Steady, but continous Google traffic drop. Help?

[dimicos]

I am facing a steady, but deteriorating Google traffic drop and i am struggling to find the real reasons. The site is in the video entertainment niche.

Here is some data regarding the site in general:

• Site redesign happened around June

• We are not doing a lot of off-site and link building in 2013, besides social activities and content distribution to partner sites (top links from OSE are gained long time ago)

• GWT crawls errors are clean (besides 404s)

• No manual actions from Google or penalty notifications

• Serious fluctuations in indexed content in June, but no real effect on traffic

• Removal of old content during August

• Top keywords are dropping (may be caused by category pages removal and flattening site structure)

• Robots file disallows only search-generated pages

• No sitemap errors or warnings

• 2K of duplicate meta-titles and descs

Thank you and appreciate your help.

wyOyoA9

[jesse-landry]

• Site redesign happened around June - Don't matter

• We are not doing a lot of off-site and link building in 2013, besides social activities and content distribution to partner sites (top links from OSE are gained long time ago) **   - This is your problem.**

• GWT crawls errors are clean (besides 404s) **   - That's not clean. Fix those 404s.**

• No manual actions from Google or penalty notifications **   - Good. But doesn't always mean the algo isn't hurting you.**

• Serious fluctuations in indexed content in June, but no real effect on traffic **   - Wondering what your anchor text profile looks like...**

• Removal of old content during August **   - ???**

• Top keywords are dropping (may be caused by category pages removal and flattening site structure) **   - or lack of SEM campaign in general.**

• Robots file disallows only search-generated pages **   - Don't matter**

• No sitemap errors or warnings **   - K**

• 2K of duplicate meta-titles and descs **   - ?! FIX THIS FIRST!! **

I would ask you: What are you doing to promote your site, market your business, and increase traffic?

[PatrickCoombe]

Great responses Jesse - couldn't have said any of it better myself!

[dimicos]

Hi Jesse, Thanks for your reply. I'll try to clear up some statements:

• • GWT crawls errors are clean (besides 404s) **   - That's not clean. Fix those 404s.**
    How would you handle 404 errors in GWT? - They shouldn't have any negative SEO effects according to Google.
• • Removal of old content during August **   - ???**

• We deleted the online games as part of the site (10% of all content).

• Serious fluctuations in indexed content in June, but no real effect on traffic - Wondering what your anchor text profile looks like... - Anchor text profile looks safe, since top 5 are branded keywords and the rest are targeted keywords. Brand name tops the chart with 9%, and no significant gap between the rest.Another question, would a PPC campaign help in this moment?

[jesse-landry]

Well as for the 404s, I would run the site through Screaming Frog and see what I get. If you find 404s there, then redirects and edits will be needed to fix them. Otherwise forget about the GWT report.

I think the most important thing for you to do (besides an overall marketing campaign) is fix those duplicate page titles and descriptions. This is a huge factor, undoubtedly.

A PPC campaign (executed properly) can always help, but you shouldn't lean on it as your fix to your marketing campaign. It is only another spoke in the wheel of your overall efforts.

Hope this helps.