Disappearing from Google...

[MariaV]

Hi

We have been at the top of Google organic listings for many years. Business on 2 of our sites has declined over the years, which we had always thought was a result of Googles move towards more paid listings, product avertising etc, which meant we were dropping below the fold. Anyhoo... but in the last few weeks sales have dropped of a cliff. Doing a quick search on various keywords shows that we have gone from page 1 to maybe P3 or worse.

Can anyone suggest anything we should be investigating as a matter of urgency.

Am looking at Google webmaster tools to see if there is anything obvious.

Nothing serious so far for either site.

Google page speed checker shows a page speed at around 70%, not much different to Sellerdeck, or the BBC.

But lower than say Amazon or Ebay.

Could really do with some help here folks as sales should be averaging 30 a day this time f year and they are now down to maybe 1 or 2. :-(

EDIt... also, how do I view the traffic detail via plesk?

[peblaco]

Are you able to post links to the affected sites, or their name? As well as keywords you usually rank for? As that may help users to take a look and see if they can spot any immediate issues.

[MariaV]

Are you able to post links to the affected sites, or their name? As well as keywords you usually rank for? As that may help users to take a look and see if they can spot any immediate issues.

Doh... stressful day after realisig all this

http://www.amusica.co.uk

http://www.pedigreecharm.co.uk

Keywords: childrens musical instruments used to put us at number 1 for Amusica

For the other, basically any dog breed plus dog gifts eg 'Labrador dog gifts' and we would be in the top 3 or 4.

Been on Google's product forums and got some useful information from there as well. It seems we may have a backlinks problem. ie it would seem somebody has been sending us links from dodgy sites. A competitor? Does this kind of thing happen? It would be easy enough to do I suppose. We've had loads of new backlinks appear in the last couple of months. Just before sales have taken a nose dive, and our rankings have dropped.

[peblaco]

The back links can be a factor, negative seo can happen although not as likely. It could also be poor back links recently duplicated and / or picked up by a recent algorithm change. Have you had search engine or marketing companies doing work for you?. You could get help from a marketing company to do a proper analysis to check your site and back links.

[MariaV]

The back links can be a factor, negative seo can happen although not as likely. It could also be poor back links recently duplicated and / or picked up by a recent algorithm change. Have you had search engine or marketing companies doing work for you?. You could get help from a marketing company to do a proper analysis to check your site and back links.

Seems like over 1000 spammy links were added on one day alone in September. So I think this is actually a VERY negative factor.

[Mike Hughes]

Aargh. I just typed you a long reply and then closed the tab by mistake. Here's the short version:

I see you at position 6 for 'childrens musical instruments' which isn't too bad.

Pop over to ahrefs and look at your link profile. What I see is:

a) A declining number of links over the past year with a recent increase
b) almost 80% of your links are sitewide - presumably from the site interlinking you have at the bottom of each page
c) only 2% of your links are no-follow

These are exactly the kind of thing Google have been working on recently. My conclusion would be:

1. An unnatural linking profile - looks like too many are under your control.
2. A lack of social signals.
3. A falling number of links.
4. Possibly a problem with the surge in links. Not 100% sure on this and not sure any problem will be permanent even if there is one.

The first three problems are the one's I'd be working on. The only problem you're going to have is that fixing the first one could hit you quite hard if you decide to remove your sitewide interlinking.

I don't think you have a penalty applied but Google is probably seeing the same things I see and adjusting your rankings appropriately.

Getting and keeping good rankings is much harder than it used to be. My own opinion is that the best practice these days is to avoid shortcuts such as site interlinking and to put much more effort into natural links.

You do have to read around the subject and make your own decisions these days though. Don't do anything that affects your site just because anyone, including me, says so.

Mike

[MariaV]

Thanks Mike and everybody else.

I've been on the google product forums and their initial advice is to 'no follow' the sitewide links, as you've already mentioned.

They also suggested 'You need to canonicalise the no-www version of your site'

And 'Your backlink profile has a high percentage unnatural links, one way or another.'

I can do no. 1 easy enough. But not sure on 2 & 3.

For 2, this is the link to Google WMT:

Setting your preferred domain tells Google which version of your site's URL (http://www.example.com or http://example.com) you prefer.

If you set your preferred domain as http://example.com, we'll treat links to http://www.example.com exactly the same as links to your preferred domain.

I'm wondering about whether I need to bother with any duplicate content in the site. We have a number of products in different sections.

As for number 3. How can you establish what backlinks are just junk, and what need keeping. And should I use the Google disavow tool to remove them?

[Mike Hughes]

This is the latest thread on the forum about canonical links.

http://community.sellerdeck.com/showthread.php?t=54467

Useful for www. issues and page duplicates via the cgi-bin.

There are a few other threads around but that one's particularly relevant if you use the sellerdeck SPP methodology rather than just putting products on section pages.

I'm not sure I'd worry too much about unnatural links. I believe Google's main tendency is to ignore them and my priority would be to make sure the good links outweigh any bad ones. Having said that, if you have control of any unnatural links the best thing to do would be remove them or at the very least make them look more natural.

There are link analysis/cleanup tools, link detox is one, but they can be expensive. You can also disavow the links if you want to. My own view though is that unless you've been really naughty and received a penalty notice it's best to focus on doing more of the good stuff and not worry too much about the few bad things that might be going on.

I think Google's algorithm changes have hit many sites that were benefiting from a few 'shortcuts' that no longer work but this is making people think they've been hit by a penalty. I suspect if you're still at position #6 for your main keyword then it's unlikely you have a serious problem and more likely that Google is just ignoring some of the stuff that previously got you to position 1 in the first place.

Mike

PS. Dan Thies did a nice presentation on Google penalties last year and what to about them. You can see it here http://braintrustevents.com/videos/

[MariaV]

Thanks Mike

I was looking in more detail at some of the links we have. Some in particular are from a site that Malwarebytes refused to open on account of it being suspected of hosting malware and suchlike. Am assuming crap like that would be good to get rid of. And would such links be harmful, given that they are from a 'dodgy' site?

Am I best off just clearing out some of the links that are really poor? I appreciate we have been downgraded in some areas, but I'm wondering if maybe we got hit by the Penguin 2 update last month, as that's when we've seen a more noticeable drop off in traffic.

[Mike Hughes]

In general yes. Get rid of seriously bad links.

The problem in trying to diagnose what the problem is and how to fix it is much more complicated than it used to be. Just because your rankings dropped at a certain point doesn't mean you have received a penalty. The algorithms that detect spam / bad links will be doing three things:

1. In all cases making sure there's no benefit gained from those links. Which may well drop you down the rankings if the links benefited you previously.

2. In moderate cases of spam indicating that all may not be what it seems and algorithmically dropping the site some places in the serps.

3. In severe cases of spam. Flagging the site for manual review which could be followed by a written penalty notice.

The big question is what's happening to your site and I don't know.

If it's just the loss of benefit from some site interlinks and a few spammy links then that would drop you down the serps but there's no penalty effect and removing bad links won't have a major impact.

If you think it's more than that then it's really a sign that you have too many spammy signals being picked up on and not enough positive ones. So in this case I would look to increase the positive signals and reduce the negative ones. I don't think it's likely to be just one bad thing that triggers this.

I think the problem is that a lot of people have got into the wrong mindset and are thinking "I used to be number one, now I'm not, so it must be a penalty and if I get it removed I'll be back to position one again."

That's not the case. Things have moved on and being number one in Google SERPS depends on so much more than it used to. Just removing some of the shortcut stuff that used to work is not going to get you back to position 1.

Yes, you should try to remove any real black marks but you also need to make sure you get have lots of positive signals to show your site has the importance / authority that makes it worthwhile of the number 1 spot.

Mike

[MariaV]

In general yes. Get rid of seriously bad links.

The problem in trying to diagnose what the problem is and how to fix it is much more complicated than it used to be. Just because your rankings dropped at a certain point doesn't mean you have received a penalty. The algorithms that detect spam / bad links will be doing three things:

1. In all cases making sure there's no benefit gained from those links. Which may well drop you down the rankings if the links benefited you previously.

2. In moderate cases of spam indicating that all may not be what it seems and algorithmically dropping the site some places in the serps.

3. In severe cases of spam. Flagging the site for manual review which could be followed by a written penalty notice.

The big question is what's happening to your site and I don't know.

If it's just the loss of benefit from some site interlinks and a few spammy links then that would drop you down the serps but there's no penalty effect and removing bad links won't have a major impact.

If you think it's more than that then it's really a sign that you have too many spammy signals being picked up on and not enough positive ones. So in this case I would look to increase the positive signals and reduce the negative ones. I don't think it's likely to be just one bad thing that triggers this.

I think the problem is that a lot of people have got into the wrong mindset and are thinking "I used to be number one, now I'm not, so it must be a penalty and if I get it removed I'll be back to position one again."

That's not the case. Things have moved on and being number one in Google SERPS depends on so much more than it used to. Just removing some of the shortcut stuff that used to work is not going to get you back to position 1.

Yes, you should try to remove any real black marks but you also need to make sure you get have lots of positive signals to show your site has the importance / authority that makes it worthwhile of the number 1 spot.

Mike

All good sense there Mike. The worst thing is this is our (normally) busy time. Orders on both sites are down something like 80% on this time last year. Seriously.

I think you're right in that we've probably been taking things for granted over the last few years. It's probably the kick up the proverbial that we need to start moving forward.

I'll be going through all the links I can find and removing the crap and then finding out how we can best generate new links to our sites.

Many thanks for your input.

[Buzby]

One of our sites had the same problem which started in May, and is continuing to date.

The site has not been redesigned since since V8 and is very dated. Suffers from duplicate content where product duplicates were heavily used in V9, and all the beginners mistakes that make me cringe when I view the site.

Our solution is to just leave it on tick-over with no updates or new products whilst a major redesign is in progress. Every single product description is being rewritten, photos retaken and all stagnant products removed.

When the site goes live in 2014 we will have a site to be proud of and want to visit, and this vibe I am sure will pay off with clients and search engines.