After optimising for SEO my ranking went down...
-
Hello,
My website was ranking for over 100 keywords but was not really optimised properly.
For example, the page title was much too long, it was segmented like this:
"keyword - Category - domain "
I followed recommandations in SEOMOZ and I removed the domain and category from the long page titles to only leave the keyword and updated the H1 to reflect also the keyword.
We dropped in ranking since even though we did not change anything, only made things more SEO optimised.
I don't understand how it made us drop in ranking??
David
-
Thank you Mike,
Very appreaciated
-
Hi David.
Okay, unfortunately this is around the time of some major Google tweaks, making it possibly harder to figure our what went wrong, as we need to try to rule out Penguin/Panda issues (feel free to take a screengrab or csv download from GA with a chart, so I can cross-check against Google's updates, and see if any of the big drop-off dates tally with major algo changes for you, as this could help rule Pegnuin in/out).
I have had a quick look at your site, and done a couple of quick Google queries, and found the following (I am NOT saying this is the cause, but this is something that should definitely be looked into).
-
LOTS (circa 1,900) of pages indexed in Google, with pretty much duplicates of your homepage title tag (I will private message you a link, rather than publishing here)
-
Possible canonicalisation issues (need to check).
David, I have triggered a crawl test of your domain, and will cast me eye over the findings when it is finished, and let you know if I see anything that may be useful.
I am leaving the office soon (especially as it is sunny! VERY rare for Bristol!), but I will check to see if the results of the crawl test are ready tomorrow, and fire you a reply once I know.
Cheers David,
Mike.
-
-
Mike,
Thank you for your comment.
The changes were made during March 2012, since then I have been checking the SEOMOZ ranking tool and have been pulling my hair out of my head.
From April to June we lost about 40% of traffic.
Each month we had much more declined keywords than improved ones.
The drop off started immediately after the updates were made.
Here are the monthly visits for non branded keywords:
Feb: 542
March: 510
April: 436
May:426
June: 288
Cheers
-
Hmmmm, and, was this change made in isolation, or were other on-page changes also made?
When you say the rankings have been going down for around 4 months, do you know what sort of date the decline started? - I ask as it may be wise to broaded the net a little in looking at the cause of this.
I am not saying the title tag changes didn't cause it, just that it would be wise to not restrict ones research... for example, did the decline start around the time of any major Google updates? (Panda/Penguin refreshes, etc).
Also, do you know how long the gap was between changing the title tags, and the drop-off becoming apparent?
So really, 3 questions:
-
Do you remember the date you made the changes
-
Do you remember how long until the drop-off was seen
-
What date did your traffic start to go down (checking Google Analytics data could show you this, switching to a 6 month view).
Sorry to answer with more questions, but I wouldn't want to put forward an opinion of what could have caused this without all the facts!
Thanks,
Mike.
-
-
Here is an example:
The title:
|
"Data centre & server room energy audits - Energy efficient design of data centres & computer rooms"
was renaimed "Data centre & server room energy audits - Energy saving computer rooms"
|
and
|
|
"Data centre Consultancy and independent advice - Data centre solutions : [Our Company Name]" was renaimed
| "Building a data centre - independent advice" |
etc. to a total of 76 page titles.
Then the pages started dropping in Google.
|
|
-
Good question.
I did not change the URL structure, I do plan on doing it as the URLs are not SEO friendly.
I will send an example.
-
Just to check the obvious, you didn't change any URL structure (of the pages) did you?
How much optimisation did you carry out on the pages, please show an example, as it is possible to 'over optimise', especially these days.
Thanks,
Mike.
-
It has been decreasing for the past 4 months consistently. I will put together some sample and post them. Thanks
-
For how long you are experiencing this drop? I mean the time frame. Some times the rankings tends to drop if there are some minor or major meta details or site update, its natural. If the meta details that you have updated perfectly suits your site/ business and the link profile of your site is good then it will not take much time to re gain the old rankings. It will be better if you provide a sample of your past and present title meta details.
Thanks,
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
-
Rank brain and User stats
We have a company that has very good link metrics (much better than competitors), great content, conversions and generates 3x the amount of turnover the other companies do. The issue is we are being challenged on our number one keywords by this competitor selling lower value items to get to 70% of the same amount of customers as us and I feel we can put this down to Rank brain and us having a strong sales force and due to this very few make it back to the websites (30% are new and 70% are repeat and for repeat we have a strong sales force unlike that competitor which catch the reorder before the make it back to the site again) so we lose the ctr, brand etc from the repeat not returning (the competitor only sells though the website so all return) In effect they have 500 customers and we have 200 so Ctr, brand, back to serp would be stronger could this effect the rankings? If you look at it like this Two companies with 500 customers (200 new and 300 repeat) 500 customers to the first all have to order online so 500 customers going back to serps, CTR up due to them searching to get the site up etc 500 customers for the second but 300 (the repeat) go though the sales lines and find the number on the email or agents call them when predicted to order again so never have to go back to the site = 40% less CTR and staying on the site customers
Algorithm Updates | | BobAnderson0 -
Lost Wikipedia page and dropped heavily in rankings. How many of you aware of and experienced this?
Hi all, We lost of our Wikipedia page for 2nd time and we dropped in rankings 2nd time too. I got confused first time whether Wikipedia was the actual reason as we had couple of major changes in our website. But recently it's been clear that losing Wikipedia page is the culprit as we have no website changes around these days. How many of you aware of this and experienced this? Please share your views. Hope this info will help you. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Drop in Organic Traffic for Homepage and Branded terms but Steady in Rankings and According to WMT.
I am stumped. I have been researching for over two days now. Our homepage organic traffic YoY is down approx. 25%. However, rank has not changed according to Conductor, Bing and Google WMT. Impressions have gone up according to both search engines and we rank now for more keywords in top 3 than we did last year. Both WMTs' present a pretty healthy picture. No insignificant indexing issues, Error URLs & blocked resources are down, daily page crawls are higher than ever, etc. I drilled into Google Analytics from a few different view points. The closest I got to an answer was I saw huge out-liars YoY in browsers and browser versions. We saw significant differences in organic traffic YoY from IE 11, 9 ,10, 8 and 7. Android Browser 31, 32 and Safari 6 and 7. I tested our homepage and search results in all of these, and found no issues. Yet, GA reports 50K+ differences YoY. My only thought is it is perhaps a GA attribution error? And/or browsers defaulting organic traffic to direct or other? Yet, our direct traffic is up but does not correlate with as much as we are down. Any tips on where to look next would be extremely helpful!
Algorithm Updates | | lunavista-comm0 -
Ranking factors
I found this page: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors Is there any new page with more up to date data ? Thank you i.
Algorithm Updates | | iivgi0 -
SEO Budgets, the million dollar question???
Hi All, I am currently looking to revamp my SEO strategy inline with Google's latest Panda and Penguin updates, and looking to appoint a new agency. With SEO changing so much over the years and so many players in the marketplace quoting all sorts, I simply need to determine the kind of money I need to be spending on my SEO, 2) what i should be getting for the money, or different budget levels what I need to be focusing on in priority order, a top ten in sorts Should i be looking to increase or decrease my spend over the long term. I am only a small business with a turnover of about 50 - 80k and need to really cement my strategy so it work long term but also shows a steady return. I have one guy quoting $99 a month, one £250 and one £750, you can probably see my problem. Thanks in advance.
Algorithm Updates | | etsgroup0 -
Google Places/Points of Interest Rankings?
Does anyone have an idea on how Google ranks or determines the 'Points of Interests' that come up when searching about places/cities?
Algorithm Updates | | CarlLarson0 -
Ranking factors for national and local
What SEO impact factors am I missing if I am ranked 1st on Google for a keyword, but not ranked local search? The keyword being setup like {"company industry" "location" }. Its ranked 4th when searched on google and the location is specific to the location in the keyword. I've tried to varify that all of my citations are correct and identical. When I compare my sites Domain Authority and links to its competitors, I should be dominating that search. If you guys have any incite it would be greatly appreciated. MADD DOGG
Algorithm Updates | | MaddDogg0 -
Another Domain ranking instead of my Domain
Hi My Domain name is Replicahause.net, 2 weeks ago my server had an outage for 3 days and my rankings dissappeared in google entirely, however i also noticed that when i typed in my domain name "replicahause" or "replicahause.net" , i would see abhishekyadav.com appearing on #1 in google which does a 301 into Replicahause.net I was able to convince the owner of Abhishekyadav to remove the 301 but my site Replicahause.net's Rankings still does not appear to have come back to google, is there something i'm missing here ? We were ranked #1 to #10 for at least 40 keywords, they've just seemed to dissappeard after the server downtime we had and the 301 from AbhishekYadav.com Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | jansimon0