SERP Drop

[UnderMe]

Hi,

I have been trading online since 2006 and over the years I have built up some impressive SERP's for keywords such as "mens underwear' which I was SERP 1 for.

However, over the past 6 months I have pretty much dropped off the face of Google for a large proportion of my keywords.

I suspect I have been hit by the Panda/Penguin updates and do not know how to recover this. I have a mixture of what I consider to be relevant and healthy links, but there are also a few links in there that Google would no longer like. However, I believe that the majority of my links are OK.

What should I do?

Thanks

i97zo6W.jpg

[julianhearn]

The first thing you should do is try to identify what the penalty is. Try this: http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/

Once you know which penalty you have you will be able to make a plan of action after doing more research.

Basically if you have been hit by panda it because your content is not good enough, and if you have been hit my penguin you have some/a lot of un-natural links.

[GTGshops]

Hi,

You can also compare the date that your ranking started dropping to the date from the search updates. This way you can find out witch update caused the drop.

http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change

Every update has a different reasons to drop your rankings.

[UnderMe]

Thanks Julian.

That is a really useful tool and although I have never used it before it seems to be telling me the following as I see it.

I can only measure as far back as July 2012 because this is when we launched our re-designed website.

FIRST DECLINE

However, the attached graph shows a massive and continued decline in organic traffic from 26th August 2012.

It seems that the start of the decline came just after Panda 3.9 on 24th July and Google's 7 Result SERP's on 14th August

SECOND DECLINE

It then appear we experienced a second sharp decline on 23rd September and this followed Google's Improved SERP Diversity action on 14th September 2012

From then on it has been a steady decline to date.

It is our home page that seems to have taken the brunt of Google's actions with us experiencing a 98% difference in traffic for the keyword "mens underwear"

Question is, what can I do about it?

Thanks

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[julianhearn]

Panda is like a black hole, once you are sucked in there are very few sites who escape.

Chances are you will never get all your rankings back. Sorry but thats the state of play, e.g. http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-two-years-later-losers-still-losing-one-real-recovery-149491

Also you are up again some big players:

1. asos.com - domain authority 86
2. debenhams - 76
3. sports direct - 66

your domain authority is only 34

The good news is that http://www.iwantpants.com/ is only 31 and in 4th place.

No one fully knows how to beat panda, but you need to improve you content, add more content, basically make users love you site, stay on your site longer, etc. Google refers to these 23 questions: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html

Your aim is to make every page of your site HIGH QUALITY. If you cant make a page high quality delete it.

[UnderMe]

Thanks.

I was just wondering what your thoughts are on this;

1. Site Re-design - in June 2012 we launched a re-design of our website that replaced the previous design that had been in existence since 2008. I personally think that the new site is far better from an SEO perspective. However, I do feel that the content on the product pages (product descriptions) is not quite as good as we did not keep relevant outgoing links or formatting.

2. How useful would it be to add static content blocks to the footer of each page like the one show at the bottom of this page - http://www.freshpair.com/mens.html

3. Content - how do you improve the content of a commerce site as it is essentially made up of products. All I can think of doing is improving the product descriptions, adding static blocks as mentioned above and posting blog content. Are there another ways?

4. Link Warnings - if my ranks were due to back links wouldn't I have received some link warnings from Google

5. Home Page - do you think my home page is too spumy?

6. Extent - whilst some of my sub pages (category pages) aren't ranking quite so well, they are not too bad and have not been affected anywhere near as much as my home page for the query mens underwear. Does this tell me anything more?

7. Google Reconsideration Request - I have submitted the Google Reconsideration Form because I think I have been incorrectly targeted for spam. How long can I expect to wait before I hear anything back from Google.

[julianhearn]

I dont like to comment on specific details because I simply don't know what works and what doesn't.

The best thing you can do is look at what is ranking and do your own version of that. If it's currently ranking well (and has done for a long time) there is a very chance that google likes it. But bear in mind that sites with very high link juice and brand awareness can get away with stuff that your brand won't be able to.

If it was penguin you won't get a links warning.

If you have been hit by panda or penguin a reconsideration request wont help.

I would totally redesign your homepage. I don't like looking at it at work, it feel almost like a porn site. Plus the there are nearly 70 h2 headers which feels spammy and there is very little content.