Website Suddenly dropping rank
-
Morning Moz Fans:
My URL is: http://goo.gl/Dhbjwj
According to MOZ, which we are tracking this URL with, somewhere between the 3rd Feb and 10th the domain went from being fairly well indexed to being dropped to pages further back than 6-7, for pretty much everything, even the company name was only registering at the bottom of page one.
Around this time we were transferring the website from .php into wordpress, so we were creating new pages, called by the same names and all the same content but we created the wordpress area in a sub domain of the website. Again around this time we had an issue with the blog area and had to take it down for 4-5 weeks due to some errors which meant google wouldn't have been able to crawl these pages properly, but the rest of the website was up and running.
We also discovered recently that the company have and use this domain http://goo.gl/5JvDUH
So my question is, what do you think caused the problem? has it been premaritally penalised? is there a way I can get google to specifically look at it and is there any more i can do?Thank you for your help
-
Ok thanks Dan
-
Hi Adrian
It's always tricky! It's a longterm solution. Things will need to get sorted out by Google and the dust needs to settle.
You can really ensure this happens faster by taking all appropriate measures - like redirects, notifying webmaster tools, updating internal/external links where possible (social, local listing, etc).
The fact that rankings were lost, means you have less to lose right now - so it might be a good time to take a step back and "do it right"
-
Great, thanks for that. Just one question, my client says that if we feel it's better he's happy to use the old domain as the main and switch the site, which makes more sense as it's the name of the company, in light of the fact we seem to have lost most keyword ranking, will this have any improvements or disadvantages?
thanks
-
Hi Adrian
I think there's a mixture of things going on here. I'll just spell out the top ones I see after a quick look:
-
On the old domain, URLs returning a 404 code need to also LOOK like 404 pages, right now they just look like the homepage: http://www.perfectprofiles.eu.com/kjhgjkhg
-
On the current domain the alt text on the logo is "dental implants luton - logo" - just make that the company name "perfect profiles".
-
In fact there's only one plain text of "perfect profiles" on the entire homepage, which is in the footer.
-
And the current domain is not the company name (?) which is why it might not be ranking as well for "perfect profiles" which is kind of a vague name to begin with.
-
Also, why not just redirect the old domain homepage to the new? I think that would be considered the best user experience since there's not really any useful content on the old domain - Google's cache shows no content really since the page is an image
-
The old homepage has a few good links as well
-
There's also three Google Plus pages and only one has a verified link to the website - it looks like there are two physical locations and one corporate? You can have three pages, but just really beef them up with as much info as possible.
-
Make sure the corporate G+ page is in fact verified and then Customize your knowledge graph listing
-
Consider having separate pages for each location only if you fill them with helpful unique info on each, like office pictures, staff names/pictures, hours, directions, etc.
I think it's a mix of a) Google not being 100% on the brand/company name - and then b) doing more local optimization for each location.
-
-
Hi Dirk, thanks for this. No we hadn't noticed a difference. Its important to point out that the page rank dropped before the new framework went live though. Although we have been looking at this and have made some improvements this afternoon. Google speed test now says 74 for the desktop so we will work some more on it tomorrow.
Thanks
-
Hi,
Did you see an increase in the load time of your pages in Analytics (pre/post launch). For a site which is not very complex in terms of structure, your load times are not really great. See http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150330_ZF_X41/1/details/ & http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150330_A8_WR6/1/details/
Page speed analysis by Google gives pretty low scores as well - for mobile 47/100 - desktop 63/100
In pagespeed - you can see the content breakdown - on your homepage 66% of the downloaded content is css/js - most of it is not used on page: https://unused-css.com/detect-unused-css?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.perfectdental.eu.com%2F (a disadvantage of most frameworks like bootstrap / foundation)
I would try to work on improving the speed -a similar case with low page speed scores noticed immediate improvement after reducing load times: http://moz.com/community/q/problem-with-getting-a-site-to-rank-at-all
rgds,
Dirk
-
I tend to think something bad must be happening here since it's been almost two months. If it's just re-indexing, it should have been over long ago.
-
No true, but if thats the case does it say "penalty" or just re-indexing
-
I'm actually not totally shocked by that. Google's results are getting more personalized by the day. It looks like Perfect Profiles' two office locations are both quite far from Manchester. It makes sense to me that they rank lower in locations that are further away.
-
Sorry a quick update. If you search in google.co.uk and search with your location being in certain areas of the UK they come up top for the brand name, but if you search for the brand name in say "Manchester" they show at the bottom of the page.
Weird
-
Hi Mark, thanks for that. As it happens the brand name seems to be appearing again today and google webmaster tools also suggests this in WMT with in the ranking section. We've been checking the manual action section for a few weeks now but it just says "No manual webspam actions found"
Thanks
-
In addition to what Becki said (all correct), I feel like it's important to note 2 other things:
-
Even websites that are appropriately redirected, lose some link equity in the process. See Matt Cutts' video here which says that roughly 10-15% of PageRank is lost through redirects and outgoing links.
-
With regard to the blog problems, I'm wondering if perhaps the blog being down for 4-5 weeks had something to do with it. If there were historically some links pointing to the blog that were boosting the site, those pages 404ing would effectively remove the links from the link graph.
Still, it seems there's some sort of penalty here because you mentioned them not even ranking for the brand name anymore. I've never seen that unless there was a penalty. Have you checked Google Webmaster Tools' manual action viewer?
-
-
Hello, there! yeah everything has 301 redirects, no duplicate content is live now. They used to come top for "dental implants luton" http://goo.gl/fO74zy
Thanks
-
Hi there, thanks for posting this.
Some questions, before I can help you properly:
Have you redirected all of the old URLs across to any new ones using the 301 directive?
That duplicate content in the subdomain, is it still live somewhere or have you removed this now?
Do you know which landing pages in particular have seen the biggest loss of traffic?
Usually, a site that drops rankings when it moves to another platform is having duplicate content or redirection issues in my experience.
I really would like to help, so please let me know the answers to the above when I can.
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
-
Installing SSL to website and site ranking
I am installing SSL to my website. Will it hurt my ranking in Google as the url will change and backlinks of the website are without ssl url.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Esnipper0 -
What is the average time table to boosting SEO rankings through a complete website frontend+backend refresh?
I am hoping someone who encountered a similar situation can help out. Here are the general details. Our company website is being rebuilt from the ground up - new copy, new information architecture, new theme, ideal URLs, data-driven research on search queries and keywords with an inbound marketing emphasis, CDN, the whole nine yards - as for several years under old management there was little emphasis on beating competition in the search results, or really on any of the fundamentals that matter. The only thing that cannot be reset, and will need to be tackled over time, is a link profile audit and weeding out the bad backlinks accrued over a decade. We are in a very small niche, and even with impeded website design, copy, content and misaligned architecture, we are still somewhat competitive vis-a-vis our competitors, just not top-3 triangle competitive for the terms that really matter. In addition, nearly all of our competitors do not (or at least do not appear to) optimize for SEO and UX, they just happened to choose to include terms in the copy that prospects would use when searching, rather than worrying about the semantics of branding (as in our old management's iron clad preference). Can someone here give an indication of when we would see rankings begin to improve in the search engine results pages upon completion and deployment of the new website? I understand I could be looking at up to a 6-month window, but I am looking for a definitive answer to tell my bosses, who may be expecting an immediate boost in the rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NikeFire0 -
New pages not ranking
I published some new landing pages about a month a go which are much better quality than previous pages and on an optimised URL. The old pages never ranked and the new pages aren't ranking either although they are much better. The old pages 301 redirect to the new pages. Any quick ways I can at least get them ranking? Not expecting Page 1 overnight but to at least see the new pages on Page 5 would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
Whats up with this website?
cybercig.co.uk Languishing around 150-200 in the rankings, very barely making it above 70. But also ranks for Refillable Electronic Cigarette on the first page. Any ideas whats happening? Not a huge amount of links but I'd have thought it would've been much higher. I'd love to know opinions 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasondexter0 -
Why the sudden link drop?
A the end of November I am showing that our total links were 118k. Current links are 22k. We changed sites early November so that was about three weeks before. What would cause the drop of about 100k links? Or where should I start investigating?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Launching 20 new URLs to branch out from a multi brand website. How do I make sure the rankings stay?
I have a client with a multiple brand website currently. The site has landing pages and directories for each of its 20 brands under one URL. The plan is to build 20 separate brand websites with new domains and have the old content redirect to its corresponding new URL. The problem that I envision is being able to successfully carry all of the existing indexed content over while only using 301 redirects and submitting the new domains to Webmaster tools. Has anyone done this in the past successfully and do you have any recommendations?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Empower_MediaMarketing0 -
What would cause a sudden rise and drop in keyword ranking?
I made one change to my site - creating a good, relevant, title. A few days later, ranking for a keyword jumped pretty well - which is what I was expecting. We were ranked 9th. Then the next ranking report showed a 20 place decline. What would cause this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ocularis0 -
Duplicate Content http://www.website.com and http://website.com
I'm getting duplicate content warnings for my site because the same pages are getting crawled twice? Once with http://www.website.com and once with http://website.com. I'm assuming this is a .htaccess problem so I'll post what mine looks like. I think installing WordPress in the root domain changed some of the settings I had before. My main site is primarily in HTML with a blog at http://www.website.com/blog/post-name BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thirdseo
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress0