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Recent site recovery - hope it lasts

Discussion in 'SEO Search Engine Optimisation' started by retired_member36, Jun 14, 2013.

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  1. retired_member36

    retired_member36 Retired Member

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    Hi Guys, a site of mine which was previously number one for around 7 months dropped to page 10 around a month ago. I decided to not bother touching it in the hope it would bounce back as ive seen things like this happen in the past but it didnt.

    So i set out to try and find a way of getting it back to number one! here is the progress so far, hopefully some of it will be useful to others

    Some background info (Before it tanked)
    The site is a .com
    8 Months old
    Exact Match domain
    Roughly 13 pages on it, all unique content
    Ebay ads on it
    Google adsense (3 blocks on home page, 1 on all other pages / posts)
    Ebay affiliate links were cloaked & opened in new page
    No meta tags
    No alt image tags

    Changes Made

    The first thing i did was change the way the visitor gets to the product via the affiliate links. The plugin i use isphpbay pro which is automatically set up so when the affiliate link is clicked a new page opens! It got me thinking that maybe google is clever enough to see sites that have products listed but open links in a new page as affiliate sites. After all, i dont know of any online retailer or shop other than affiliates site that sends its customers to a new page when they click on a product link, DO YOU?

    I thought it was worth a shot!! afterall the only thing its going to hurt is the bounce rate which is something im not too concerned about as id rather them be buying items on ebay :)

    As i said above I use the phpbay pro plugin to generate ebay items on the site and when i was checking through the source code, i noticed a lot of the plugin names were displayed in the header including this one!. So if google are looking to penalise affiliate sites, they could easily just look for sites with known plugin names or plugins associated with affiliate sites in the header and wollop them with a penaulty. There was loads of other retarded code there that didnt need to be so i downloaded the following plugin: head cleaner and removed ( feed_links, feed_links_extra, wp_print_styles), Re-checked the source code and it was all nice and clean :D (The head cleaner plugin can be found here http://wordpress.org/plugins/head-cleaner/)

    Next, I have some pages on the site listed under a shop section. This is where i have the phpbay pro plugin set to dominate the pages with products only!, so decided to no follow links to these pages and no index them. (Im not bothered if they are not indexed because there is plenty of content on the site thats drawing the visitors in).

    Anyone who uses the inbuilt link cloaker that comes with phpbay pro will find its default cloak text is item- (the ebay item title makes up the rest of the link) For example item-renault-megane-2009. After looking at some of the bigger stores online to get an idea of how their link structures are made up i decided to change the cloak text to: Shop/Product/ID- (so urls would be displayed as http://www.Example.com/Shop/Product/ID-renault-Megane-2009 ). You might be wondering why i bothered doing this when ive set the shop pages to no index!, and the answer is because i use the plugin in the sidebar to show a few items for sale and this is sitewide, so will be displayed on pages that are indexed.

    I also altered the site title from Product name - service to product name

    ####################################################

    I Checked the SERPS a few days later and the site had climbed from page 10 to page 7, Nothing to shout about i know but it was progress.

    ####################################################

    I then decided to alter my wordpress theme!, mayb it was overused or something?? so i found a new theme in the wordpress themes section and tweaked it until i got it looking the way i wanted. Because i changed the theme and my adsense was hard coded into the previous one, it meant this theme didnt display any adsense on it at all.I was planing on adding the adsense code to it later that day but something came up which meant i had no time, (and then i forgot lol)

    Made one new post.

    ####################################################

    A few days later i was checking the SERPS and was shocked to see the site sitting at the bottom of page one!!. I checked again the next day and it was still on page one but had moved up to position 4.

    ####################################################

    I thought id try my luck with adsense and added advert to it (Hard coded in the posts! but NOT on the homepage), after re checked the SERPS today i noticed the site had moved down to position 5 (Could adsense be causing this negative effect??) ill give it a few more days and see how it goes.

    If anyone has any questions or wants to have a look at the site, just PM me
     
  2. Domain Forum

    Acorn Domains Elite Member

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    IWA Meetup
     
  3. Admin

    Admin Administrator Staff Member

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    Thanks for taking the time to report in so much detail, very interesting read and some ideas to try on my sites.

    Keep us posted on your results, if I see anything on mine I will post here.

    Are you using a WP SEO plugin?

    Cheers!

    Admin
     
  4. Aiden Roberts

    Aiden Roberts Well-Known Member

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    Excellent stuff, I haven't got any product sites up but the head cleaner looks useful.

    Cheers

    Rob
     
  5. Aegean Greece

    Aegean Active Member

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    Thats very interesting. There must be something else influencing the position of your site. I can't see Google demoting a site running ads from its own network. That just means less traffic for those sites, which means less clicks on their ads, which over millions of sites means a lot less money, plus it would devalue the bid levels.

    Although from what you wrote that appears to be the case Suggys, I honestly think there must be other forces involved.
     
  6. Murray

    Murray Well-Known Member

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    Would be interested to know the site if that is ok.

    Cheers.
     
  7. retired_member36

    retired_member36 Retired Member

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    Hi guys ive replied to some PMS

    Im not using seo plugin

    Ive noticed the site has fallen another place since ive put these ads on. I might remove them today and see if its rankings change...
     
  8. DarkSky

    DarkSky Active Member

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    You really shouldnt be chasing serp position daily, it's not uncommon for a site to dance about the serps when you make enough changes. I would avoid reacting to serp results.

    Content is king.

    Ads do have a negative impact by the way, Google are very anti paid placements, this does include Adsense. I'm not suggesting not to use it, but to keep this in mind if adding lots of ad units.
     
  9. GreyWing

    GreyWing Well-Known Member

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    Everything I have seen shows about a 7 day to 10 lag with Google. So if you change something today (removing ads etc) and your page drops tomorrow, chances are they are not linked.

    What's more I suspect Google knows this and if it thinks you are trying to alter you site to their serp's, I think it drops you out.
     
  10. pbryd United Kingdom

    pbryd Active Member

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    I've just set up a basic WP to hold some article on a site which was hit hard by google.

    As they say content is king, so I won't be installing any type of SEO add ons, meta tags or anything, just an article, with one link out and some adsense at the bottom of the article.

    It will be interesting to see if google finds the new articles and improves the ranking of the site.

    I'll gauge my success by the amount of visitors I have rather than search engine ranking.
     
  11. boxfish United Kingdom

    boxfish Well-Known Member

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    I think you are misunderstanding 'content is king'.

    Content is king because:

    It is what people come to see, what keeps them, what they share and what they link to. They find out about it through you promoting it and giving them a reason to visit it - they find it useful, tell others, the whole thing grows - without the content that is not possible.

    Spend 10 hours creating great content - Spend 10 hours promoting that content and see results - without the content you have nothing to promote.

    'Content is king' does not apply to copying and pasting a $5 block of text and expecting magic.
     
  12. pbryd United Kingdom

    pbryd Active Member

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    The idea I was trying to get across was that I was avoiding trying too hard at SEO and simply providing content and seeing what google made of it.

    Yes I'll be attempting to provide good quality content relevant to my visitors.
     
  13. dashu1 United Kingdom

    dashu1 Well-Known Member

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    It's interesting that you posted this because I came here today to mention a discussion I had with my brother in law yesterday who is a webdesigner and has been doing some experimenting.

    He created 2 pages on different sites that were very similar in content but not identical.

    On site A he put 1 adsense block, on the other he didn't, and the page on site A ranked well, the page on site B didn't.

    After a few weeks he swapped them over, adsense block on site B but none on site A and the rankings flipped over.

    After another few weeks he swapped them back and the rankings flipped again.

    I don't know if this was coincidence or what, but I wondered if anyone else had noticed anything similar.

    I'm going to give it a whirl and see what happens.
     
  14. Curt United Kingdom

    Curt Member

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    I'd take adsense off if poss. If you do require them, ensure all ads are 'below the fold'.
     
  15. Admin

    Admin Administrator Staff Member

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    I don't see the point doing that, if you put them below the fold then delete them altogether. Try replacing Adsense with other Ads and what that does?

    Admin
     
  16. Curt United Kingdom

    Curt Member

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    The point is that her rankings have fallen. If the user lands on the page and immediately sees ads, how will Google see this as beneficial to the user?

    There is a few articles on it recently such as: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-page-layout-penalty-14612.html
     
  17. Blossom

    Blossom Well-Known Member

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    There is so much bad advice in this thread it more than outweighs the good.
     
  18. DarkSky

    DarkSky Active Member

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    Where's yours? :cool:
     
  19. Curt United Kingdom

    Curt Member

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    +1
     
  20. dashu1 United Kingdom

    dashu1 Well-Known Member

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    It doesn't make sense that Google will downgrade sites for having adsense on them, they want to earn more money, not less money.

    Maybe they'll downgrade a site for having too many ads vs content, i.e. that's all they exist for, but it's doubtful 1 ad will result in it.
     
  21. Murray

    Murray Well-Known Member

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    They wont earn any money if their search results are poor because people will stop using them.

    They have nothing against adsnese, but "made for adsense" sites with poor or thin content that only exist to make money they don't like that.

    Maybe you're hovering around the tipping point Suggys where advertising gets too heavy vs content and other quality indicators and the page layout algorithm comes into play.

    http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html
     
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