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We've seen around a 25% drop in Google referral traffic from the 14th July 2014 onwards and having real trouble identifying why and from what search terms we're being effected. WMT and Moz Pro don't show any movement. Is anyone else seeing the same thing on UK search terms?

Seems a bit late to be the effect of Panda 4.0?

Any help would be amazing.

Thanks.

We are having a quality/ relevance issue with some of our traffic. One of the problems is that we are ranking well in certain foreign countries, which is driving irrelevant traffic to our site (as we only really cater for UK residents).

Is there any way to suppress our overseas Google rankings whilst retaining good performance in the UK?

Thanks.

Thanks Andrew!

I was being a bit blind there - good spot.

In the backlink profile for my site on OSE, I'm seeing a lot of links that are paid advetorials and I know go through DoubleClick.

I was informed that links going through Doubleclick automatically become NoFollow links.

If the above is true, should I ignore these links? If they are NoFollow, they don't really contribute to my backlink profile?

THANKS!

Hey Jarno,

Thanks for your detailed response. I will look into the calculations as a method.

I also think doubleclicks policy is completely nofollow, I was just looking for some confirmation.

Thanks.

ah now I follow. (no pun intended)

The links were placed there by request and I am sure the website wouldn't purposely noFollow the links because, as you say, they would gain nothing. But they go through doubleclick, which usually suggests a sponsored or paid ads. Obviously sponsored or paid ads should be NoFollow but these links aren't paid advertorials, they are natural links. So I just wanted to know whether something going through DoubleClick automatically kills any juice.

Hi Alan,

Thanks for responding.

I don't really understand your answer (Sorry!). Could you elaborate a little?

Thanks

Hi,

I'm trying to work out whether a group of links to my site are Follow or NoFollow.

There is no rel=noFollow on the link but they do appear to go through Doubleclick (the link begins with this http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/), will this automatically cut-off any link juice?

Thanks.

wow that excellent if your domain is ranking so early in its development. That probably shows that you really should avoid the risk of any keyword stuffing, as your domain and your content will do the work for you!

As far as I know the meta desc is roughly 155 characters but it's not always set in stone. It may be that Moz adds this ellipsis in order to limit a meta desc truncating mid-word.

No problem. Although, I've just noticed that since the re-brand Moz actually uses hyphens now instead of v-bars. Perhaps you can read something into that? But probably not.

For general usability and brand consistency it is best to implement the same title system across all pages.

Hi Joel,

We have exactly the same problem with our EMD site. It's a fine line between phrase targeting and keyword stuffing. (especially when you see stuffing doing well in the SERPS!)

We have found that the URL is quite a strong indicator to google so if your keywords are in there, then the title doesn't need to be too keyword heavy, which I think your suggested example is.

It may also be worth considering putting your brand name into your titles just like Moz do: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Amoz&oq=site%3Amoz&aqs=chrome.0.57l2j58j59l2j60.1582j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#safe=off&sclient=psy-ab&q=site:moz.com&oq=site:moz.com&gs_l=serp.3...1015.1455.0.1619.4.4.0.0.0.0.106.400.1j3.4.0...0.0.0..1c.1.17.psy-ab.gdYtgeZmNoQ&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.47883778,d.ZG4&fp=b708dfac7b585b5e&biw=1360&bih=667

Hope this helps.

It seems to me that both can be effective.

For example, Moz and econsultancy make good use of the vertical bar: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Aeconsultancy.com&oq=site%3Aeconsultancy.com&aqs=chrome.0.57j58.6061j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Whereas BBC opt for the hyphens: http://tinyurl.com/lbp5kxe

Both work but from a personal perspective, I think the vertical bars split up the content in a nicer way.

Hi Robert,

In my experience, going for responsive design is always the best option. m. sites can work but they don't make sense is responsive is an option.

Take a look here in regards to your canonical query: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details

Let me know if that helps!

Hey Joseph,

You are absolutely right.

Our main aim is always to get registrations to the site and build our database and we try and do this by advertising good jobs that make people want to sign-up!

Thanks for all your help on the matter, if you think of anything else, don't hesitate to let me know.

Cheers.

Hi Joseph,

Thanks for the tip I will definitely check out that tool.

I see what you are saying about modifying my meta info, I think we stuff graduate a bit too much site-wide, which is something I've started working on.

I suppose I (like most people) was hoping it was a technical error with a quick fix but (like most people) I'm now realising it all comes down to good ole' fashioned link building.

Thanks.

Hi Justin,

Thanks for your response and I really appreciate the detail and the honesty!

I get what you are saying about the questionable backlinks. None of them were actively obtained by us but that doesn't change that there are some suspicious sites linking to that page in particular. Would you recommend trying to get some of those links removed?

I suppose what confused me was that the Moz PA ranking is much healthier than some of the sites ranking on page 1 of the SERPS. So perhaps a Penguin/ Panda demotion is the most obvious answer (Ouch that hurts to say out loud!)

Thanks.

Hi Joseph,

Thanks for getting back to me. It is a bit worrying to see that amount of backlinks being lost, I wasn't aware of that!

Could you give me any more clues as to why that would be happening/ how to prevent it?

Thanks.

My URL is: www.graduate-jobs.com/graduate-schemesAfter ranking on page 1 for the search term 'graduate schemes' for over 4 months, the page then disappeared completely from the SERPS for over 6. I've been assured it isn't a Penguin/ Panda problem, as this is the only page on our site that has seen this sort of drop. When checking backlink profiles of the ranking pages, our page is as strong if not stronger and it receives a good amount of traffic with decent user metrics.If anyone could take a look at the page and have a guess at why it isn't moving anywhere, it would be really appreciated.Thanks.