Can't seem to get traffic back post Panda / Penguin. WHY?
-
I have done and am doing everything I can think of to bring back lost traffic after the late 2012 updates from google hit us. I just is not working.
We had some issues with our out of house web developers which screwed up our site in 2012 and after taking it in house we have Eden doing damage control form months now. We think we have fixed pretty much everything.
- URL structure
- filling up with good unique content(under way. Lots still to do)
- making better category descriptions
- redesigned homepage.
- Updated product pages (CMS is holding things back on that part otherwise they would be better. New CMS under construction)
- started more link building(its a real weak spot on our SEO as far as I can see)
- audited bad links from dodgy irelavent sites.
- hired writers to create content and link bait articles.
- Begun making high quality video's for both YouTube (brand awareness and viral) and on site hosting (link building and conversions) (in the pipeline not online yet).
- Flattened out site architecture.
- optimise internal link flow (got this wrong by using nofollows. In the process of thinking of a better way by reducing nun wanted Nav links on page.)
i realise its not all done but I have been working ever since the drop in traffic and I'm just seeing no increase at all.
I have been asking a few questions on here for the past few days but still can't put my finger on the issue.
Am I just impatient and need to wait on the traffic as I am doing all the correct things? Or have I missed something and need to fix it.
you anyone would like to have a quick look at my site and see if there is an obvious issue I have missed It would be great as I have been tearing my hair out trying to find the issues with my site. It's www.centralsaddlery.co.uk
Criticism would me much appreciated.
-
We didn't get an instant hit. It was a 50-60% drop spread from aug to end of feb in a pretty steady downward slope. It has been pretty level from feb until now. That's why I'm a bit unsure of the reason for the drop. I havlocal ready cross referenced the google updates and there is a rough coronation between the updates and the start of the declin but nothing concert.
-
Check SEOMoz's Google algo change history:
http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change
If you were hit by Panda or Penguin, you should see a cliff-like drop on or within a day of the dates listed in the document. Panda & Penguin are completely different penalties, so recovering from them requires knowing which one it was.
Of course there could be other issues with your site as well, it's hard to say without more info.
-
I'm not sure exactly but I think it's more Panda as we have not had the best content in the past. If we just keep on slogging through with more content is that the best plan? If so I'm happy to do so. I just need to know there is a light at the end of the tunnel. would also like to be sure that everything else a pout our site is as good as can be.
-
Is it Panda or Penguin you've been hit with? With Penguin it's necessary to submit a reconsideration request after you've removed your low quality links. Your rankings may not immediately recover because you removed links that were previously benefiting you, so it's necessary to build new links.
Panda is a lot trickier to recover from. Only a small percentage of sites that were hit by Panda have recovered. Mainly the penalty hit sites with massive amounts of thin content, so if you have a lot of low quality or duplicate content, you need to replace it with unique, original content. There are no real shortcuts here, but you can work with 3rd party content brokers to help you with process.
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
-
Crawl and Indexation Error - Googlebot can't/doesn't access specific folders on microsites
Hi, My first time posting here, I am just looking for some feedback on a indexation issue we have with a client and any feedback on possible next steps or items I may have overlooked. To give some background, our client operates a website for the core band and a also a number of microsites based on specific business units, so you have corewebsite.com along with bu1.corewebsite.com, bu2.corewebsite.com. The content structure isn't ideal, as each microsite follows a structure of bu1.corewebsite.com/bu1/home.aspx, bu2.corewebsite.com/bu2/home.aspx and so on. In addition to this each microsite has duplicate folders from the other microsites so bu1.corewebsite.com has indexable folders bu1.corewebsite.com/bu1/home.aspx but also bu1.corewebsite.com/bu2/home.aspx the same with bu2.corewebsite.com has bu2.corewebsite.com/bu2/home.aspx but also bu2.corewebsite.com/bu1/home.aspx. Therre are 5 different business units so you have this duplicate content scenario for all microsites. This situation is being addressed in the medium term development roadmap and will be rectified in the next iteration of the site but that is still a ways out. The issue
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ImpericMedia
About 6 weeks ago we noticed a drop off in search rankings for two of our microsites (bu1.corewebsite.com and bu2.corewebsite.com) over a period of 2-3 weeks pretty much all our terms dropped out of the rankings and search visibility dropped to essentially 0. I can see that pages from the websites are still indexed but oddly it is the duplicate content pages so (bu1.corewebsite.com/bu3/home.aspx or (bu1.corewebsite.com/bu4/home.aspx is still indexed, similiarly on the bu2.corewebsite microsite bu2.corewebsite.com/bu3/home.aspx and bu4.corewebsite.com/bu3/home.aspx are indexed but no pages from the BU1 or BU2 content directories seem to be indexed under their own microsites. Logging into webmaster tools I can see there is a "Google couldn't crawl your site because we were unable to access your site's robots.txt file." This was a bit odd as there was no robots.txt in the root directory but I got some weird results when I checked the BU1/BU2 microsites in technicalseo.com robots text tool. Also due to the fact that there is a redirect from bu1.corewebsite.com/ to bu1.corewebsite.com/bu4.aspx I thought maybe there could be something there so consequently we removed the redirect and added a basic robots to the root directory for both microsites. After this we saw a small pickup in site visibility, a few terms pop into our Moz campaign rankings but drop out again pretty quickly. Also the error message in GSC persisted. Steps taken so far after that In Google Search Console, I confirmed there are no manual actions against the microsites. Confirmed there is no instances of noindex on any of the pages for BU1/BU2 A number of the main links from the root domain to microsite BU1/BU2 have a rel="noopener noreferrer" attribute but we looked into this and found it has no impact on indexation Looking into this issue we saw some people had similar issues when using Cloudflare but our client doesn't use this service Using a response redirect header tool checker, we noticed a timeout when trying to mimic googlebot accessing the site Following on from point 5 we got a hold of a week of server logs from the client and I can see Googlebot successfully pinging the site and not getting 500 response codes from the server...but couldn't see any instance of it trying to index microsite BU1/BU2 content So it seems to me that the issue could be something server side but I'm at a bit of a loss of next steps to take. Any advice at all is much appreciated!0 -
Link backs from same IP? Can it hurt?
We host several client sites on our VPS host. We'd like to add a link back to the footer, however cautious as these are all on the same IP. Will this hurt our SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | idlwebinc
Will Google ignore these link backs?0 -
Google is ranking the wrong page and I don't know why?
I have an E-Commerce store and to make things easy, let's say I am selling shoes. There is: Category named 'Shoes' and 3 products 'Sport shoes', 'Hiking shoes' and 'Dancing shoes' My problem: For the keyword 'Shoes' Google is showing the product result 'Sport shoes'. This makes no sense from user perspective. (It's like searching for 'iPhone' and getting a result for 'iPhone 4s' instead of a general overview.) Now what are the specifics of my category page (Which I want Google to rank): It has more external links with higher quality It has more internal links It has much higher page authority It has useful text to guide the user for the keyword It is a category instead of a product All this given, I just don't know how I can signal Google that this page makes sense to show in SERPs? Hope you can help with this!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | soralsokal0 -
If I only Link to Page via Sitemap, can it still get indexed?
Hi there! I am creating a ton of content for specific geographies. Is it possible for these pages to get indexed if I only put them in my sitemap and don't link to them through my actual site (though the pages will be live). Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
Travis0 -
Automotive part / OEM / Manufacturer numbers
Hi All, What's the best way to optimise pages for OE / Manufacturer Part numbers? Disclaimer: All part numbers in this post are fictional. I dont want this post out ranking my client for real part numbers 🙂 Take this for Throttle Body for example: WOODYS S-AB-Q.123.53G This is the main part number from WOODYS (the manufacturer). However, these are all variations of exactly the same product: Woodys 2.78972.11.0 Woodys 2.78972.16.0 Woodys 2.78972.20.0 Woodys 2.78972.26.0 Oh, and car brands use OE numbers for these parts, such as: VWA 9808e40923G VWA 9808e40923L VWA 9808e40923M VWA 9808e40923P VWA 9808e40923Q These internal part numbers are vitally important as most of my clients customers are garages/mechanics so they're very likely to search on OE numbers. So, would you suggest: Optimising 10 different pages for the same product (using the part numbers in the URL, Title and H1). The problem is there's no unique content for these pages, only the part number varies, so this would likely get penalised for dupe content, or not enough unique content. Optimising one page for all terms. If so, how do you suggest doing this to ensure all part/OE numbers rank well and part numbers are prominent in the SERPS?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowoody
Could Schema.org help here by marking up these EO numbers with the isSimilarTo property of the Product type? I'm trying to ensure these part number get equal presence in the SERP snippet when searched for, even though I can't physically include all these numbers in the Title tag, URL and H1 of one page. 3. Something else? Thanks, Woody 🙂1 -
How can I tell if a website is a 'NoFollow'?
I've been link building for a long time but have recently discovered that most of my links are from NoFollow links, such as twitter and Youtube. How can I tell if a website is a 'NoFollow'?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul_Tovey0 -
Does 'jump to' navigation work with a hidden div?
Will jump to navigation work when using a hidden div? Basically, we use a navigation system such that when a user clicks on a title, it expands to show the rest of the article, each title has an anchor associated with it, but no where else on the page / site do we link to those anchors. In order to make jump to navigation work, we are considering adding a hidden div with links to the anchors. Does anyone have experience doing this? Did it work?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
What is next from Google Panda and Google Penguin?
Does anyone know what we can expect next from Google Panda/Penguin? We did prepare for this latest update and so far so good.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jjgonza0