How To Identify Algorithmic SEO Losses
You’ve been hit by a Google update – you’ve lost rankings and are thus losing traffic. Every visitor that’s no longer arriving at your site is losing you potential income in product sales, affiliate commissions or Adsense clicks.
There are three steps to recover, and in this post, I’m going to show you how to do Step 1.
Before you can fix your site, before you know what changes need to be made, you first need to identify what algorithm update actually effected you. Here’s how:
Log in to Google Analytics. Choose “All Traffic” from the “Traffic Sources” menu in the sidebar. Also choose a date range during which you experienced your drop in traffic / rank. For this site, I was hit in late April, so I’m viewing traffic from April 1 – May 31. If you were hit recently, you might pick a date range like September 1 – today.
Click “google/ organic.” The page that loads will ONLY show you the traffic you were receiving from Google’s organic search, so it will make it extremley clear as to when you lost rankings and thus, when you were effected by an algorithm update:
In my graph, the biggest hit this site took was on April 27. You can see a dramatic dip in what was otherwise a fairly steady stream of traffic, and it’s wasn’t just a one-time blip on the radar either. It was complete loss going forward too.
This is what a u update that’s effected you negatively looks like.
Here’s another:
We can se this loss came at about September 28.
Once you’ve identified the date you were effected, you can check the Algorithm Update Timeline from SEOMoz and see if any of your losses correlate with specific Google updates.
For example, in my first graph the site experienced a loss on April 27. Looking at that Algorithm Update Timeline, you can see that was also the date that Penguin was released – so you can easily surmise that the loss in traffic was caused by Penguin.
The second site experienced it’s loss on September 28.
There were two updates pushed on out Spetember 27 – the Exact Match Domain update and a Panda update. How do you know which one you were effected by?
You weren’t effected by the EMD update if you aren’t using the keywords you want to rank for in your domain.
For me, this site was using the keywords I was targeting in the domain, so I can’t eliminate the EMD update yet.
So how do you know with 100% certainty? You don’t. But here’s what I’ve determined from looking at my sites:
The EMD update didn’t drop otherwise good sites from ranking positions to nowhere-to-be-found. It might bump sites down a few, even several notches, sure, because Google was no longer giving them a “boost” due to the keyword-rich domain. But the EMD update didn’t annihilate good sites – it bumped them.
But this site went from being in the teens for a number of keyword phrases, like this one, do being just GONE from the SERPS completely.
The site you’re seeing a drop in September 27 is, frankly, not a great site. Sure, the content is original, but it’s not bringing any value. It’s doesn’t have anything new or interesting to offer. It’s a think Adsense site where, technically, all the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed, but if we’re being honest, it’s a crap site.
This site wasn’t hurt by being an EMD (but a lot of webmasters are making themselves feel better by pointing fingers at that as a reason).
It was hurt because it sucks. It was hurt by the Panda update that rolled out the same day.
Knowing is Half The Battle?
How you approach the fix depends on what was broken in the first place – you’ve got to bring the right tools to the job!
The Penguin effected site would need to look at their backlink profile – see if they’ve relied too heavily on low-quality links and over optimized their anchor texts.
The Panda effected site would need to look at the quality of the content on the site itself. Make people happy with your content, solve a problem.
If you’ve experienced a loss, was it Panda or Penguin? Let’s see which wins in the comments!
Great analysis!
There was also a penguin refresh and a page layout algorithm that occurred at the same time. It makes it nearly impossible to determine which affected downgraded sites. But, I think your analysis helps to narrow it down for sure!
The best “aha” for me about this post was when you said the EMD update wouldn’t send sites into oblivion. It just isn’t used to boost sites anymore as a ranking signal. Is this what Google said about this update? Because, if so, it would clear up a lot of misinformation.
Thanks for the great post. I have been following you for years but just never got around to commenting
. Also, the word you want to use is “affect”, not “effect” in your posts. I can’t help it, I am a grammar nut. It’s my job! Thanks for the always awesome content.
Jenna
@Jenna – Last thing I want to do is say “Hello” and then be argumentative, but I do need to clarify for other readers that the Penguin refresh you’re referring to was on Oct. 5 and the Page Layout update was on October 9, so by simply checking the dates as described in the post you can get a VERY clear idea of which of the updates you were effected by.
I’m sure there must be a time for affect. I just don’t know when it’s most effective.
ooh awesome! Thanks for the clarification on the updates.
how do i figure why i’m losing traffic?
Panda September 27th
this was the site that was to replace the one that got hit HARD by penguin in April. I’m not having a good year.
When you say over-optimized their anchor text, are you just referring to off-site or are their penalization for over-optimizing on the site itself now (i.e. keywords in sidebar titles, etc.)
@Karen – Mostly off-site.
This is great and I will be comparing my sites this evening using this. You say there are 3 steps to recover – I am hoping that you are also going to be covering the next 2? I am ABSOLUTELY looking forward to that as I’ve yet to hear anyone else explain how to do it
Thanks Michelle, this made a lot of sense.
But there is also a factor that if you were using an EMD and getting a boost apparently you came under extra scrutiny (maybe even manual) for content and onpage SEO against all the keywords you were ranking for. If you had done something wrong then you got dumped not bumped. But it was the EMD that shone the light on you.
I have 3 sites affected, all EMDs, all several years old.
One ranking at no 1 for years. Original content but perhaps not delivering what the visitor wanted. Definitely over optimised. I plan to get rid of some of the SEO on page and I had new content lined up that I just never got around to posting.
Two other sites that didn’t rank untill after Penguin earlier this year and then they went first page and my comp got dropped.
One is a looser it should never have been on page 1, it was built for following a technique on a course.
The other was pretty descent, a Challenge site but had never got to page one because it was in a competitive field, I need to take a look at it and see what it needs content wise. See what was wrong with it. I had never really finished the site.
I think on both sites I plan to salvage I was targetting certain keyword strongly. I would need to diversify the keywords and not worry anout going after them.
I would be very curious to see how these Google updates affect the Challenge with pricking EMDs, using posterous etc. If it could beat that then it would not be free!
Here are my traffic numbers for the last part of April:
April 21- 260 (not below 200 since April 1)
April 22- 265
April 23- 316
Aprl 24- 231
April 25- 77
April 26- 50
April 27- 65
April 28- 38
April 29- 62
So my big drop was between April 24 and April 25. Traffic has not been above 88 since then. Between March 1 and April 23, avg about 300 ith spikes to 578 (high) and 188 (low).
FYI Site based on personal experiences in 25+ years in antiques business as a store owner and dealer, so all original contant. I hated backlinks and used the typical on page SEO with plugins to optimize, keywords in 1%-2% range.
Hello Michelle, I’ve been getting your blog update on my mailbox from time to time but this is I think the first time I’ve commented. I’ve been thinking hard how to remove spammy links since I was also affected by the penguin update. Thanks to your post that I’ve remembered the disavow tool Matt Cutts have announced a few months ago and now it is already available which I’ve searched just today. We are in the mercy of those negative SEO and spammy links and it’s beyond our control to remove them one by one asking webmasters and pleading to them.
So hurray to this God sent tool! You can see the tool here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main
Thanks Michelle – obvious, but I hadn’t done it. Now realise it was probably Penguin and Panda that hit my sites.
@manny BEWARE THE DISAVOW LINKS TOOL! This will basically mark all the links that you are not disavowing as an admission to manipulating your own links. Every link you don’t disavow you are admitting to either creating, encouraging, or saying “it is ok”
Any information Google can take from you they can also use against you. My advice is let it simmer for a few months and find out what happens from there.
@RAW – If your site is already tanked and you haven’t been able to get it back, there’s no harm in using the disavow tool. The site is near dead, it can’t get worse.
Hi Michelle,
Great post – And awesome screenshots. Nobody likes getting hit with an algorithm update, especially if they are not sure if it was an algorithm update to begin with.
Hey Michelle,
I just got your email about Rich’s newest book…thank you for sending that as I can tell just from the title that I can use the insights he provides. Hope to get started on it right away.
All the best,
Greg
Hey Michelle
Great Analysis, This is what we did for 2 of ours clients websites that got hit with the panda update.
We discovered that the content had no value to anyone, it was just about the products itself. The problem was they were just creating content to keep the website updated and fresh and not about actual people connecting and engaging with the content.
Both sites have been fixed and we have seen the traffic now getting back to normal.
Originally the traffic was around 700 – 1000 visits per day and when panda hit the traffic went down to 200 – 300 visits per day causing sales to drop also.
It took some time to make the changes but traffic is back to around 500 – 800 visits per day now slow growing in numbers.
The domain name has good authority such as the domain name is 13 years old and has natural good quality links etc… from previous.
We think that’s why is didn’t take as long a we thought for the positive change to occur.
Love your testings and results Michelle, most of the results and advice has been from yourself.
and if you would like to see out traffic data, then please don’t hesitate to email me.
Thanks again
Danny