hello, We have an Ecommerce store. We have a lot of content on the home page and product pages and we are going back and forth between which one to use between a toggle "Read More" "Show Less" toggle for each section and a anchor linked menu. We have long product pages We're thinking a read more toggle is more appropriate for category descriptions so that they can go at the top of the category and not take up space. But the read more toggle with lots of content scrolls the page down and doesn't scroll it back up when you hit "show less" We're leaning towards a linked menu for the home pages and product pages for this reason, but an accordion type set of toggles would look nicer. What do you recommend, and how have you set up your read more toggles if they have lots of info so that they are not confusing? Are there other options? ' Not looking for code (I can do that) I'm looking for ideas on the cleanest home page, category pages, and product pages when they have tons and tons of textual content. Wanting to trim it up and make it look compact and neat! Thanks!
Web Design | | BobGW0 -
How can I fix New 4XX Issue on Site Crawl?
Hi all, My recent site crawl shows 27 4xx issues on this website http://www.rrbusinessconsultants.com/ All of them are for 'posts' on this wordpress website. Here is an example of the issue: http://www.rrbusinessconsultants.com/rr-business-consultants-on-the-rise-of-glassdoor-and-how-companies-are-coping/void(null) The blog page seems to be creating links ending in void(null) which are defaulting to 404 pages. I cannot see the links on the site so cannot see how to remove them. Can anyone provide any insight into how to correct his issue? Many thanks in advance.
Web Design | | skehoe0 -
Moving position on a page
I would like to know if the use of adding #nameofthesection in a URL with the objective of moving position on a webpage might be somehow harmful? IE. www.mydomain.es/people-and-planet/sustainable-life-at-home/index.html www.mydomain.es/people-and-planet/sustainable-life-at-home/index.html#saving-water Many thanks for your help!
Web Design | | victoriaht0 -
Changing Page Extenstions
Hi all, I have a 10 year old website done in Classic ASP, which is fast becoming outdated and we are going to convert it to PHP so all of our pages would be changed from a '/page.asp' extension to a '/page.php' extension. I am familiar with the need to setup 301 redirects for this and I understand there will probably be a short term drop in our Google rankings. Naturally, I don't want to have to go through this again in the future so here is my question. Is having NO page extension, like '/aboutus/history' the wave of the future? Does having no page extension effect SEO at all? I have seen more websites using this technique in 2013 goes on so I am thinking this is the way we should plan our site update. I haven't looked into how to actually do this yet, but it would seem to make sense to me so that if we needed to change from PHP to say .NET or something else later on, we would not have to do 301 redirects again or have another drop in our rankings. Do any of you have an opinion or experience with this?
Web Design | | jacksghost0 -
Multiple Local Schemas Per Page
I am working on a mid size restaurant groups site. The new site (in development) has a drop down of each of the locations. When you hover over a location in the drop down it shows the businesses info (NAP). Each of the location in the Nav list are using schema.org markup. I think this would be confusing for search robots. Every page has 15 address schemas and individual restaurants pages NAP is at the below all the locations' schema/NAP in the DOM. Have any of you dealt with multiple schemas per page or similar structure?
Web Design | | JoshAM0 -
New site - same host domain?
Building a new site for my business (different URL) For SEO purposes...Is it ok to host the site on the same account as my existing site (GoDaddy) or should I purchase a seperate hosting account? Thanks
Web Design | | Tustep0 -
Will upgrading my dedicated server improve my site speed
hi, at the moment i am concerned about my site speed for www.in2town.co.uk My hosting company is tmd hosting and my package is Intel Atom 330 1MB L2 Cache 1.6GH $159/mo $189/month500GBStorage4GBRAM10TBBandwidthi am looking at increasing this to**$219/mo** $289/month500GBStorage6GBRAM10TBBandwidthcan anyone let me know if this will make a difference to my site speed please
Web Design | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Combining web pages and it's affects on SEO?
We are looking into amending a website we are working on to try and combine 2 or 3 current pages onto one page. This site is similar to an estate agents site and currently has images, map, floor plan sub pages etc. Can anyone tell me, if we were to combine these pages and include the above details on one page, how that would affect the current search engine rankings?
Web Design | | SoundinTheory0