May last year my sites orgainic listings, and therfore visitors, plumeted. Why?
-
Hello,
May last year my site took a major fall. I am unsure why, and it's time I found out why. Recently I have rebuilt the site from scratch, except for the urls and content, and it's starting to turn back.
What is the best method to go about understanding just what caused the decline? What are the options I have?
See the image for a graph of the all-time traffic. http://i.imgur.com/uL93yPj.png
My website in question is: www.ditalia.com.au
Thanks.
-
Thanks guys, this does seam like a good place to get answers and help in my area of expertise--design and layout.I have had a couple of SEO people work on backlinks and they say they didn't do any black-hat stuff. But, I guess I will find out during this research and fix.
-
Did you get a manual penalty notice in Webmaster Tools?
-
I haven't had any penalty notifications from Google at all. (other than some 404 errors)
-
Have you examined your link profile closely for obvious spammy, dubious, unrelated links?
-
I will check this.
-
Are your inbound links heavy with keyword anchor text?
-
I will check this.
-
Is your textual content unique and give value to your visitor?
-
Yes, every page is unique, however, I have not check for plagiarism--if others have stolen it from us.
-
have you changed your meta content?
-
Only recently when I made the new site--about 4 weeks ago. They weren't change just before May 2012.
-
is the drop relating to certain keywords
-
Pretty much all of them.
MOZ has scanned my site and is displaying data about it now so I will start researching the links, determine their quality, and research how to
Any advice you have would be much appreciated.
-
-
Michael's questions are spot on but based on the timing and a quick glance at your anchor text profile I think it's pretty safe to say you were hit by Penguin. I'd assume there was some shady link building done to your site in the past through a link-blast service or some black-hat SEO.
Your site has a ton of links with the anchor phrasing of "wedding dress" or some variation thereof. I would suggest that you do some research on Penguin penalties and how to clean them up and definitely check Webmaster Tools for penalty notifications.
This is a good community to stay close to throughout this process. There are a ton of helpful people here who can help with questions along the way.
Good luck!
-
It might tie in with either Penguin or Panda updates, although content is Panda and Penguin is links (URLs).
- Did you get a manual penalty notice in Webmaster Tools?
- Have you examined your link profile closely for obvious spammy, dubious, unrelated links?
- Are your inbound links heavy with keyword anchor text?
- Is your textual content unique and give value to your visitor?
- have you changed your meta content?
- is the drop relating to certain keywords
- how have rankings stacked up over the past 2yrs - have they fallen?
You need to examine closely so that all your work doesn't fall flat again.
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
-
Does anyone have a good resource for seeing SERP feature/presentation change Year-Over-Year?
Moz only tracks general SERP feature changes for the last 30 days.
Reporting & Analytics | | homedepot0 -
How Am I Linked to These Sites?
I was going through Google Analytics, specifically looking at the Channels under Acquisition. I found a number of sites that Google is giving credit as sources of traffic.
Reporting & Analytics | | TowerMarketing
When I went to the sites, however, and searched the page source for links to my site, I could not find any. My site is www.towermarketing.net. The sites being listed by GA are:
blackhawkhardware.com
musicas.baixar-musicas-gratis.com If anyone can tell me how Tower is getting traffic from these sites, and what I can do to fix it - because at this point I am considering them spam - I would appreciate it. Thanks!0 -
When analysing my inbound anchor text am I using by page or site?
When checking to see my anchor text profile to make sure it's not too dense with the same phrases, should I be measuring against my whole site or page specific? eg if i have 100 links across my site and 20 are for the same phrase this is 20%, but if the same 20 phrases are to one page and that page has 40 links this is 55% Many thanks Ash
Reporting & Analytics | | AshShep10 -
Why would our client's site be receiving significant levels of organic traffic for a keyword they do not rank for?
We have a client that has received 100+ organic visits for the keyword 'airport transfers', yet the site does not rank in the top 100 search results for this keyword. We have checked that it is not untagged PPC traffic. Truly baffling. Can anybody help?
Reporting & Analytics | | mrdavidingram0 -
How is it possible that this site has a higher page authority than my site?
Judging by open site explorer, I'm crushing my competitor in every imaginable way. And yet, somehow they have a higher page authority than me and, consequently, are ranking higher than me. How is this possible? My site is on the left: 40atcpP.png
Reporting & Analytics | | ScottMcPherson0 -
Analytics tagging parameters effect on site SEO
One of the effective tools used in analytics tagging is the use of analytics parameters that starts with '?' or '#'. Example on site tagging: Main link: www.domainname.com./category/sub-category/ www.domainname.com./category/sub-category/?lid=topnav www.domainname.com./category/sub-category/?lid=sidenav All three links link to the same landing page, with an extra parameter. Using email or campaign tagging: www.domainname.com./category/sub-category/ www.domainname.com./category/sub-category/?utm_source=launch&utm_medium=email&utm_term=html&utm_content=getscoop&utm_campaign=hwdyrwm2012 With that we create many tagged links based on the campaign internal strategy. How do these effect indexing, and link juice? How do thy effect SEO in general?
Reporting & Analytics | | RAPPLA0 -
GA - how returning visitors are counted ?
If a visitor comes to my site from 3 different traffic sources within a session, does GA report shows 1 visit and 2 returning visitors ? Previously ( before Google made changes in session ) it used to show 1 visit and zero returning visitors. right ?
Reporting & Analytics | | seoug_20050 -
Overall site traffic - 3 quick questions
3 things : 1. Does Google factor in overall site traffic in rankings? So for 2 sites, all other things being pretty much equal, the one with higher traffic will be listed higher? 2. Does this logically imply that sites with lower traffic overall face an uphill struggle to be ranked highly??? 3. As an extension to this, would it be true to say that by increasing site traffic, say with Google Adwords or other online or offiline or whatever advertising, that might help get higher SEO rankings??? Thanks so much for your responses. This forum is great!
Reporting & Analytics | | inhouseninja0