Lost ranking and can't figure out why
-
My page http://www.drschulmanplasticsurgery.com/body/buttock-lift-augmentation-new-york-city/ recently moved from first page to past the 15th. I was never penalized on the last update and have very few links pointing to this page. I can't figure out why i just moved so far back. Can anyone offer some advice?
-
From my experience with this latest update (not even 24 hours old, mind you) it seems to be more of the latter than the former. I'm seeing sites that had a mix of good/poison links sit around the same placement while sites with nothing but spam links dropped off the face of the earth.
Again though, this is early and one teeny tiny little example out of the billions of pages out there.
-
Tom,
Most of the links are from his internal blog. They are adding in the catagory pages and tag pages which i have set to not index in my seo plugin. There are only a few external links from sites that are general health blogs that have good page authority. The anchor text for those has been different every time. Is there a different tool you are using to see backlinks. I am using open explorer her on seomoz.org.
-
Tom, would you state that Google takes the spammy links into account and devalues website rankings which have good links with them as well, or is it simply Google removing those spammy link domains as any relevant source of link importance and thus making the websites loose rankings just for the simple fact these domains hold no real value with Google now? Thanks!
-
Hey there
As you'll probably be aware, we have just had the latest Penguin algorithm update, aimed at devaluing low quality and manipulative links.
Of the links pointing to your page, I'd say that probably all of them look manipulative and look to have been built for a search engine.
The sites in question look like link farms - a blog network that links out to a number of unrelated health niche websites (and some random ones). There's very little value on show for a user, each article looks placed to provide an optimised anchor text backlink to a number of websites.
In addition, each domain looks like it has once expired and been bought up someone and turned into a blog network, probably on the premise that the domains were old and carried PR, DA and PA, so would pass decent link equity. The anchor text pointing to your website all look targeted as well.
Basically, nearly every link to that page looks artificial, placed for a search engine and intended to pass PageRank, without offering anything for a user. It's exactly the sort of link that this Penguin update would try and target, so it's no great surprise to me that you have lost your rankings.
My advice would be try and get the links removed ASAP. Last resort would be to use the disavow tool. You may need to wait until the next algorithm refresh to see the effect of removing/disavowing the links take place - the last time Penguin refreshed was 6 months ago prior to yesterday, so we can only hope the new version will refresh monthly.
In the mean time, I would concentrate on earning links by offering quality content, resources or guides to your users. Contact webmasters and bloggers in your field that could benefit from your expertise, or alternatively promote the content on your own blog and use marketing, PR and social media to attract attention to it.
Hope this helps.
-
Simple answer (which you wont like) is that nobody has a good idea why it happens. I had a site where no links were created drop significantly in rankings. Why? Have no real idea. Content is good, your social media signals are good, wait a few days and check it out then.
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
-
Why can't google mobile friendly test access my website?
getting the following error when trying to use google mobile friendly tool: "page cannot be reached. This could be because the page is unavailable or blocked by robots.txt" I don't have anything blocked by robots.txt or robots tag. i also manage to render my pages on google search console's fetch and render....so what can be the reason that the tool can't access my website? Also...the mobile usability report on the search console works but reports very little, and the google speed test also doesnt work... Any ideas to what is the reason and how to fix this? LEARN MOREDetailsUser agentGooglebot smartphone
Technical SEO | | Nadav_W0 -
Test site got indexed in Google - What's the best way of getting the pages removed from the SERP's?
Hi Mozzers, I'd like your feedback on the following: the test/development domain where our sitebuilder works on got indexed, despite all warnings and advice. The content on these pages is in active use by our new site. Thus to prevent duplicate content penalties we have put a noindex in our robots.txt. However off course the pages are currently visible in the SERP's. What's the best way of dealing with this? I did not find related questions although I think this is a mistake that is often made. Perhaps the answer will also be relevant for others beside me. Thank you in advance, greetings, Folko
Technical SEO | | Yarden_Uitvaartorganisatie0 -
Walking into a site I didn't build, easy way to fix this # indexing problem?
I recently joined a team with a site without a) Great content b) Not much of any search traffic I looked and all their url's are built in this way: Normal looking link -> not actually a new page but # like: /#content-title And it has no h1 tag. Page doesn't refresh. My initial thought is to gut the site and build it in wordpress, but first have to ask, is there a way to make a site with /#/ content loading friendly to search engines?
Technical SEO | | andrewhyde0 -
Can changing a host provider impact search rankings?
I was wondering if changing my host provider would impact my search rankings on the major search engines?
Technical SEO | | bronxpad0 -
What if my host doesn't have the 301 redirect feature?
Ok, So i need to do a 301 redirect but my host doesn't have the feature with htaccess. I currently use yahoo. What are my options?
Technical SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Adding 'NoIndex Meta' to Prestashop Module & Search pages.
Hi Looking for a fix for the PrestaShop platform Look for the definitive answer on how to best stop the indexing of PrestaShop modules such as "send to a friend", "Best Sellers" and site search pages. We want to be able to add a meta noindex ()to pages ending in: /search?tag=ball&p=15 or /modules/sendtoafriend/sendtoafriend-form.php We already have in the robot text: Disallow: /search.php
Technical SEO | | reallyitsme
Disallow: /modules/ (Google seems to ignore these) But as a further tool we would like to incude the noindex to all these pages too to stop duplicated pages. I assume this needs to be in either the head.tpl or the .php file of each PrestaShop module.? Or is there a general site wide code fix to put in the metadata to apply' Noindex Meta' to certain files. Current meta code here: Please reply with where to add code and what the code should be. Thanks in advance.0 -
Different version of site for "users" who don't accept cookies considered cloaking?
Hi I've got a client with lots of content that is hidden behind a registration form - if you don't fill it out you can not proceed to the content. As a result it is not being indexed. No surprises there. They are only doing this because they feel it is the best way of capturing email addresses, rather than the fact that they need to "protect" the content. Currently users arriving on the site will be redirected to the form if they have not had a "this user is registered" cookie set previously. If the cookie is set then they aren't redirected and get to see the content. I am considering changing this logic to only redirecting users to the form if they accept cookies but haven't got the "this user is registered cookie". The idea being that search engines would then not be redirected and would index the full site, not the dead end form. From the clients perspective this would mean only very free non-registered visitors would "avoid" the form, yet search engines are arguably not being treated as a special case. So my question is: would this be considered cloaking/put the site at risk in any way? (They would prefer to not go down the First Click Free route as this will lower their email sign-ups.) Thank you!
Technical SEO | | TimBarlow0 -
Can local SEO harm national rankings?
Today I met with a firm called Localeze that provides local directory submissions. I understand the importance of this service if your site is competing locally, however I'm not sure the effects of local SEO for a national brand. Our firm gets most of our traffic from across the country, not just one location, and our business is scattered (which is a good thing). We rank for service related keywords that are not tied to a location. We do not show up for local results so our business in our immediate location is weak. We would like to increase our local presence in search engines but I want to make sure that this will not take away from our national presence. Will optimizing a site for local search negatively affect general rankings? Thanks
Technical SEO | | KevinBloom1