SEMrush vs GA rankings drop since February and December 2018?
-
I am wondering if someone can help me understand what's going on with our site.
We had a 50% drop in the number of keywords ranking from February 2018 to October in SEMrush. Looking at SEMrush, I am actually seeing a drop after 2/208 with many competitor's sites as well. We saw moderate improvement in November, but around December 6th, we started seeing a decline the number of keywords ranking again.
In Google Analytics, there was a 10-15% drop in traffic after February 2018, which recovered September to December, but since early December, there is a drop again.
In GWT, I am seeing something similar to analytics with impressions and clicks.
We have done some SEO the past couple of years, but we have taken care to do things white-hat so as not to incur a penalty. We have also invested in writing content for our blog on a regular basis.
Any thoughts?
-
Hi,
I just got a client who has had the same problem as you do, different numbers - drop and goes back up again. I did some analysis as he also had taken some SEO services. Well, I wouldn't blame the backlinks that he had but yes, it was excessive backlinks produced during the Dec 2017 - Mar 2018. Which I believe wasn't required at all. Did some fixing with backlinks and now he is back up again.
When it comes to your case, Do not rely 100% on third-party tools like SEMrush they can be right up to some extent but not 100%. Second, season or competition could be another thing that may have pushed you down during a certain period of time.
Third, what does GSC says, High impression or Clicks? It's okay to have a higher impression but If clicks are somewhere around the same in comparison to organic traffic that it's okay as you do not get the 100% exactly the same data both in GSC and GA, numbers may differ up to 5%-10%. Also focus more on High Impression VS. CTR. Do some comparsion what was working in Feb or June or anyother high months and what's not working this month. Which queries dropped in CTR or Impression etc. Do some analysis.
Last, we all know there was an update in August that has impacted most of the websites and experienced the dropped in traffic and such small updates are still impacting the sites.
My suggestion: Do an audit, go through the backlinks, check your keywords, see which pages were working good? What keywords went down? What could be the reason competition or do you need to change ON page.
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
-
Keywords Ranking Fluctuate
Hi Moz Community! I've been working with a client’s website for about a year now. They were hit with the original Panda/ Penguin update because of some spammy links. We have analysed and disavow sapmmy links edit anchor tag and landing pages. We've made a decent climb back while working on it keywords ranking was improved some of them are from out of 500 to top 30, but not a full recovery. There are some weird things happening that I would love some insight into. 1. Ranking for keywords are again dropping and traffic is gone: I notice keyword ranking is dropping and some of the keywords which are on 2 and 3 page, now on 9<sup>th</sup> page. And also traffic is down. Any help would be appreciated! Regards, S
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ShaunPhilips0 -
One guy using some Alexa rank tricks to gain high PR etc..?
Hi! One finnish guy is getting pretty nice Alexa ranking to his sites, even if the real traffic is not somewhere near it would lead for that cool Alexa rank. I am a bit suspisious if he is using some Low Bounce Rate High Traffic Boosters on his sites.. I will give you some examples here to look into.. Vihjepaikka(dot)com - Created on 2013-03-13 - Alexa Rank 129k!!! - PR3 - Backlinks not many qualitys.. Casinolla(dot)net - Created on 2014-10-15 - Alexa Rank 351k!!! - PR0 - Backlinks 0!!! Cashadvance777(dot)com - Created on 2014-09-04 - Alexa Rank 772k!!! - PR3 - Backlinks 0!!! Let me know your thoughts on these.. Cheers!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Kononen0 -
What are legit ways to raise up you're ranking for a new website?
I have a wallpaper website that i just made and bought a template that looks fine for the site so far for a month now, and i wanted to know what steps i cant take to better rank my site and build some traffic along the way. I use only specific directories, not sure how to get a press release done and also link back to other sites from pages that get a decent amount of traffic where i can leave a link to it, of course not leaving any type of spammy looking comments. This is the site i am working on right now, freehdwallpapers.be I have linked back from a few sites already, i look at the alexa rank if it will show a number at one point, the sites worth is still pretty low, and also i have added social networks on the site which has gained a number of followers to this day, so i got work to do still. I just don't want to go on about it the wrong way and get penalized by google.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 1080HDWallpapers0 -
Google says 404s don't cause ranking drops, but what about a lot of them
Hello, According to Google here, 404s don't cause rankings to go down. Our rankings are going down and we have about 50 or so 404s (though some may have been deindexed by now). We have about 300 main products and 9000 pages in general on this Ecommerce site. There's no link equity gained by 301 redirecting the 404s. A custom 404 page has been made linking to the home page. There's nothing linking to the pages that are 404s Provided that no more 404s are created, can I just ignore them and find the real reason our rankings are going down?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Highly competitive keywords ranking
Hi , I just start one page website ( website that give a user one service like backlinkswatch . com or prchecker ) This niche is so competitive and the first 5 results for keywords that I have selected for my website have a google pagerank > 4 I know that ranking for high competitive keywords take more times but what Can I do to make it fast without getting penalized , all what I hear now is guest post and guest post and guest post any other idea ??
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | loumi0 -
Link Removal and Disavow - Is Page Rank a sign directory is okay with Google
Hi, Currently cleaning up a clients link profile in preparation for disavow file and I have reached the stage where I am undecided on some directories as I don't want to remove all links. Is Page Rank an indication that Google is okay with a particular directory? For example the following domain is questionable, but has a PR of 3. Do I need to consider scrapping all such links in anticipation of future updates? http://www.easyfinddirectory.com/shopping-and-services/clothing http://www.toplocallistings.co.uk/Apparel/West_Midlands/Shropshire/ Thanks in advance Andy
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarzVentures0 -
Webiste Ranking Differently Based on IP/Data Center
I have a site which I thought was ranking well, however that doesn't seem to be the case. When I check the site from different IPs within the US it shows that the site is on page 1 and on other IPs it shows that it's on page 5 and for some keywords it shows it's not listed. This site was ranking well, before but I think google dropped it when I was giving putting in too much work with it (articles and press releases), but now it seems to have recovered when I check with my IP, but on other data centers it still shows it prior to recovering. It was able to recover after not building links to for a period of time, it showed it moved back up from the data center I'm connected to, but it still shows the possibly penalized results on other data centers. Is it possible that site is still penalized? So the question is why does it show it recovered in some data centers and not others? How do I fix this? It's been about 2 months since it's recovered from some data centers. Is this site still penalized or what's going on? There are no warnings in web master tools. Any insights would be appreciated! This isn't an issue with the rank tracking software, I've tested this on a multitude of IPs with varying differences. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seomozzy0 -
Massive rank drop for 'unnatural links' . Help!
Hi Everyone, I work for a company called Danbro - www.danbro.co.uk Recently a massive penalty lead to a huge drop across all keywords in Google including the brand name. Since we have conducted a massive clean up; (requesting competitors to remove duplicate content, removing some poor quality links etc etc) We still have not seen any improvement whatsoever nor has Google responded. Has anyone ever received a positive response from Google? Since we sent a reconsideration request our ranks actually went worse!! Any advice would be great
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Townpages0