XML Sitemap Leads to loss in ranking and traffic in Google.
-
I have submitted XML sitemap in Google's webmaster tools for some of the categories of my website. after submitting the sitemap i have seen the drop in traffic and ranking of keywords for the categories tof which sitemap was submitted.
The other categories for which i have not submitted the sitemap the ranks have not changed.
my sites alexa rank is approx 3000
Please help me out should i remove the site or change the priority of the urls which i have fixed in the sitemap?
-
just leave it. Double check for errors on it.
-
I believe you should leave the sitemap as it is for now. and Work on improving the quality of your website; The Pages, Design, Link Structure, URLs, Content... I mean everything
Improve the quality score of your pages and your rankings will surely rise again
-
hi Dennis
so what do you suggest should i remove the sitemap or leave the sitemap as it.
-
Hi Mrtijn
the categories are the top performing categories from the websites. i have done the keyword tracking the keywords from the categories having the sitemap have gone down. whereas the keywords from the non-sitemap categories have remained stagnant or move up.
-
if it was indeed caused by submitting the sitemap, its too late for you to worry about it. My vote, another coincidence. Ive actually experienced this twice and i got my rankings back by analysing where i went wrong with the tech/structure.
With an alexa like that, you probably have a big site. Try to find a "main" problem and fix that first rather than going for different changes all at one time.
-
I've seen such behavior before, but I'm also pretty sure that it's not related to just uploading the site maps itself as it's just a signal to Google to where they can find the (new) pages. Are the category pages of low quality or is there something else which could cause this?
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
-
Yelp (recrawl Google/Bing)
If Google and Bing show an older version of a site's Yelp rating in the search results, what options are there to help ensure Google and Bing recrawl the Yelp page? Additionally, it appears third-party sites such as MapQuest show Yelp ratings and appear in Google search results; is it possible to request MapQuest to recrawl Yelp and then ask Google to recrawl MapQuest? Any advice would be much appreciated!
Industry News | | Mack_1 -
What are your opinions on the Google News vs Spanish Government Issue ?
Greg Sterling said: "Governments across Europe are justifiably alarmed by the declining fortunes of their respective newspaper industries. However punitive or parasitic taxation measures targeting Google, masquerading as copyright protections, are not the answer." Do you agree?
Industry News | | Tintanus1 -
Webmaster Tools Keyword Rankings Explanation
While analyzing the Google Webmaster, I found several keywords that are ranked in the top 10 search results with words such as: they, was, mai, and chiang. (For example:they)After reviewing the top pages shown under the keyword "they", I did not find the keyword or its variant "them" repeated in the content of the page. I am not sure why "they" is ranking so high and of course, the word "they' is not effective for finding significant content. Also word such as Chiang Mai are never used separately but the two words are ranking far apart from each other. Mai is ranked at 5 and chiang is ranked at 11. I would think that the rankings would be very close together since the two words are usually used in conjunction with one another. Can anyone explain the reason this may be happening please?
Industry News | | jimmyzig0 -
Google Cached "Text Only" version
Is there a way to test what a page would look like in Google "Text Only" version before a page is indexed in Google? Is there a tool out there to help with this?
Industry News | | activejunky10 -
Help ranking for a keyword
So I found a keyword that is labeled as "Low Competive" on Google Adwords. About a week and a half ago I optimized the page using the SEOMOZ On-Page optimization tool. It says that I am 100% with everything. My website is new but it has been around for about a year. I haven't gotten into linking and the more in depth SEO. After doing some searches though I noticed a lot of other new website that are atleast ranking in the top 50 for certain keywords, so I figured I could get my page to rank atleast in the top 1000 for this "Low Competitive" keyword. Could someone take a look and see if maybe I over optimized it or did something that would make this keyword not rank even in the top 1000 on google? Any advise is appreciated. I am obviously very new to SEO, but I am someone that likes to do and learn everything for myself. Thanks in advance! The keyword is: Nitro Monster Truck The web page is: http://www.rcnitroshop.com/nitro-monster-truck
Industry News | | bilsonx0 -
Google Search Quality Team - Commission Based Reviews
I have been busy this past week writing articles for various sources about the recent update on Google. A number of people contacted me about the analysis I was doing and the report. Some were members of the Google Search Quality Team. I knew manual reports were done before - but after the documents they showed me regarding the reports they do and the compensation for doing the reports - I am left in a state of being pretty shocked. May be I have been naive for all these years but I didn't realize that; Google outsourced the review and reconsideration requests to individual reviewers for a compensation Google's position in terms of checking qualification and experience of these "reviewers" was very insufficient at best, The three contacts I spoke to who had done reports had very little training or experience. I went through the GSQT REVIEWERS PDF (a very long and thorough document) that I was sent - with them. We went together through some sites I wanted them to review and their comments that came back were quite astounding to say the least and would have made many of you Mozzers laugh. Obviously I don't want to post said document online here.... BUT, I wanted to know if: a) any Mozzers had ever been part of such a group - the GSQT b) had any dealings with them - in terms of having your website reviewed and known about it. I knew about this group way back - like in 2005 or 2006 or sometime around then - I was told at time it was stopped and Google had stopped paying these sub contractor reviewers. Please don't get me wrong here... totally on board with manual reviews... I would just prefer them done by a trained team that possibly worked for either a professional company that maintain high quality review testing and standards - or for that matter GOOGLE employees that were trained. I just am a little unsure of them being done by individual subbies that get paid for the amount they do. What if that subbie has got some skin in the game for a particular keyword? What if their knowledge about certain aspects isn't up to par or not tested on a regular basis. This space is always changing and as you guys ./ girls on this forum know - it can change pretty quick. I just would want all websites to be judged fairly and equally by a group trained EQUALLY and to the same standards. I don't care if this is a G team or not - I just want it to be a team that is trained equally and trained continuously as opposed to paying outside people based on numbers of reviews done. When the livelihood of a small business is the balance I don't want a commission hungry toe rag with one years experience being the gate keeper for me or any of our clients. Carlos
Industry News | | CarlosFernandes0 -
Chrome blocked sites used by Googles Panda update
Google's Panda update said it used Chrome users blocked sites lists as a benchmark for what they now term poor quality content. They said the Panda update effectively took about 85% of them out of the search results. This got me thinking, it would be very nice to discover what are the exact sites they don't like. Does anyone know if there is an archive of what these sites might be? Or if none exists, maybe if people could share their Chrome blocked sites on here we might get an idea?
Industry News | | SpecialCase0 -
How changing my domain name brought back rankings.
First I would not recommend doing this to anyone else, but my circumstances were extreme.
Industry News | | AlanMosley
Let me explain to those that did not read previous posts on the subject. I had a domain thatsit.net.au, I had never really promoted it as I used a keyword domain to rank in search engines but kept this domain mainly for email, but having said that it did rank ok considering, it ranked first for my business name at least.
A few moths back I decided to promote it and check the rankings, I was surprised to see that it ranked last for almost every thing,. Even my business name. Let me impress when I say last I mean in most cases absolute last and if not last very, very close to last.
I decided to get some links happening to move it of bottom, in my experiences a site that ranks that bad even a few links with show a big jump in rankings, it is easier to get from page 1000 to page 900 than it is to get from page 2 to page 1. The site had about 200 links and I pushed that up to about 1,000 but I was still at the bottom even for long tails searches where I was the only exact match on the internet.
asking for advice I got responses like you need better links and the such, this did not account for the sudden drop in rankings, as I knew the history I knew that thee was something deeper going on, I asked Google for reconsideration they said there was no manual action taken.
I should also mention I ranked very well in Bing all this time and still do.
By now I was getting paranoid that someone was stuffing me up somehow as a last resort I changed the domain name from thatsit.net.au to thatsit.com.au I did this about 10 days ago.
Today I searched for my company name and I came up #4 not bad from not being in the top 1,000 a few days ago.
Rankings are not where they used to be but I can handle that, I have 301’ed across all my links and have stated to change over the links I control, but as I still don’t know why the other domain would not move from the bottom as search results I am nervous that I may 301 over the problem.
I have never really done anything in the way of Black Hat SEO that would get me banned, maybe a bit of light grey over the years but nothing to worry about.
Anyhow I am non the wiser as to why things happened like they did. But I did want to report back to others that read the posts and thought that maybe I was imaging things.
I was never really depended on the domain ranking, what really bothers me is not knowing why the .net.au domain fell from rankiings and I still don’t know why.1