Possible penalty question - need expert help
-
hallo everyone,
I am posting this question to the MOZ community, because I could not find any useful information or proper advice so far, even after consulting a few local SEO experts.
I noticed from the end of september a steady and consistent decrease in visits (please see attached pdf) for my website https://bastabollette.it
I lost so far almost 40%.
Please consider that I have not changed my habits in blog posting lately, both in quantity and quality. I have not made any subtantial change on the website lately.
I did a general audit of the site asking to an expert but apart from some generic suggestions (like: "work on increasing PR, add more quality backliks, use more no-follow links, fix broken links" - things I am currently going to fix anyway) I don't really understand the reason of the drop.
Please also note the strange drop of 11/22/15 (see search console screenshot).
Can you please help me?
thank you.
-
Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium. Select Bing/Organic
-
Thank you Marie for your honest and complete answer.
One question: how can I check bing traffic in google analytics? I looked for it on google but (how funny) could not find the answer.
-
It's not uncommon to see weird blips like that in Google Search Analytics. I wouldn't get too worried about that unless the rankings stayed down and were legitimately down.
Do you see any manual action in Google Search Console --> Search Traffic --> Manual Actions? If not, then it's not a penalty.
This sounds like a question that would need quite a bit of investigation to answer, but here is where I would start:
In Google Analytics - Audience - Acquisition - All traffic and then click on Google/Organic as well as the other options. Is the drop across the board? Or just in Google traffic? If it's Google traffic only and other sources like bing traffic or direct visits are stable, then I'd be worried that you're being considered low quality by an algorithm change in Google. It could be Panda or the Quality (Phantom) update, but it would be hard to say without digging in deeply.
If the changes are across the board, then I'd be looking at things like a seasonal change. (It's not uncommon for sites to see a gradual decline going into the winter.) Or, perhaps a site issue such as a technical problem or a hosting problem or malware, etc.
It could also be that a competitor is outranking you. A drop from #1-#2 on some keywords can have a drastic effect.
From what you've written, it seems like a penalty is unlikely. But, unfortunately I don't have the answer for you.
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
-
Can Anyone help me with Google search console soft 404 error?
Hello everyone, I just build one site on WordPress and submitted it to the Google search console along with the sitemap. Some URLs got indexed but one of my URL is showing error in Search console. My post https://hotpass.site/create-subdomain-godaddy/ is showing soft error 404 webpage not available in Google search console. I have rechecked the site and seo settings. Nothing is there. I have even checked it with LIVE URL test. But still Search console is not accepting this URL. Can anyone help me with this? Help will be appriciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | Pauline210 -
Need help Taking my Site to the Next Level
Any, and I mean ANY suggestions would be Great and Welcome, Good and Bad. Have a Good site, with what I believe good content, and just stuck at the same level for over 6 months. Please and Thank you for taking a few minute of time out of your day on this. Joe https://www.surecretedesign.com/
Reporting & Analytics | | surecreteproucts0 -
Analiytics question
Hello guys, We are currently getting in our website around 600 daily visitors.
Reporting & Analytics | | WayneRooney
We getting around the 50 quotes a day.
Can i know trough Analytics from where all the visitors that click the quote button coming from ? Thank you0 -
Multiple-Domain tracking for sister sites- NO retail checkout- Please help
Hello, I have about 5 sites I want to set up multiple-domain tracking in google analytics. All posts I read seem to be focused on cross-domain tracking for the purpose of tracking a visitor from one domain across another domain for shopping cart check outs. I don't need that. I have about 3 sister sites (mastersite.com, sistersite1.com, sistersite2.com, sistersite3.com) related to my primary site. I want 1 Master Analytics Profile to track traffic for all of these sites combined. My visitors will not jump from mastersite.com over to sistersite1.com. There will be no cross-domain visits. How can I set up 1 master google analytics profile that will aggregate traffic data from all sites and present the data to me in one analytics profile. Please help
Reporting & Analytics | | AndreGant0 -
Changed URL's, traffic dropped from 2k week to 1K week. Need advice!
Hi Mozers, I recently changed my URLs for my ecommerce site and my traffic went from 2,000 visitors a week to 1,000 visitors a week, over a 3 week period. Traffic is down, so are unique Kwds. I need advice on why this happened and what I should do moving forward. To brief, I have a ecommerce website, www.ecustomfinishes.com. I noticed pattern that a lot of my URLs with a unique URL structure (URL.Com/ProductDescription/ProductName) were getting a lot of entrances ~30-50 a month, and others that followed the path of my subcategory (URL.com/SubCat/Product) were getting 0-3 entrances a month. The seo pattern was that those with unique product URLs were hitting long tail Kwds, and those URLs with /subcategory/product were getting far less traffic. I changed 150 or so urls to be unique. Good idea, I thought. Since then: CON: Since then my traffic dropped from 2200 visitors a week to 1100 visitors a week. -25% week to week, over 3 weeks CON: # of non-paid keywords sending visits: -25% week to week, over 3 weeks PRO: my Urls receiving entrances +10% week to week, over 3 weeks REF: http://imgur.com/GwZT8 Question: What are your best suggestions moving forward? Any advice is much appreciated, Thank you!!! abBN3
Reporting & Analytics | | longdenc_gmail.com0 -
'Search Queries Report' in Webmaster Tools Question
Hi, How much do you use the search queries report in webmaster tools to research current rankings/movements? It does look like a great tool but the data doesn't seem to be spot on. For example a keyword over a week might have flux in position so lets say 6.0 then 9.2 for 3 days then back to 6.0. But I check the serp's for this keyword everyday and didn't see any movement?!?! Is this a good tool for you?
Reporting & Analytics | | activitysuper0 -
Need Tips to Track Advertising of Domain on my Car
Hi, I'm working on building a new site. http://www.pilatesboisfranc.com/ I also bought the domain .ca (the business will be in canada) .net .org and .info All the domains are redirect to the .com This site is about my wife new business, a Pilates Studio. We would like to advertise the site on our personal car, using vinyl letters to display the domain name. Is there a way tu use the (.ca) http://www.pilatesboisfranc.ca advertise on my car and track that advertising using Analytics? I know I can use a URL something like http://www.pilatesboisfranc.com/health and track the hit, but using a shorter URL is the key. Can you help? Thank you, BigBlaze
Reporting & Analytics | | BigBlaze2050 -
Question for SEO experts!
I am checking my competition with all the metrics available and I have no clue why we are not coming up higher in ranking on Google. It's been 3 months and we've been bouncing between 9 and 7 position. One competitor just came out of nowhere with almost 600 internal links and few external links and occupied 3rd spot. I've built pretty good portfolio of links with links even coming from Google for crying out loud. My on page optimization is very good, we've even passed W3C with no errors. At least 3 of our competitors above us have less Domain Authority, Page Authority, Back links for external domains, number of external domains, etc... Not sure what is going on. We are not really trying to be the top dog in Google all the time, but it is the principle of a thing. Keyword is Laser Marking. Our domain starts with cms. Don't want to type the whole URL because Google might crawl (maybe a bit of paranoid at this point LOL) Any suggestions?
Reporting & Analytics | | DmitryP0