Bought old site. Two weeks later, rankings burnt... could this be why?
-
Hi all,
Just joined SEOmoz. Good to be here.
I bought an amateur business directory site (not a web directory, but actual profiles of professionals) started in 2004 with page 1 rankings for the top 2 keywords in a professionals niche. Very stable rankings for years and super clean link profile.
However I fear I have killed the asset in a matter of weeks, hopefully it's not terminal... here's what I did:
#NOTE: I have reverted all changes 2 days ago, but still going down in the rankings.
**A) Added Google Analytics:**I think this is what killed it. Why? I didn't realize the analytics account I used had been previously used for a website that was burnt by the search engines, I believe because of duplicate content (I copied a full glossary from a book, didn't know better at the time).Looking at my AWstats the traffic started going down slightly the same day I put the code. It's gone from 170 to 80 visitors per day in 1 week, steadily going down. I rank page 4 or 8 now for what I was page 1 before :(Could it be Google all of a sudden linked that blacklisted (I suppose) Analytics account with the newly purchased site and decided to doom it as well?How can I redeem it?I have taken out the analytics code snippet and deleted the url from the account.OTHER CHANGES:
B) On-site SEO:
- Added H1 in homepage with main keyword (only had H2s before)- Added H1 in each professional profile page "[Professional type] in [Region]" (only had H2s before)- Changed title "[Professional type] - Region: [Region], Professional [Name]The idea behind the changes was to add H1 which in my understanding is very important and was missing, and to include the location in the title, as many searches are of the type "[Professional] in [region]".I think what could have hurt it is now many pages have the same H1.I have reversed all changes.C) I launched a Google Adwords test campaign.In the campaign, because it was a quick test to see how much traffic I could get from the kws, not an attempt to get new sign ups, I simply copy-pasted a landing page from another site and tweaked the text so it made sense to my audience. I run the test for a day or two.
D) Added Hellobar.There was no correlation in time between adding the hellobar and rankings going down, so I don't think this mattered. I have taken it out too.**THANKS FOR YOUR HELP!**I really want to develop a long term asset I can focus on full-time but I fear I may have stupidly doomed the whole website already.
- Added H1 in homepage with main keyword (only had H2s before)- Added H1 in each professional profile page "[Professional type] in [Region]" (only had H2s before)- Changed title "[Professional type] - Region: [Region], Professional [Name]The idea behind the changes was to add H1 which in my understanding is very important and was missing, and to include the location in the title, as many searches are of the type "[Professional] in [region]".I think what could have hurt it is now many pages have the same H1.I have reversed all changes.C) I launched a Google Adwords test campaign.In the campaign, because it was a quick test to see how much traffic I could get from the kws, not an attempt to get new sign ups, I simply copy-pasted a landing page from another site and tweaked the text so it made sense to my audience. I run the test for a day or two.
-
Todd, I have Private Messaged you the Url. I'd rather not put it out in the public thread. Thanks!
-
Do you want to share you website Url I have a few things I can check if you like.
-
I didn't do any new linkbuilding since buying the site a month ago.
Since the drop happened 6 days ago are you suggesting someone could have given me bad links on purpose?
I didn't change URL/domain.
I'm trying to see if I can revert instead of add things to the site, which would make figuring out what affected the rankings even harder. I will install webmaster tools once nothing else seems to work, thanks!
-
Webmaster tools will let you know if you have unnatural links
Crawl errors
It is easy to set up.
If you changes the URL's make sure you 301 them to the new ones
Did you switch domains?
-
@Russ: I'm not certain when I lost my ranking, but looking at my traffic stats in AWstats, they started going down on April 26th, which is the day I installed GA. This is less than a week ago so I doubt it has to do with algo updates?
PS: read your chairman's first book ages ago. Cool to see you here.
I forgot to mention the On-site SEO changes of point B seemed to increase the traffic from 170 to 200-300+ for the following 4 days, until I added the GA code snippet...
-
Only 1 H1 per page. Now I have taken them out as before, when it ranked well (no H1s in any page).
-
I believe Title was relevant, which is why I added the location in it, though I have reverted to old one now.
-
Adword: ok, I think we can discard it as reason.
-
Hello bar: ok, I think we can discard it as reason, also it was on for 3 weeks and nothing had happened.
Page time: hadn't thought of this!. I just tried pingdom.com on my homepage and it gave Perf (75/100) Requests (55) Load time (956 ms) Page size (288 kb) "site faster than 89% of websites tested".... so it doesn't seem to be the problem?
@ Todd:
No, I don't have it... would it help revert thigs at this point?...
@ ALL: I think it has to do with a change I have done on the site. Nothing external. If one reverts back to the same site that he had before rankings fell, does Google usually get it back up? If so are we talking days/week/months? Thanks so much for your support, I feel blind without it.
-
-
Aha! There is no correlation of adding a GA of a burnt site and rankings… there is no way I can believe that your GA account that has been previously used for a website that was burnt by the search engines can kill the rankings in SERPs…
This must be something different!
- Unless you are not using too many H1 on each pages its great!
- Changing title can hurt the rankings if they are not keyword focused!
- Adword campaign can never kill the site rankings if you are not changing anything in the website for this purpose… usually for adwards if you add/include more pages, its good practice to exclude those pages from indexing!
- Adding a Hello Bar not really!
Check your page time speed and may be due to (improperly) adding of codes page time load might went up and effect the ranking negatively.
H1s and Titles can hurt if they are not keyword focused but other then this adding GA or Hello bar can’t hurt Google Rankings in anyway…
-
Do you have a google webmasters account for this site. It allows you to check your vitals of your site.
-
When did you lose your rankings? You may have lost your rankings in the myriad algo updates, panda releases, etc. in the last month or so.
All of the changes you mentioned above should not have had a negative impact.
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
-
Site penalized by google
I noticed for a while that our competitors don't rank for any keywords organically and they are using paid ads to gain traffic. They have been in the industry for over 6 years and we are only new and have ranked above them already. How can we find out if a competitor has been penalized? Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | edward-may0 -
Ad Rank and Performance for PLA
Hello everyone and happy Friday from London! I have just launched a Product listing Campaign and I can't get to find any information about ad rank and how it's performing. From AdWords all I can see is: 1.number of click 2.CTR 3.Position which is zero Any suggestions? Cheers
Paid Search Marketing | | PremioOscar0 -
Need help regarding to get rank for “Product listing Ads” on perticular keyword
I have one project Canvas Champ and we have been running Google shopping campaign for this project and we are getting good visits from some of the keywords. But our client has sorted out some keywords having high search volumes like “Canvas Prints” Now, We want to show our Product listing Ad for this keyword. Let me make you aware about our past efforts: We have set an auto target in Google Adwords for this particular product and make its bid around $8 and we have reviewed that product in listing for 2 days, but we didn’t see our Product Listing Ad on Google Search Result for this keyword. So Now, My concern is that, How can we show our Product listing Ad on Google SERP for this particular keyword “Canvas Prints”? Let me know if you have any confusion with my question. It would be really appreciated if I would get valuable inputs for the same. Thanks,
Paid Search Marketing | | CommercePundit0 -
Enhanced Sitelinks for Large Ecommerce Sites
We're about to set up enhanced sitelinks for our main site but I'm not sure about the best way to do this given the duplicate URL rule. Ex. we have a campaign for X category of products. X category has 13 subcategories and each subcategory has 4 ad groups. So in total, campaign X category has 52 ad groups in it. We planned to do a sitelink for every ad group, so 52 for this X category of products. But the duplicate URL rule makes this difficult considering how many will be in a single campaign. Making them links to related subcategories isn't possible as we'd run into duplicates really fast. Same with About Us, Contact Us, etc. What's the best way of approaching this?
Paid Search Marketing | | Kingof50 -
I want to try some Google PPC ads on other sites but don't know what i'm doing.
We have seen a massive drop in traffic this year and i am contemplation using banner ads to try to increase sales and also to help with marketing. the problem is i know nothing about doing this. I have used it in the past but to limited success and i was just stabbing in the dark. I have a few questions. Am i better to target keywords related to the product or to the people who may buy my products? Is it better for direct sales or brand awareness? What kind of ROI can i expect if i get it working well? Is it better to pay for the big keywords or pic all the low hanging fruit? Does it work? Should i employ an expert, are they worth it? Any insights into the world of PPc would be a massive help.
Paid Search Marketing | | mark_baird1 -
Report site for duplicate content
Hi All, I know that when a site is using duplicate content (my content) I can report it to Google and have them removed from the index, contact the hosting provider, etc But I was wondering if there is anything I can do to have Google shutdown their PPC campaign? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | Tug-Agency0 -
Your thoughts on Pay-Per-Rank (Performance based) SEO firms
I am seeing several Pay-Per-Rank (performance based) SEO firms popping up lately. The model is interesting. They only take on the work that they know they can achieve good results. Most seem advertise white hat SEO. Overall thougts? Anyone have any experience with these firms? Any recommendations?
Paid Search Marketing | | paddlej0 -
Your Google AdWords account has been permanently suspended for repeated violation of AdWords or Landing Page and Site policies in this or a related account.
My client nor I received any warning. We even had a google adwords team optimize the account and my rep does not yet know the reason for the ban. Not sure if its related but their google organic rankings dropped significantly at the same time. https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164786 Any advice here? Do these Questions get indexed by google? I will ask my client if I can disclose the domain. Is there any way around a permanent ban? They were spending 50K per month. Is this enough to have any clout?
Paid Search Marketing | | webbroi0