Any ideas why this site is being penalized?
-
http://www.my-french-house.com/ has been online since around 2004 and has nearly always been in the top 10 serps for terms like 'property for sale in france'. However, over the last 12 months we've been hit really hard by Google and have fallen dramatically in rank. Can anyone give any insight into what may have happened?
As an aside, we've had no message in the Google Webmaster Console and have not contacted Google about the apparent penalty / penalization.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Jim
-
Hi Jim-
There are plenty of good articles about Penguin recovery, but here is the main goal:
Remove unnatural backlinks: Look for non-relevent backlinks, backlinks with manipulative anchor text or unnaturally high anchor text ratio, sitewide links, etc.
This can vary with each site and please don't look at my blurb and just start getting rid of backlinks. There has been a ton of discussion on Moz about Penguin recovery, which you should read up on: http://www.google.com/#q=penguin+recovery+moz.com
Do a lot of research if you are going to tackle it yourself instead of hire it out.
Best of luck!
-
It is looking like we've been hit by Penguin 2.1 (5th Update). There was a significant drop in organic traffic on 6th October 2013. There was another drop around 17th March 2013, which looks to be related to Panda update 25. However, weirdly enough we recovered quite considerably from 7th July until Penguin 2.1. Is that something that others have experienced as well?
In view of this, does anyone have any specific advice?
-
I haven't visited your site or looked at the backlinks, but most likely, you were hit by either Penguin/Panda or both. Save yourself some time and use Panguin Tool to look at your traffic stats compared to Algorithm updates. This is the best tool for a quick insight into potential traffic loss. http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/
See if your traffic drop-off aligns with a particular update(s) and then move forward with fixing it from there. If nothing lines up with the algorithm updates, perhaps your own site has made a mistake during a code update.
-
The link operator only shows a snapshot and is in no way representative of the actual links. Open Site Explorer on here will give a more accurate account of your link profile.
You also want to take a close look at your organic traffic stats and compare with the Google update dates here http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change and see if there is a pattern emerging.
I have dealt with sites that have just generally declined organically over a year or two and usually it comes down to poor on-site SEO (including possibly panda) and the indirect effects of penguin.
-
I'd review this article for more ideas about why your traffic may have dropped [http://3qdigital.com/experience/diagnosing-traffic-drop/].
Also, when you do get into Majestic SEO, you want to look for links with high-volumes of the same, non-brand anchor text. If your anchor text is uniform across a majority of your links, that's not good. If it turns out to be the case, you'll want to contact as many of those websites as you can to see if they'll modify the anchor text.
-
Thanks for that Justin. We do have a webmaster console account and we've had zero messages relating to bad practices etc.
Re the number of links - there should be way more than that as far as I'm aware! How could there only be 7 now?!?
I'll take a look at majesticseo.com. Anything else we can do?
-
Do you have a Google Webmasters account set up? Are there any messages there?
My hunch is that Google killed most of your links. I'm not sure how many links you had previously, but now you only have 7. [See attachment]
You may have done nothing to get penalized. But the sites linking to you may have. I recommend getting a Majestic SEO account [www.majesticseo.com] and diving into your historical link profile.
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
-
Penalized for keyword?
Hi There! We have been building our website (https://systemfarmer.hu) for years, and had a great position for the keyword "office 365" in hungary. Now our site dropped in the middle of nowhere in natural search list. Is it possible that google penalized us? Tried to find out the reason without any luck. Thanks! Laszlo
Technical SEO | | laszlosf0 -
Site Hack In Meta Description
Hey MOZ Community, I am looking for some help in identifying where the following meta description is coming from on this home page - https://www.apins.com. I have scrubbed through the page source without being able to locate where the content is being pulled from. The website is built on WordPress and metas were updated using Yoast, but I am wondering if an installed plugin could be the culprit. On top of this, I have had a developer take a look for the "hack" and they have assured that the issue has been removed. I have submitted the URL in GSC a couple of times to be re-indexed but have not had much luck. Any thoughts would be much appreciated, the displayed description is below. The health screening plays http://buyviagraonlineccm.com/ a significant and key role in detecting potentially life-threatening illnesses such as cancer, heart ...
Technical SEO | | jordankremer0 -
Mobile site content and main site content
Help, pls! I have one main site and a mobile version of that site (m.domain.com). The main site has more pages, more content, different named urls. The main site has consistently done well in Google. The mobile site has not: the mobile site is buried. I am working on adding more content to the mobile site, but am concerned about duplicate content. Could someone pls tell me the best way to deal with these two versions of our site? I can't use rel=canonical because the urls do not correspond to the same names on the main site, or can I? Does this mean I need to change the url names, offer different content (abridged), etc? I really am at a loss as to how to interpret Google's rules for this. Could someone please tell me what I am doing wrong? Any help or tips would GREATLY appreciated!!!!! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | lfrazer0 -
Why does my site rank so badly
its my turn to ask the interminable question why does my site rank so badly? site is: marriagerecords.org.uk. it was #1 for 'marriage records' on google for about 6 months. then it was 5th to 10th for about 2 months. now it is nowhere for this phrase and anything else, none of the pages I have written rank for anything. I have spent hours upon hours researching original content and I have got some great backlinks from sites like wrexham.gov.uk and somerset.gov.uk (some dont show in opensiteexplorer yet). im guessing im over-optimizing something but i'd love some concrete fixes if anyone could suggest any. thanks, tom
Technical SEO | | lethal0r0 -
What can we do to improve our site
Hi. I am hoping that some of you can help me with the in2town site www.in2town.co.uk The site is a news/lifestyle magazine site. The site is a cross between, huffington post, digital spy, female first and the sun newspaper. Basically the site is a news site as well as covering showbiz news, travel news, health news and advice etc What i would like is for people to look at the site and let me know what they feel i should do to improve the site to make it better for our readers and to gain more readership. I would also like to hear from people on how they find moving around the site as well as the speed of the site. At the moment the site is with an american hosting company and i am in the process of talking to UK hosting companies to move the site. The site is currently on a dedicated server. It would mean a lot if people could give me their advice on how to improve the site and make it a beter experience for our readers while at the same time being able to generate income with the site. Just a quick note, all content is original and we have a number of people who write for the site. many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Site not indexing correctly
I am trying to figure out what is going on with my site listings. Google is only displaying my title and url - no description. You can see it when you search for Franchises for Sale. The site is www.franchisesolutions.com. Why could this happen? Also I saw a big drop off in a handful of keyword rankings today. Could this be related?
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions0 -
Mini site links?
Can anyone point me to information about the "mini" site links on the Google search results or tell me how to get them set up? These aren't the full site links that show 3 by 3 under the first listing but small text links that appear for certain results. (See attached image for reference.) Are these something that can controlled/requested? NAj6E.png
Technical SEO | | DVanSchepen0 -
Delete old site but redirect domain to a new domain and site
I just have a quick query and I have a feeling about what the answer is so just wanted to see what you guys thought... Basically I am working on a client site. This client has a few other websites that are divisions of their company. However these divisions/websites are no longer used. They are wanting to delete the websites but redirect the domains to their name main website. They believe this will pass on SEO benefits as these old division sites are old and have a good PR and history. I'm unsure for DEFINITE, which way is correct?
Technical SEO | | Weerdboil0