Rank drop ecommerce site
-
Hello,
We're going to get an audit, but I would like to hear some ideas on what could cause our ranking drop.
There's no warnings in GWT.
We deleted 17 or so blogs (that had no backlinks pointing to these blogs and were simply for easy links) last summer thinking that they weren't white hat so we had to start eliminating them. At the same time, we eliminated a few sitewide paid links that were really strong. With all of this deletion, our keywords started to drop. For example, our main keyword went from first to third/fourth. With the deletions, our keywords dropped immediately a couple of spots, then with no more deletions, all of our keywords have been slowly dropping over the last seven months or so. Right now we are at the bottom of the first page for that same main keyword, and other keywords look similar.
We have 70 linking root domains, of which:
15 are blogs with no backlinks that were created simply for the purpose of easy links. We didn't delete them all yet because of the immediate ranking drop when we deleted the last ones.
One PR5 site has links to our home page scattered throughout it's lists of resources for people in different states in the US. It doesn't look like a standard paid link site, but it has many paid links in it's different pages.
One PR4 site has our logo with another paid link logo at the bottom of one of it's pages.
There are 2 other paid links from two PR4 sites that look editorial. There are other links on the sites to other websites that are paid. All links for these 2 sites look editorial.
That's all the bad stuff.
Other things that could be causing drop in rank - > Our bread crumbs are kind of messed up. We have a lot of subcategory pages that rel=cononical to main categories in the menu. We did this because we had categories that were exactly the same. So you'll drill down on a category page and you'll end up on a main category. To the average user, it seems perfectly fine.
Our on-site SEO still has a few pages that repeat words in the titles and h1 tags several times (especially our #1 main keyword), titles similar to something like:
running shoes | walking shoes | cross-training shoes
where a word is repeated 2 or 3 times.
Also, there are a few pages that are more keyword stuffed than we would like in the content. Just a couple of paragraphs but 2 keywords are dispersed in them three times each. The keywords in this content is not in different variations, it's exactly the keyword.
We've still got a few URLs that are keywords stuffed with like 3 different keywords.
We may have many 404 errors (due to some mistakes we made with the URLs in our cart) - if Google hasn't deindexed them all then we could have dozens of 404s on important category pages. But nothing is showing up in GWT.
Our sitemap does not include any broken links.
Google is confused about our branding it seems. I'm adding branding to the on-site SEO but right now Google often shows keywords as our branding when Google changes the way the title tag is displayed sometimes in the search engines.
We don't link out to anyone.
We have lots of content, almost no duplicate content, and some authoritative very comprehensive articles.
Your thoughts on what to do to get our rankings back up?
-
before I could tell you the best way to get your ranking backup I would have to look at your site.
I Would bet you that because you have bad back links that you try to remove you might've missed a few.
"There are 2 other paid links from two PR4 sites that look editorial. There are other links on the sites to other websites that are paid. All links for these 2 sites look editorial."
Google it is a $40 billion a year company that has the resources and ability to figure out if it's a paid link or looks like a paid link. They will find out from other sites using similar services paid links are one of the worst things you can have in my opinion.
Do a title tag like this is spamming
running shoes | walking shoes | cross-training shoes
using something like Shoes - Walking - Running - Cross-training
would be a better title tag
"Google changes the way the title tag is displayed sometimes in the search engines."
This is normal for Google will change your title tag to suit the queried keywords. It is supposed to help you.
"We may have many 404 errors (due to some mistakes we made with the URLs in our cart) - if Google hasn't deindexed them all then we could have dozens of 404s on important category pages. But nothing is showing up in GWT."
Are you only using Google Webmaster tools to try to figure out if you have for 404's?
when you say blogs I'm assuming your meaning posts?
when you delete blog posts and other parts of the website you're essentially deleting interlinking, back links that you may not know about, your changing your website structure.
If you have not corrected all possible 404's or at least most this will hurt you quite a bit.
For instance when people redesign their site and do not 301 redirect properly even sometimes when they do 301 redirect properly they go down drastically in the SERPS
this is because Google does not trust change immediately.
if you scroll down you'll see my answer in this post and its relevancy to changing parts of the website and Actually trying to keep your site rank.
http://moz.com/community/q/how-to-keep-old-url-juice-during-site-switch
" We have a lot of subcategory pages that rel=cononical to main categories in the menu."
That might not be the wisest idea.
I would strongly recommend a site audit.
if you give me your URL I will run it through some tools for you and give you my opinion.
Sincerely,
Thomas
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
-
Seeking Site Feedback
Hello everyone! Hope you are all doing well. Long story short, I'm currently in the 30-day trial period for Moz Pro and I'm taking advantage of running a campaign for my (currently) one-man SEO/Digital Marketing company. Recently built my site using Divi. Filled out all the SEO information through the Yoast SEO plugin, tied Google Analytics, etc... Seeking feedback on the visuals of the website and whether you have any feedback on link-building in order to bring in more traffic to the site. http://fourpeaksseo.com Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Four-Peaks-SEO0 -
Has our site been attacked?
Hello fellow mozers! I am having a problem you might be able to help me with and any thoughts on the issue will be greatly appreciated. Yesterday, I received an automated monthly report from Quill Engage, a tool that fetches data from Google Analytics and generates reports in a narrative format. Last month's 'referral traffic' section indicates two incredibly spammy websites driving more than 200 sessions to our website. Naturally, I checked out GWT and Open Site Explorer but couldn't find any traces of such activity. Futhermore, all our metrics seem ok. Can this possibly be a negative SEO attack that was only traced by the aforementioned tool? Can you propose any other way to test this and make sure we're not being attacked?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SMD_0 -
Why did this fabric site disappear for "fabric" and why can't we get it back?
Beverlys.com used to rank on the first page for "fabric." I'm trying to get the date of their demise, but don't have it yet so I can't pinpoint what Google update might have killed them but I can guess. In doing a backlink analysis, there were hundreds of poor quality, toxic sites pointing to them. We have carefully gone through them all and submitted a disavow request. They are now on page 9 from nowhere to be found a week ago. But, of course, that's not good enough. They are on page 2 for "fabric online" and "quilt fabric." So Google doesn't completely hate them. But doesn't love them enough even for those terms. Any suggestions? They are rebuilding the site to use a different ecommerce platform with new content and new structure. They will also be incorporating the blog within the site and I've advised them on many other ways to attract traffic and backlinks. That's coming. But for now, any suggestions and help will be much appreciated. Something has got to be holding them back for that one gem of a keyword. Also, I would like to know what experiences others have had with the disavow request form. Does Google absolutely hold you to making every attempt you can at getting those links removed? ANd how does it know? No one responds so it seems to be such a waste of time. And many now actually charge to remove your links. Thoughts? Thanks everyone!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | katandmouse0 -
Closing down site and redirecting its traffic to another
OK - so we currently own two websites that are in the same industry. Site A is our main site which hosts real estate listings and rentals in Canada and the US. Site B hosts rentals in Canada only. We are shutting down site B to concentrate solely on Site A, and will be looking to redirect all traffic from Site B to Site A, ie. user lands on Toronto Rentals page on Site B, we're looking to forward them off to Toronto Rentals page on Site A, and so on. Site A has all the same locations and property types as Site B. On to the question: We are trying to figure out the best method of doing this that will appease both users and the Google machine. Here's what we've come up with (2 options): When user hits Site B via Google/bookmark/whatever, do we: 1. Automatically/instantly (301) redirect them to the applicable page on Site A? 2. Present them with a splash page of sorts ("This page has been moved to Site A. Please click the following link <insert anchor="" text="" rich="" url="" here="">to visit the new page.").</insert> We're worried that option #1 might confuse some users and are not sure how crawlers might react to thousands of instant redirects like that. Option #2 would be most beneficial to the end-user (we're thinking) as they're being notified, on page, of what's going on. Crawlers would still be able to follow the URL that is presented within the splash write-up. Thoughts? We've never done this before. It's basically like one site acquiring another site; however, in this case, we already owned both sites. We just don't have time to take care of Site B any longer due to the massive growth of Site A. Thanks for any/all help. Marc
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | THB0 -
Why is our site being penalized?
The rankings for our transcription site (gmr transcription) fell around Jul 19. Its been an uphill task to get the rankings back particularly for the keyword 'transcription services'. As per our opinion except for one competitor the rankings of the other top 4 makes no sense to us. We have tested our site and there seems to be no reason for it to be penalized. After a month of trial I am reaching out to the community for advise.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Sangeeta0 -
Links to partner sites
I have some partnerships in some portals, usually I put the banner of my company with a link to my site on a space partners. How should I proceed? To place the banner no link? To put the link nofollow? Can’t I do it? Don’t I need to worry about it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | soulmktpro0 -
What happened with Hayneedle's rankings?
Hayneedle is an e-commerce company that operates 200 niche sites selling indoor and outdoor home products. They were ranking at the top of the first page for most terms related to their sites (fire pits, fountains, benches, etc.), but all of a sudden at the end of April they lost their rankings, getting dropped to page 4 or lower for tons of their sites (barstools.com, patiofurnitureusa.com, adirondackchairs.com, benches.com, etc.). Does anybody know what caused this? Other than one thread on an SEO forum, we haven't been able to find any discussion about it online. It seems like cross-linking between the sites could have been a problem here, but we'd love to hear thoughts from the experts here on this. Our company is using the same business model of one brand with niche sites and we want to avoid anything like this happening to us.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | outdoorliving0 -
Using Canonical Tags to Boost Lead Form Ranking
I presently have a number of whitepapers that bring traffic to our site. If a visitor elects to download the whitepaper they are taken to a lead form with an abstract of the whitepaper. The abstract is present because the visitor may or may not have come to the lead form directly. I imagine this would be a "no no," but how do you feel about placing a canoncial tag on a whitepaper that points to the lead form w/ abstract? The obvious idea being to take the umph of a whitepaper to direction search visitors directly to the lead form.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shoffy0