Help! Rankings dropping after optimising
-
I have been using MOZ a lot, in the past I have always been able to optimise a website enough to rank well in my local areas, but lately every time I optimise a website based on MOZ recommendations the rankings are just dropping and dropping... I haven't focused any efforts on backlinks, but a few sites have gone from the first page of SERP to 2nd and continue to drop... I have 2 example sites:
https://www.documentmanagementsoftware.com.au/ - optimised for "Document Management Software" - was initially ranked no.7 in google AU, now it is no.16 after my efforts.
http://www.tmphysio.com.au/ - optimised for "canberra physiotherapy" - was no.6 now it is dropping to no.9 after 'optimisation'
Any help or insights would be extremely helpful as I feel hopeless!
-
Thank you very much for your response. After more research today and looking around the Q&A's on MOZ I thought that must be the best strategy. You response has confirmed that! Thank you again.
I'm just really surprised that documentmanagementsoftware was ranking no.6 in February 2017... was there google updates that caused that to drop?
-
Hi Luke,
The onsite SEO for both sites actually looks pretty good - looks like Moz has helped you optimize the pages well!
Where both sites are not doing so well appears to be with the links pointing to them.
On the Document Management Software site, there really aren't any good links pointing to the site. It looks like there are a few really old businesses linking to it, but that's about it. Not enough "quality" links for it to be competing with the top sites for "document management software".
On the physio site, it looks like there are a lot of old "SEO links" pointing to the site which would be doing more harm than good (hopefully these are disavowed), eg:
http://sportsinjurycentre.net/sports-physiotherapy-kippax-expert-sports-injury-management/
http://diagnosisneckpain.com/neck-ache-sufferers-talk-to-a-deakin-physio-for-fast-relief/In summary, onsite SEO is looking good but I think you should focus your efforts on improving the offsite SEO for both sites.
Cheers,
David
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
-
Migrated Domain, 90% Drop in Organic Traffic, HELP!!!!
One week ago we migrated our old domain www.nyc-officespace-leader.com to https://www.metro-manhattan.com/. Our organic search traffic from Google has dropped about 90%. Is this normal? If so, how long should it take to recover? We filed a submitted a domain change request on Webmaster tools one week ago. We are noticing that many of the www.nyc-officespace-leader.com pages are still indexed which seems strange after a week. To complicate things, we filed a disavow file on April 9th for spammy links that pointed the NYC site. We filed the identical disavow of those links to the new Metro domain to ensure low quality links don't point to the new domain. Prior to making the domain change request, we migrated 30-40 non critical pages from NYC to Metro domains. Webmaster Tools indicated that the traffic was normal on the migrated pages. We then migrated remaining pages and filed the domain change request on April 4th. It is after April 4th that traffic and ranking declined. I would like to mention that there was no change in content; identical content was migrated from Metro to NYC This does not seem normal. Research prior to the migration indicated that if proper steps were taken it should proceed with limited disruption in traffic and ranking. Any ideas on how to remedy this situation? Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Should we optimise our internal links?
Hi again, We recently had a technical search audit done by a specialist agency and they discovered a number of internal links that caused redirects to happen. The agency has recommended we update all of these links to link directly to the destination so we don't lose out on link equity. We'd just like to know if you think this would be a worthwhile use of our time. Our web team seem to think that returning a 301 to a crawler means that the crawler will stop indexing the original URL and instead index the redirected destination? Thanks all. Clair
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iescape2 -
Rankings drastically changing
I monitor our positions for a few keywords but they are very unstable. One day they will be at position 1, 2 or 3 and then all of a sudden not even on Google. We use an IP redirect to guide users to the correct site and I suspect this may be a cause. Could anybody shed some light? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JordanRowlands0 -
Traffic drop on this site
I am SEO'ing this site but need some assistance in the analysis. it was doing not too bad but in the last 4 months the google traffic has really fallen off, i suspect the keywords may need improving but any tips or observations would be great.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crowng0 -
Ranking and Deindexing Issues
Hi We have a website www.advanced-tuning.co.uk which has been suffering since Penguin 2 in terms of SERPS drops and indexing of pages. There are several issues which I believe are impacting on rankings and indexing/ pages being removed from the index. 1) Unnatural links. Been through Cemper and 2% of back links are toxic , 71% suspicious. There has been some auto link building undertaken by previous SEO’ers which has resulted in a lot of very poor quality back links - .pl forum member links etc. I put together a link disavow doc and have now seen Average Link Detox Risk drop to moderate from high. There still a few dodgy links but I’m working my way through these. 2) “thin” content – the site has a lot of auto generated manufacturer / model web pages e.g. http://advanced-tuning.co.uk/model/chevrolet-captiva-2-0-d-vcdi-150/ http://advanced-tuning.co.uk/model/bmw-116i-115/ these pages are internally linked to each other In addition there's a series of geographically targeted web pages which tbh don't seem to have been hit (yet) e.g. http://advanced-tuning.co.uk/location/engine-remapping-huddersfield/ My question is should I; a) Look to remove these manufacturer / model pages completely b) Invest time in generating suitable content for the service /location pages? c) Remove both types of content and concentrate on creating suitable content and links for the top level manufacturer web pages Also If i do remove the manufacturer / model pages is it worth me 301'ing the pages that are still indexed? Thanks in advance, Ade
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Door4seo0 -
Home page mysteriously not ranking at all
Hey everyone, I'm baffled by a situation. I started working on www.hushabyephotography.com almost 3 months ago. The first thing I did was changed the address (was previously blog.hushabyephotography.com) and updated all of the links pointing from the old name to the new "www" and used 301 redirects for canonicalization. Have also built some additional links, added content to the site, and performed on-page optimization to rank for the primary key phrase "san diego newborn photography". But ranking is no where to be found, I searched for the key phrase, and at rank 190 is a random subpage, not even the home page. The listing had also disappeared from Google Places a few weeks ago after the client updated their listing (which I believe was the result of the known Places bug (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-you-may-need-to-hide-your-google-places-address-asap). I'm at a loss here for ideas, as I've never failed to at least have a site on the radar. There aren't any spam links so I don't think any penalties are the result. One last thing, it ranks on page 2 in both Bing and Yahoo... Please help me out Mozzers!!! 😕
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joes_Ideas0 -
How to get subdomains to rank well?
Hi All, I am setting up a new site and I want to make use of subdomains to target multiple countries as follows: uk.mydomain.com us.mydomain.com australia.mydomain.com etc. Now i know what you're all going to say, why not use folders as they are more effective. Well I did think of this but decided against it because I would like to make the best of a low competition industry. I want to push my competitors as far down in the SE's as possible and i plan to do this by targeting generic non locational search terms with both sites so I can hog the top 4 spots.as follows: www.mydomain.com www.mydomain.com/keyterm uk.mydomain.com uk.mydomain.com/keyterm-in-the-UK Whats steps can I take to ensure rank passes to my subdomains? Is it better to start the site with folders like www.mydomain.com/us/keyterm and then 301 them to subdomains at a later stage or should i start with the subdomains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith1