PA59 DA51 Yet the site hardly ranks

[3Amigos]

Hello All,

I wonder if you'd kind enough to help with your insights...

The site is www.dataclinic.co.uk

It's been up and running since 2002 and is a data recovery related site that for years ranked on page 1 for lots of data recovery search terms.

Now it's hardly ranking at all, despite decent content and updated blogs. Google (via Webmaster tools) says the site hasn't been penalized for bad links... but we are searching for an explanation as to why it's so difficult to get our once good rankings back.... (For example, the main search term we'd like to rank for is "data recovery"... we are currently on page 8... [google.co.uk search]... why???)

Any ideas greatly appreciated... and I'll reply to each of you privately if you wish.

Thanks for your time.

Chris

[RikkiD22]

Hello Chris,

Before I have a quick look when did you website stop ranking? Was it sudden or have you lost your rankings slowly over time?

[3Amigos]

Hi Rikki,

Thanks for your reply - the site completely bombed ranking wise mid Nov 2012. We are not aware of any changes at this time.

In Jan 2013 a new site was created to replace the old (and hopefully fix whatever was wrong) and used 301 redirects to map old pages to new.

As of today thou, we are still ranking very poorly..

Thanks

Chris

[MattJanaway]

Sorry to hear of the problems, Chris.

Can you give us an idea of the keywords that have dropped off and their relevant landing pages?

Also, it might be worth checking whether the drops in visitors coincided with any algo update. To check, try this great tool:

http://www.panguintool.com/

Matt

[RikkiD22]

Hi Chris,

There were in fact a couple of Panda updates in November 2012, it may be worth looking into these to see if either could have effected you. More details at: http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change#2012

[RikkiD22]

Never seen that tool before Matt, do you rate is highly?

[MattJanaway]

Yeah its pretty cool. Its basic but serves its purpose nicely. Saves having to remember the dates of each algo update (or checking them manually).

[3Amigos]

Hey Matt,

Thanks for replying. I used that tool you recommended and there's a marked drop off from March 2012. Infact the traffic in June 12 is a quarter of what it was before the March 12 drop off. So obviously, this is very significant.

Typical keywords: "hard disk failure", "data recovery", "hard drive data recovery"

We used to rank on page 1 for them all...

Best,

Chris

[3Amigos]

I'm looking at it now.... Thanks!

Chris

[MattJanaway]

I'm not sure if this is the issue but having looked at the link profile of that specific page it looks a little unnatural. There are lots of links pointing to that specific page on your site with anchor text. Granted, the anchor text is mainly long tail but still very keyword rich (hard disk failure).

It could have something to do with the issue. I'd recommend maybe building a few nice clean links to the page using branded anchor text or naked anchor text (www.mydomain.com). Even if anchor text isn't the issue, it should only help your website if the links look natural

I'll try and delve a little deeper later on, I have to jump into a meeting now I'm afraid.

Matt

[3Amigos]

Hi Matt,  this clean link building is already underway... although this action should address the poor rankings it still doesn't remove the cause of the rankings loss obviously... Frustrating!!!

Best, Chris

[RikkiD22]

Hi Chris,

Things link your robots.txt file, on page optimisation etc aren't screaming out any major issues like you are reporting so I don't think you are going to find a specific, easy to see, reason for your drop and have an overnight answer unfortunately.

There was also a Panda update in March. Given your two drops were around dates with Panda updates that would signal a bit of a warning.

As Matt suggested I would do a full analysis of your link profile and look to lessen the keyword rich nature if that is the case.

Rikki

[3Amigos]

Thanks Rikki - your time and advice are much appreciated.

Best,

Chris