Why is my traffic dropping so hard after being regular for several years?

[mcany]

This post is deleted!

[DennisSeymour]

Hi Matthew

I would look into your backlinks. Since this is penguin, that's the first thing you need to look at.

Having links from sites like these should be one of your main concerns:

• http://www.xoogie.net/
• http://www.thebestfinanceinfo.com/
• http://www.cellublox.com/
• http://www.rocktheadored.com/
• http://www.moderndir.info/
• http://www.2addlink.info/
• http://freedomplusconsulting.com/

The next is your over saturated anchor text usage.

Once you fix those, I would focus on some UX/UI stuff for the site and fixing your canonicals.

Good luck!

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Mathew,

I agree with Dennis, your link profile looks unbalanced. There is some talk about an algo update that was moving rankings around in early-mid May and my experience for a few sites has been that those that have an (even slight) overabundance of exact match links in have been pushed down a bit (after being as you say quite regular for some time). This might be the case for you, your domain seems to have a lot more exact match phrase links than the others above you (I see you at #5 for french estate agents).

I would try to reduce the number of exact match links you have, especially from low quality directories and the like, but ideally you would be supplementing these with higher quality branded links to balance out your link profile. This wont happen overnight though.

Other than working on your content/onsite stuff and trying to improve user experience where possible it might just be a matter of making the link profile look more even, getting in a few more high quality links (a couple of good press links for you/some of your competitors, maybe you can do some more work there) and then being patient to see what happens!

Also might be worth seeing if there are any country variations apparent in your dropped traffic. If the UK (say) is your main target but you also get traffic from other countries then a link or two from a regional site might push you up a bit in the country specific rankings and help offset your lost UK traffic.

[mcany]

Hi Dennis,

thanks fr your help, I employed a SEO company based in London for 1 year back in 2009 and as for me they were only creating links in directories such as some that you mentioned. Seeing no results I didn't renew the 1 year contract.

Is there a way to remove the links from these low traffic directories faster than sending an email to the directory's webmaster who may accept to remove them if he is in a good mood?

[mcany]

Agreed, I will remove them from my signature in Article websites such as articlebase and replace them by our company name.

And of course a good old press release should improve the rankings, I just need to find a good title/subject

I have also selected UK as the default target in Google webmaster tools so that I should gain a few ranks back.

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Mattew,

Honestly, that is probably not going to move the needle much.

In regards press I was not meaning a press release, these are low value links. I was meaning more links from sites like the bbc, telegraph etc, real press links in other words. Some of your competitors have a few, I thought I saw one from the ft.com in your profile. These kind of links referencing your input/expertise in regards the french property market is what I meant.

If you can replace the link in your article websites then ok, I guess worth doing just to bring the numbers down a bit, but again the crucial thing will be to bring your higher quality link ratio up and that will take time and effort. As for GWT, I would think google already had a pretty good idea you were UK based/aimed so I doubt this will change things much. When I mentioned other countries I meant seeing what kind of good qualified traffic you got from other countries (if relevant). How about Ireland for example? A good link or two from an Irish press mention (for example) might have a better chance of effecting local Irish searches in the short term while you are patiently waiting for the UK rankings to change. Same could possible go for other english speaking countries, but you will know better than I do which countries if any are relevant.

Hope that helps!

[mcany]

Thanks Lynn, we do reply to journalist requests on a daily basis so we might just need to wait for the next property feature in a major UK newspaper, as for the other countries I agree with you but they are less important as 90% of people buying in France at present are UK based so maybe later.

Hopefully with all the improvements we are doing rankings will become even better compared to what it used to be