Call for Help. Hit Badly with "Medic" and another 30% Loss with Sept 28th Update
-
Hi Everyone,
I am not sure how this is all happening. We have been online for about 15 years, and now we are at our lowest amount of traffic in about 10 years. Our sites are www.bestpricenutrition.com and www.mysupplementstore.com. We sell commodity items, but I have focused on unique product descriptions, tons of UGC, blog posts and guides for awhile now and it has always done us well. Until as of late.
This is what I feel led up to this, but I am hoping there is something I missed.
May 1st, 2018: Migrated www.bestpricenutrition.com and www.mysupplementstore.com from Shopify. Similar sites, but almost all unique content. We purchased www.mysupplementstore.com about 8 years ago. A ton of traffic and sales, which is why we didn't just redirect it.
Around May 25th: www.mysupplementstore.com took a big hit and lost almost 40% of its traffic. Nothing happened to www.bestpricenutrition.com, we actually increased traffic.
Aug 1st Update: www.mysupplementstore.com lost another 25% of its traffic. www.bestpricenutrition.com lost about 40% of it's traffic.
Sept 28th: Nothing happened to www.mysupplementstore.com, but www.bestpricenutrition.com lost another 30% of it's traffic.
So I have been trying to figure out if there is anything technically wrong, but doesn't seem so. These are issues we discovered in August.
- During the migration, the reviews from each site were syndicated to both websites. There were 1000's. This was resolved in mid August.
- During the migration, the company doing the migration pushed our blog posts to both websites. 100's of blog posts duplicated to each website. This was resolved mid August.
- We found that a disgruntled employee instead writing unique content for our product pages, she was copying them one from another. This was about 100 product pages, which we have since resolved.
What's Left
- I noticed on www.bestpricenutrition.com that we have 100's of blog posts that are getting hardly any traffic. I had trimmed www.mysupplementstore.com of this low traffic content. I am working on www.bestpricenutrition.com still.
I have been in this industry since 2003, survived 2012, but have exhausted everything I know to figure this out. It's another sob story I know, but trying to keep everyone's job alive here, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-
Hi Jeff,
This is a tough one. Very sorry to hear about your business losses.
As I'm sure you know, several the recent "core algorithm" updates from Google have focused on site quality. Via their Quality Rater program, they ask human reviewers, with specific guidelines, to dig not only into the content of the site but the background of the owners/writers. They test new substantial algo changes with this group before they update results for all users, with a specific focus on "Your Money Or Your Life" (YMYL) content, or pages that deal with serious and potentially life-altering topics.
A site offering health information and supplement advice, and also selling those supplements, is in the crosshairs of this kind of review.
This is just my take on it, but I expect your losses are largely due to the perceived brand trustworthiness. I'd consider toning down your on-site product promo imagery and ensuring trust-building elements (badges, ratings, testimonials, any kind of accreditations you have) are clearly visible above-the-fold. I'd also recommend building a more clear/clinical layout and typographical treatment for your advice content (blog posts, articles, etc). You might also want to consider limiting the array of supplements you promote and sell, staying away from the controversial and potentially dangerous.
I also, unfortunately, would not expect immediate results from this. These core algorithm updates come several times a year, but but I worked with an auto parts retailer who lost 30% of their organic traffic+revenue overnight in the "Phantom III" update (which seemed to be a general "quality" update similar to recent core algo updates) - they had some UX issues, content that seemed there just for SEO, etc. About a year after their big drop, they made a big push to improve UX/quality and add trust-building elements to their pages, and six months after this design/UX overhaul, they regained all of their traffic in the "Phantom V" update.
I suspect there is nothing technically broken with your site and that duplicate content and similar are not holding you back much - but that quality raters preferred search results with other sites for the keywords you've been ranking for.
First impressions of the brand, quality/trustworthiness of content, etc have big impact here - but these reviewers are also instructed to verify that the owners/publishers of the site are accredited and trustworthy as per other online sources:
"Many websites are eager to tell users how great they are. Some webmasters have read these rating guidelines and write 'reviews' on various review websites. But for Page Quality rating, you must also look for outside, independent reputation information about the website. When the website says one thing about itself, but reputable external sources disagree with what the website says, trust the external sources."
Not to suggest you have scam/similar accusations showing up online, but it's something additional I'd want to look into.
Best of Luck,
Mike
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
-
Optimization for "Search by Photos" feature
Howdy, fellow mozzers, Does anyone know what affects a given company photos show up in the "Search by Photos" section? I can't find any decent info.. Here is the link to SEL, describing the feature (not even google themselves seem to have an announcement about it). https://searchengineland.com/google-showing-mobile-search-by-photos-option-in-selected-local-verticals-323237 Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DmitriiK0 -
What is this Interactive SERP Feature Called?
Hi Mozers, The interactive SERP feature that appears when you're searching for hotels nearby. It lets you input specific dates and number of adults and then lists different hotels nearby, their ratings and where they are located on a map. Two questions: What is that called? How do hotels get pulled in? Schema? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater0 -
Is Snip.ly bad for SEO?
Hi, I'm using the software snip.ly, which allows me to add call to action into content I publish through social media. It's really powerful but I'm wondering how it can affect my SEO? Snip.ly now appears into my link report and its spam score is only 2, which is good. However I'm afraid that in the long term, it can be bad: links are created manually by the webmarketer Topics of this website are infinite the ancor is the same Your thoughts?..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 2MSens0 -
Can I Use Multiple rel="alternate" Tags on Multiple Domains With the Same Language?
Hoping someone can answer this for me, as I have spent a ton of time researching with no luck... Is there anything misleading/wrong with using multiple rel="alternate" tags on a single webpage to reference multiple alternate versions? We currently use this tag to specify a mobile-equivalent page (mobile site served on an m. domain), but would like to expand so that we can cover another domain for desktop (possibly mobile in the future). In essence: MAIN DOMAIN would get The "Other Domain" would then use Canonical to point back to the main site. To clarify, this implementation idea is for an e-commerce site that maintains the same product line across 2 domains. One is homogeneous with furniture & home decor, which is a sub-set of products on our "main" domain that includes lighting, furniture & home decor. Any feedback or guidance is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LampsPlus0 -
Need help understanding "Clone sites"
I just read an article about Panda and it warned against against Clone sites: "Clone sites are a strong panda factor (JM, Mar 10, 2014)" I don't have any clone sites, but there are dozens of sites with imitations of mine. We were the first in the area of interest, and then all these other sites that imitated us popped up. None are exact replicas. But many have spun some of our articles and used them to create their sites; the site structures are not identical though. Google seems to know we are the original site on the topic since we are ranked #1 for most terms. Would these be considered clone sites in their eyes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
Please help with page
We used to use this page http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/banners/vinyl-pvc-banners.html to rank for the words vinyl banner and PVC banner but we have tried to focus the page only on PVC banners and move the vinyl banners word to http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/ yet for some reason even though they have both been spidered google has now chosen to rank this page http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/stickers/vinyl-stickers.html for the vinyl banner words- how do I stop this from happening I thought the home page would be powerful enough to rank for the word with a title inclusion and a spread of the word on the page. Also if anyone can give their opinion on why they thinkhttp://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/banners/vinyl-pvc-banners.html does not rank very well I would be truly appreciative.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Is the <a data-uri="">link SEO friendly?</a>
We've earned a great link from a popular website but it is in a strange format: <a data-uri="http:;;;;;;;;www.domain.com;;;;" target="_blank">blue widgets</a> It is still visible as a link from the web browsers, but I was wondering how will it perform in terms of SEO visibility and crawabillity? Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MartinPanayotov
Thanks!
Martin0 -
This site got hit but why..?
I am currently looking at taking on a small project website which was recently hit but we are really at a loss as to why so I wanted to open this up to the floor and see if anyone else had some thoughts or theories to add. The site is Howtotradecommodities.co.uk and the site appeared to be hit by Penguin because sure enough it drops from several hundred visitors a day to less than 50. Nothing was changed about the website, and looking at the Analytics it bumbled along at a less than 50 visitors a day. On June 25th when Panda 3.8 hit, the site saw traffic increase to between 80-100 visitors a day and steadily increases almost to pre-penguin levels. On August 9th/10th, traffic drops off the face of the planet once again. This site has some amazing links http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/04/algorithmsdata-vs-analystsreports-fight/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesAgate
http://as.exeter.ac.uk/library/using/help/business/researchingfinance/stockmarket/ That were earned entirely naturally/editorially. I know these aren't "get out of jail free cards" but the rest of the profile isn't that bad either. Normally you can look at a link profile and say "Yep, this link and that link are a bit questionable" but beyond some slightly off-topic guest blogging done a while back before I was looking to get involved in the project there really isn't anything all that fruity about the links in my opinion. I know that the site design needs some work but the content is of a high standard and it covers its topic (commodities) in a very comprehensive and authoritative way. In my opinion, (I'm not biased yet because it isn't my site) this site genuinely deserves to rank. As far as I know, this site has received no unnatural link warnings. I am hoping this is just a case of us having looked at this for too long and it will be a couple of obvious/glaring fixes to someone with a fresh pair of eyes. Does anyone have any insights into what the solution might be? [UPDATE] after responses from a few folks I decided to update the thread with progress I made on investigating the situation. After plugging the domain into Open Site Explorer I can see quite a few links that didn't show up in Link Research Tools (which is odd as I thought LRT was powered by mozscape but anyway... shows the need for multiple tools). It does seem like someone in the past has been a little trigger happy with building links to some of the inner pages.0