20-30% lost in Google traffic in december/january

[hjochums]

This post is deleted!

[LynnPatchett]

Hi,

Nothing sure, but late December saw a panda update, maybe this is relevant maybe not.

If it is relevant a couple of things come to mind:

<address>- Maybe you have some slightly thin content on these pages and a bit of added content might help - difficult to tell, cannot understand it :)</address>

<address> </address>

• you have quite a few indexed pages, any indication of duplicate content issues in seomoz or wmt? If so consolidating relevant pages might help.

• You have quite a lot of advertising banners on the pages (that big one up top especially hits the eye!), might be worth removing some of them or moving them below the fold on some pages to see if that affects things at all.

Of course, it is always good before doing anything to try to identify exactly what is going on. 20-30% is big, but it is not like you have dropped off the planet. So confirming what sources/keywords/landing pages are contributing to this drop is an important first step as is making sure it is not something else completely (like maybe seasonal variation for example?).

Hope that helps!

[hjochums]

This post is deleted!

[LynnPatchett]

Hi,

Have a look at this tool (https://secure.chartelligence.com/) which overlays dates of google updates and other important events on top of your analytics graphs. Useful to see if there seems to be a close correlation between an update and your traffic drop.

Tough to say how much the link warning on the one site might affect the other. If google thinks they look like part of the same network then it is certainly something you want to try to clean up.

I would still be inclined to check the dates of google updates first and see what correlation exists. I would also look at those banner ads, just from a user point of view that banner up at the top for me really makes the site look like a 'built for ads' type site. Again, any correlation between adding, rearranging the banner ads and the drop in rankings? If you put them in or added to them recently then it is possible the site got picked up and flagged in the next update...

[joseph.chambers]

Have you check in and looked in web master tools what links were lost or deindexed? You can also check https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/backlinks-new/subdomains/www.sommerferie.nu

You're loosing more backlinks a day then you're getting. This is the issue - if you want to spend a couple bucks go here: http://www.linkdetox.com and this will help you so much in seeing link networks.

Heck, emailing them telling them its removing the links themselves or that you will disavow it and who knows what will happen. Webmasters, normally reply quick and will remove it.

Remember your disavow file, keep it neat. Comment it. Add emails that you contacted and when. Group them.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Howdy,

Unfortunate, it's really hard to asses why you may have experienced a drop without a deep-dive look into your site, links, and history. But there are some basic steps you can take to help diagnose the problem.

1. Check Google Webmaster Tools for any messages, HTML suggestions, crawling errors or other indications of problems. Sounds like you might already be doing this.

2. Check the date of your drop against known algorythm updates. The Google Algo History is a good place to start.

3. Do a complete site audit. Here's a good template for one: http://moz.com/blog/how-to-perform-the-worlds-greatest-seo-audit

4. Completely crawl your site using a tool like Moz or Screaming Frog, looking for common errors.

5. Check your backlink profile for dodgy links. Paddy Moogan wrote a good guide on how to do this: http://www.stateofsearch.com/step-by-step-guide-finding-low-quality-links/

The key here is to try to identify any problems that you can fix. Sometimes Google simply changes the way they rank sites and devalues your link profile, your content, or something else that's hard to control. But once you identify the problem, it's much easier to fix.