Hi everyone, Thanks for having me in your forum and I hope to gain much insight in to the topic of SEO. I have been asked to optimise a client's new website (weiss-ukdotcom). It was launched on 21/03/14 under an existing domain used for their previous site. Upon examining not only the site but also the Google Analytics reports I found a number of strange anomalies which I pointed out to the client who subsequently instructed me to investigate. These are the main issues: Since the launch of the new site and without any work to it from myself or anyone else I’m aware of it has absolutely been dominant in Google for almost all of the major keyphrases relevant to their industry. (In fact some searches using fairly generic phrases for the industry like “floor standing temperature chambers” or “floor standing test chambers” produce results with 7 or more of their pages listed on page one of Google’s SERPs.) Also since launch the traffic according to Google Analytics has dropped by over 95% from an average of about 4000 visits to under 200 for any 30 day segment after launch. The amount of new visitors has dropped from a pre-launch amount of around 3000 (75%) to less than 10 (5%). Acquisition from organic search has dropped from 2600 (68%) to 110 (56%). As there are less than 10 new visitors I am assuming 100+ visitors were revisiting the site via a search engine. I have found no natural (or any other) external links leading to the site. This simply doesn't add up to me. Basically if there is nothing wrong here I am not needed. Your thoughts are appreciated.
Thanks for that, SEO Emerge. Does this also apply to sites that merely had a vamp over (new look, new and more content)? In other words the website in question is not new as such but operated under the same domain before. Secondly even if the Goggle dance does apply how do I explain the massive drop in traffic, particularly traffic resulting from organic search?
You just need to continuously build links to the site in order to keep it on top of Google. Go for high quality links that stick rather than low quality links that can be deleted a few hours or day after you created them.
Each change like new design, pages, content etc. counts as an update and as such, some time will have to pass for indexing. What you explain does not sounds like a G Dance tho, you are experiencing sudden and massive drops so you are more likely suffering from an algorithm penalty (or check your Webmaster Tools to see if there isn't a manual penalty applied). What you need to do is dig in your analytics - when exactly did the drop happen? What changes have you made in the short period before the drop? You say there are no external links at all? Are you sure about that? Because toxic links and duplicate/irrelevant content are the most common reasons for such occurrences. The answer is in the analyse, be sure in that - just dig in and find it
Thanks for the tips, however doesn't a penalty mean your ranks suffer? It seems to be exactly the opposite, in fact the site is pretty dominant in the SERPs which makes the drop in search traffic all the more confusing.
Nope, most algorithm penalties come with severe traffic changes too, its not about the rank only. For example, sites that were hit by the last algo update (Panda 4) suffered up to 80% drops in traffic. And when your traffic drops, the ranks are soon to follow
Check your webmaster tools and see if you haven't got any email there! Don't look on the wrong direction for problems!