New more "helpful" internal linking causing SERP & traffic drop?

[Squee]

Still dealing with the weird traffic drop on my website.

I have removed a bunch of old links from a defunct blog, 301 thin pages, added text to remaining pages.

I'm still stumped.

So awhile ago I freshened up my website and thought I was "helping people" by making sure they could CONTACT the studio more easily... I added more links to the "contact page" I thought this would help conversions...This changed the number of links to my entire site....Would this be the problem with my ranking/traffic drop?

http://bayareaboudoir.com/babinternal1.pdf

[Squee]

Update:

I just went through and fixed the last of the  404 errors with 301.

I also changed the internal linking structure to have more links going to the home page and not to the contact page.

I hope this helps.

www.bayareaboudoir.com

I'd love some more input on this issue.

[GandercCo]

I admit that I don't know your whole situation. But based on my own experience with Local SEO I can say this...

I can very often count on Google to Severely Drop the ranking of the site and or the individual site-page shortly after I do a medium to large amount of SEO Tweaking on the given client site.

Personally I call this "The Google SEO Shake Down" (not sure where I got that term). I don't know if they do this on purpose, but it is predictable like clock-work, so I can only assume there really is something to this "Google SEO Shake Down" idea.

This DROP In Ranking only lasts a few days to a week or so (for me so far).

If your ranking problem has been less than two or three weeks, I would suggest to just stop all your activity and play the waiting game with Google for 5 days to as much as 3 weeks (usually 4 to 7 days, but does vary). If this is the "SEO Shake Down", your site will pop right back up. However, if this has been going on for over 3 weeks, I'd think there is a more serious problem.

Parting Thought:

I frame this "SEO Shake Down" in my own mind like this... Google does this in order to see if there is an SEO spammer that may panic and throw a bunch of spammy SEO tactics at the site. This has worked well for me so far without fail! When I see a big dip in ranking just after doing some SEO tweaking I WILL always stop and wait... So far, the rankings have always came back.

I hope this helps to shine just a little more light on your situation. No one has taught me this, I'm only speaking from my own personal experience alone. But since this so far has been absolutely 100% predictable, I figured it wouldn't hurt to share.

-Gary.

Up Date: I forgot to mention that the "SEO Tweaking" mentioned above is "On-Page" SEO only. OFF-SITE back linking may be a different beast all together! Cool?

[Squee]

Fascinating theory, but this has been a slow steady decline since March.

Not an instant drop.

Here is an awesome graph of Jan to now.

http://www.bayareaboudoir.com/capture2.jpg

I erased all my stats Jan 1st from previous years.

But they had been slowly climbing.

[GandercCo]

Sorry to see your rankings going down. It's obviously not the "shake down" thing I was referring to.  However...

I looked at your site after looking at your graph and think I may have found something that could possibly be a contributing factor to your rankings issue.

In my home town I'm a seo big-fish, but here on "The Moz", I'm just a wee lil minnow, so I do not claim to be an SEO Jeenyus outside my physical area. That being said,

Do you mind if I share with you what I think I see to be a possible issue? I don't want to offend you or anyone by coming across as a self proclaimed super-geek, this is why I'm asking.

-Gary.

[Squee]

Geek away....

If this was a simple problem with one simple answer I would have fixed it 4 months ago

I've had lots of suggestions and lots of bits of help.

I'm always glad for more, if your suggestion does not work, someone will pipe in and we all learn from it.

Here is another thread that has more data too to help you out.

http://moz.com/community/q/web-traffic-tanked-not-penguin-nor-panda-i-am-stumped

What do you see?

[GandercCo]

Well said! That's exactly what I was thinking and hoping... That if my idea is not the problem, maybe a real geek with chime in and fix it. Anyway, here goes...

There has been some new additions to Google's algo announced just a few days ago. Emphasis on "Announced", who know but Matt Cutts on how long it has actually been active, right?

They (Google) have started targeting anything that "they consider" bad, misused, search terms. Two such terms are "PayDay Loans" and anything that "They Consider" to be of a Pornographic nature.

Although your site is a classy photo studio for private "Intimate" photography and not a porn site, it does have semantic terms on the site that "They May Consider" worth lowering just a little.

Below is a link from which I got this info and formed this theory. This is probably not the problem since I'm not a big-shot and no big-shots have mentioned it, or they "have" mentioned it but found out to not be the issue. But I'm having fun with the exchange and hope to learn more myself... Just like you said above.

Here's the link (I hope)

http://searchengineland.com/google-pay-day-loan-algorithm-google-search-algorithm-update-to-target-spammy-queries-162941

-Gary.

Oops! I meant to add this quote from the page,

Google has officially launched a new search update to target “spammy queries” such as [payday loan], pornographic and other heavily spammed queries

[Squee]

I saw that video, yes it is a good one.

Interesting theory about the new "spam search queries" I can see that might be an issue with some sites, I'm not sure it is with mine.

There is something called "pink filter" that I have heard of that if google determines your website to be porn, it will not allow it when safesearch is on.

According to theory if I have not been hit by the "pink filter" I am not labeled porn and should not have my rankings dropped. It does look like Google is changing, I'll keep this in mind.