Organic search traffic down 60% since 8/1/18\. What now?

[RoniFaida]

I have a small health & fitness blog, and my Google search traffic suddenly dropped 60% around August 1 (I've attempted to link an image). My rank has dropped for 86 keywords. I have no manual penalty, so I'm guessing I was affected by the algorithm change.

My technical skills are VERY limited. I've tried to find answers on my own, but every time I try to "fix" something, I only seem to make it worse. I do seem to have some structural/performance issues with my site (e.g., lots of 404 errors from uninstalled plugins and unwanted permalinks). I asked my server for assistance (I used managed Wordpress hosting), and they said they couldn't help.

As you can imagine, this is quite devastating, and I have no clue where to go from here. I don't know if I'm allowed to link to my site here, but it's mommyrunsit dot com. Any assistance is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Sharon

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[Jane7865]

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[sarahwalsh]

If your organic traffic substantially decreases, this could be because of an algorithm update or because the business is possibly incurring a manual or an algorithm penalty?

[Tomosal]

Yes, same happened to my websites https://www.healthpaper.org and https://www.scienceworld.in. these site are in Hindi language. I need to know how to recover and grow web traffic.

[Dr-Pete]

Unfortunately, I think the "not a penalty" line is sometimes a bit of a cop-out on Google's part -- anything that moves a bunch of sites up, is naturally going to move a bunch of other sites down. Even if those sites have technically done nothing wrong, it sure feels like to them like they're being penalized. I also don't like that Google claims they're rewarding good behavior, but then won't really tell us what that good behavior is. If it's genuinely good behavior, give us some guidelines (we're not asking for chunks of code from the algorithm).

I'm comparing a case right now where there are two sites in the same industry, both seem decent, but one got a huge boost on 8/1 and one took a big hit. Hoping to glean some insights, but there's just a ton of speculation at the moment.

[RoniFaida]

Dr. Meyers,

Thank you so much for your response. It is tremendously helpful, and I appreciate the actionable items that I can address right away. I am trying not to freak out, but honestly a 60% drop in organic traffic is devastating to a small site like mine,

You may find this helpful as you collect data: I've been studying my ranking for various search terms.. One post in particular has been on page 1 of Google for 3.5 years, and it dropped down to around #10+ overnight. Some of the posts that have replaced mine in the top spots were written by bloggers who I know, all of whom are comparable to me in style and reach, and none of whom are either more or less authoritative than me. Their posts have been there all along but just ranked lower than mine.

I've heard the theory that Google is not necessarily penalizing content, but rather they are giving a boost to deserving content that has previously been unrecognized. This makes sense, but it also kind of stinks.

Thanks again for your help. I'll keep my eye out for new info about the algo update.

Sharon

[Dr-Pete]

I've studied the August 1st update as much or more than most, and let me first be brutally honest and say that we're still at a pretty early stage of speculation. Until we have clear recovery cases, we're all just trying to tell a story from the anecdotal data. There are a lot of plausible theories, but we can't give you clear answers other than to confirm that the update was large and the health and fitness vertical definitely seemed to be disproportionately impacted.

The E-A-T theory is plausible, from what I've seen, but it leaves a lot left to be explained. We don't know what signals Google uses for Expertise/Authority/Trust -- are they on-page signals, link-based signals, citation-based signals... ? Probably a combination, and some of those are a lot easier to control than others.

Looking briefly at your site, here's what I might try if I were you. Again, this is educated guesswork at best:

(1) Your author name links go to pages that show all articles by that author. I know this is a common practice, but I would consider linking those to a full bio page for each author, with credentials. The on-page E-A-T signals probably aren't the whole picture Google uses, but they're the easiest to control. Currently, these pages also lead to more, similar pages (page 2, 3, etc.), which could look thin, but your rel=prev/next tags seem to be properly formatted. I'm more concerned that Google isn't seeing any information about the authors on those immediately linked author pages (other than a very short blurb).

(2) I know this can be a dicey issue online (especially if you're trying to protect anonymity to some degree), but I'd strongly recommend using your full name, properly capitalized. The use of just "sharon," "victor," etc. could make it harder for Google to connect you to third-party mentions and citations, unless those sites link directly to your bio pages. I strongly suspect Gogole is using some link/citation signals to establish E-A-T. it's a bit like having a consistent business name and address in local search -- you need to make it easy for Google to connect your name to mentions of you.

You do have some odd links to your site that almost look like they're tied to a link network, but I'm having trouble finding some of them manually (they're coming up in Link Explorer reports). If you've got any link profile problems, I'd consider cleaning those up ASAP. If Google is pushing hard and require more proof of expertise in your link profile, that's going to be a lot harder battle. There's no easy fix for that, other than continuing to try to build credibility. Again, I think the full-name issue might help here, but it's only one small piece of the puzzle.

Sorry you've been affected by this -- we're seeing a lot of small health/fitness blogs getting hit, and many seem to be decent quality, independent blogs by well-meaning people.

[RoniFaida]

Thanks, GR. I'm trying not to despair, but ugh. I'll read those posts - thanks so much.

Sharon

[GastonRiera]

Hi Roni,
sorry to hear that you were hit by this god damn update.

Im writing to send you good wishes and hope. Also to sum up and add two other studies about the algorithm. Read them full and try to understand what's the issue in your site:

Analysis and Findings From The August 1, 2018 Google Algorithm Update – A Massive Core Ranking Update - GSQi
Google's August 1st Core Update: Week 1 - Moz Blog
Google’s August algorithm update strengthens as roll-out continues - Sistrix
The August 1, 2018 Google Update strongly affected YMYL sites - Marie Haynes

Best luck!
GR

[RoniFaida]

Thank you so much. I'll read those articles and see if I can figure anything out.

I would appreciate any suggestions. My site is https://www.mommyrunsit.com/

Sharon

[MiriamEllis]

Hello, Sharon,

I'm so sorry to hear your blog was strongly affected by the August 1st update. From what I've read, health/fitness is one of the categories which has been most obviously impacted.

We are still in the early days of speculating about which signals Google is focusing on.

Here is Dr. Pete's post detailing what Moz has seen happen with this update:

https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/googles-august-1st-core-update-week-1

Marie Haynes also wrote a blog post offering a theory that Google's focus may be E-A-T signals (expertise, authoritativeness, and trust), which I recommend that you read if you haven't already, bearing in mind, of course, that this is only a theory: https://www.mariehaynes.com/the-august-1-2018-google-update-strongly-affected-ymyl-sites/ She offers some suggestions for things you might analyze and attempt for your website.

I hope these at least offer some information, and if you wish to share your domain name here, perhaps our community can make some specific suggestions even though no one but some folks at Google can be totally sure what was targeted and how a site can attempt to recover.