Steady decline since Panda 4.0 but struggling to identify cause (and solution!).
-
Hello
I work as an in-house SEO (previously worked for an agency) for the website naturalworldsafaris.com. After a strong start to the year we were seeing really good growth but since Panda 4.0 was released we have been steadily declining.
Our site has, I believe, good, unique content and is largely free of technical issues. I'm struggling to identify what exactly is the issue for the drop. We've had several key terms drop from the top half of page 1 to page 2 of the SERPS, such as the term "Borneo Holiday" (on a Google UK search). I don't believe we have any duplicate content issues.
We've had a few external SEO specialists take a look and none have come up with anything new. Site speed has been flagged as a concern but when compared to our competitors in the SERPS we are consistently one of the faster sites so while we are looking to improve this, I don't feel it can be the only issue.
Any suggestions as to what else we should be investigating next would be much appreciated.
-
You've taken good steps so far and kudos for continuing to put time and effort into the cause. Great collective feedback. Additionally, have you run a keyword density tool on the home page? Your other top level pages are good candidates as well. Check All Text and Headlines. Other SEO's can chime in but rule of thumb has been no higher than 4% keyword density on a page. A high density in Headlines could indicate an issue as Headlines has historically been a key component in Google's algorithm. I haven't studied at this granular level but others may have. All the best.
-
Thanks Pixel by Pixel. We don't operate on a local basis which is why we've not done anything with Google local before.
I'll look into the images, thanks for picking up on that; I think a lot of it is to do with how the site was built, it uses a lot of images for all the styling. While the site is large it holds a lot of good, unique content and on the surface I think we do meet all the requirements that Google recommends for content depth and quality.
Will keep looking through to see if there is another issue we can spot though!
-
Hi Kate,
Unfortunately it's always a guessing game but couple of things i did notice - you've got a Google plus page set up but you seem to have forgotten about Google local (because it's always fun to confuse people by naming all your products Google "something") - https://plus.google.com/113270767742987744992/about it can be helpful to make sure that it is up to date as it can assist any local searches.
You've got a rather large site which is fine just make sure its all optimized so every page is helpful, authoritative etc.
Another oddity is on my quick look you've got a very large volume of images (nearly 90% of your links) which is fine but they all have very similar names (and a lack of lat tags).
Although somewhat controversial don't forget to get people to review you! e.g your Google local is without reviews which can help identify your site as a great place people are using and a reason why you should move up in the SERP.
Hopefully there is some 'Leads' for you to look into from my very brief look (I also noticed you're in Brighton High five)
Just a quick disclaimer all the above is not a garuntee and it's only observations i made I'm sure some of the Moz "recommended" list can come with a very good action place to help your site if you wanted a bit better advice etc.
The last bit of advise is remember Google wants to give the best answer to a search so make your site that, with information that's going to help and then back that up with e.g shares/ reviews etc. show people found it helpful if possible.
Best of luck!
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
-
IP Address location v Server Location Penguin 4/Possum
Hi All, Our hosting provider have their IP address range in Melbourne but offers servers in Sydney or Melbourne.. If we were to take a server in Sydney and an IP address from their Melbourne range (only IP range offered) will the new localisation updates to the Penguin/Possum Algorithms serve less up to our clients in Sydney thinking we are located in Melbourne? Sorry if im confusing.. I know I am 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CFCU1 -
Site Migration of 4 sites into 1?
Hi Guys, I have a massive project involving a migration of 4 sites into 1. 4 sites include: **www.MainSite.com ** www.E-commerce.com www.Membership.com www.ResearchStudy.com Goal of this project is to have 1-4 regrouped into Main Site I will be following the best practice from this post https://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos which has an awesome checklist. I am actually about to start Phase 3: URL redirect mapping. Because all of these sites have hundreds of duplicates, I figured I should first resolve the Main Site dup issues before creating the URL redirect mapping but what about the other domains (2,3,4) though? Should I first resolve the Dup issues on those ones as well or it is not necessary since they will be pointing into the Main Site new domain? I want to make sure I don't overwork the programming team and myself. Thanks For sharing your expertise and any tips on how should I move forward with this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Solution to Duplicate Pages within Shopify
Thanks in advance for your time and expertise. I am having issues with duplicate page content and titles on a client's Shopify subdomain. Examples below. Two questions: #1 How can I solve this issue? Do I block the duplicate pages from being crawled? With meta NoIndex? Establish the main page as the canonical version and stop obsessing? Other... #2 Is it a big concern or am I needlessly obsessing? Feels like a concern that needs to be addressed, but maybe not? Duplicate Page Content Examples: #1 URL: http://shop.shopvandevort.com #1 Duplicate URLs: http://shop.shopvandevort.com/collections/all; http://shop.shopvandevort.com/collections/all?page=1 #2 URL: http://shop.shopvandevort.com/collections/accessories #2 Duplicate URLs: http://shop.shopvandevort.com/collections/accessories; http://shop.shopvandevort.com/collections/types?q=Accessories Duplicate Page Title Examples: http://shop.shopvandevort.com/collections/vendors?q=For%20Love%20And%20Lemons http://shop.shopvandevort.com/collections/for-love-lemons http://shopvandevort.com/blog/tag/for-love-and-lemons/ http://shop.shopvandevort.com/collections/for-love-lemons?page=1 Thanks again for taking a look here, very much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AaronHurst0 -
4 questions about a paragraph of SEO friendly text in my e-com websites header.
Hi guys, I'm trying to understand the SEO behind our websites header. www.mountainjade.co.nz As you can see we have a paragraph of relevant introductory text that is also SEO friendly in our header. What I would like some help with is understanding how google views and assigns 'juice' to information like this in the header or footer of a website. Usually certain pages have content specific to a given topic, and google ranks these pages accordingly. But with a websites header / footer its content appears on every page as the header is always at the top and footer at the bottom. 1. In what way does my website benefit from the paragraph of text in the header? e.g at the domain level? Just the home page? etc etc 2. How does google assign 'juice' to the paragraph of text? (similiar to Q1). 3. How would my website be effected if I moved the text to the footer? (Aesthetic change) 4. When I 'inspect element' on the paragraph, it is labelled 'div id=site description.' Can someone please explain the relevance of a sites description to SEO for me. This paragraph of text was in the websites header before I came onboard, and I've been too concerned to change / move it as I don't know enough about it. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks team, Jake
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jacobsheehan0 -
Google WMT Turning 1 Link into 4,000+ Links
We operate 2 ecommerce sites. The About Us page of our main site links to the homepage of our second site. It's been this way since the second site launched about 5 years ago. The sites sell completely different products and aren't related besides both being owned by us. In Webmaster Tools for site 2, it's picking up ~4,100 links coming to the home page from site 1. But we only link to the home page 1 time in the entire site and that's from the About Us page. I've used Screaming Frog, IT has looked at source, JavaScript, etc., and we're stumped. It doesn't look like WMT has a function to show you on what pages of a domain it finds the links and we're not seeing anything by checking the site itself. Does anyone have experience with a situation like this? Anyone know an easy way to find exactly where Google sees these links coming from?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingof50 -
My PR 4 website won't rank for keywords that have very weak competition
I bought a real 1Yr old PR4 domain and used it to make a blog that would rank easily for new trending keywords (Ex: product launch keywords). I used Yoast SEO and made sure I did all the on-page recommendations it gave me and had linklicious ping the post and a couple high PR backlinks that I gave the page, but it won't even rank page 10 let alone index. My domain is indexed and the home page links to my post. I know a average amount of SEO but I hate doing it because stuff like this frustrates me. Can someone help me? Do I need to get certain backlinks? Is there a way to get my site and post to index faster? BTW the keywords i'm trying to rank for have websites that are brand spanking new some of them are blogspot websites. Most of them don't have a single backlink to them.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jamal41930 -
What has this subdomain done to recover from Panda?
I found that doctor.webmd.com was affected by Google Panda, and then recovered (if you look at traffic on compete.com). What do you think they did to recover?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
My website keywords have been almost completely taken out of indexing in Google since 04/26/11 and I cannot determine why, anyone know?
I had 12 to 15 1st page Google rankings in the iPhone, iPad, app review vertical. As of 04/26/11 I have lost all rankings, traffic has gone from 1,000 to 1,200 a day to 150 to 350 a day. I was using a plugin for auto press releases, but have removed this and deleted the urls. I also have changed themes and hosting over the last 3 weeks. I have been trying to get SEO help, but cannot seem to get anyone to help me. thank you Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crazymikesapps1