Mobile Friendly Penalty?

[TysonWong]

My website, http://www.stephita.com/ used to appear on the first page of my "locally" searched terms on www.google.ca.  Specifically, when users searched for "wedding invitations", we would appear between 1-3 on the rankings.

Sadly, I "ignored warnings" of making my site "mobile friendly" for too long, and only recently made drastic changes to my site to get it to "mobile friendly" status.

So, I've fallen far in the SERP, down to the dreaded second page, for my keyword search: "wedding invitations".

The "mobile friendly" version of my site has been up and running for about 1 month now.  My site's home/index page has a PR3, compared to all the other sites that have leaped frogged mine are all at PR1.

Does anybody know the likelihood that my site will ever see the page 1 daylight again?  Or has Google Penalized my rankings

Very much appreciated any help the community can provide!

[ChrisAshton]

Hi Tyson,

You won't get penalised for having a website that isn't mobile-friendly, what you can expect to see though is poor(er) rankings for searches from a mobile device.

I've had a quick look at your site and the reason for your ranking drops is going to be far more to do with keyword spam and thin content than anything else.

Page Titles & Meta Descriptions For example, this page title for one of the invitations pages:

Wedding Invitations in Vaughan - Stephita Invitations Online, Toronto, Richmond Hill, Markham, Scarborough, Mississauga, Thornhill, Etobicoke, York, East York, Woodbridge, Vaughan, Concord, North York, Maple, New York, Barrie, Ajax, Pickering, Oakville, Newmarket, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Montreal, Ontario, Canada, Handmade, Wedding Invitations, Thank-you Cards, Save the date, Menus, Programs, Placecards, Stationary, Stationery, Pocketfolds, Pocketfold, Trifold, Tri-fold, Trifolds, Tri-folds

The meta descriptions are very much the same. As a rough guide (length is based on pixels, not characters), page titles should be kept to a max of around 55 characters. The above is 501 characters, by comparison.

These guides are great resources for writing page titles and metas:

Page Titles
Meta Descriptions

Thin Content

The other major factor I noticed was thin content. Of the landing pages I opened, they seemed to have ~100 - 400 words which can be enough if done very well, but I typically suggest more like 1000+ words for your landing pages, making sure you answer all the common questions you users might have about each product. Make the content genuinely helpful for users rather than just telling them all about your business

404s (Broken Links)

There are a few broken links on the site, pointing to the following pages:

http://www.stephita.com/img/swatch/paper_japanese/268.jpg
http://www.stephita.com/img/swatch/paper_japanese/449.jpg
http://www.stephita.com/img/swatch/paper_japanese/460.jpg
http://www.stephita.com/img/swatch/ribbon/488.jpg
http://www.stephita.com/img/swatch/ribbon/489.jpg
http://www.stephita.com/img/swatch/ribbon/490.jpg
http://www.stephita.com/img/swatch/ribbon/644.jpg

The above are images that must have been either moved, removed or renamed. Each of them are referenced on the Swatches page.

Also, they're actually showing me a "soft 404" meaning rather than present me with a 404 page to suggest I clicked a broken link, it keeps that link in the address bar but shows me the home page. Very confusing from the user's perspective since it looks like they've gone to the page they tried clicking  yet it's identical to the home page (because it is the home page... kind of!) If you copy/paste one of the above links into your browser, you'll see what I mean.

302 Redirections

If a page is being permanently removed and you want to redirect traffic, strength and search engines to another, you should always use a 301 redirect (a 301 is a permanent redirect) rather than the current 302's (temporary redirect).

This is quite a minor detail compared to the other issues but something to mention anyhow.

Helpful Tools You'll find these tools handy in fixing these issues up and perhaps identifying more with a thorough look through everything.

Moz On-Page Grader - This one will give you a "grade" for your onsite optimisation and highlight potential issues. Screaming Frog SEO Spider - This too will crawl your site much like a search engine and show you a bunch of elements they can "see". It's great to see an overview of all the elements I've listed and so many more.

I know this isn't really what you were looking for but it is the answer I'm afraid. I hope you find it helpful!

[TysonWong]

Hi Chris,

I appreciate you giving me the feedback on my site issues.  I've rectified a few, and will thoroughly go through my site to ensure it complies with the suggestions.

What is the likelihood that once Google sees that the page is cleaner, will my site jump back up to the top?  Does the PR3 still factor in SERP?

Thanks!