SOS. Google has booted my store out of its top 10.

[healthstatus]

Any business model is ok if it brings income. Why buy traffic outside of ebay if ebay works ok for me? Really, it's better to sell my products
at ebay or amazon than on my own store. Because when i sell one item from the store i delete its url, and this is bad for seo.

Sorry, I thought you wanted help.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

But we've lost all our best possitions during last 2 months

I think your answer depends on your new positions.

Were you always in the top 10 and now, you are 12-17? Or 53-72?

If you are in the teens, that just might mean that someone has out SEO'd you.

A bigger drop could mean some precipitous Google penalty has been imposed.

I remember years ago when a Google algo change sank my top 10, first page rankings back to page 13 and 14. I knew that I had to start over and retool. Several months later I was back, after isolating the problem areas and fixing them.

 

[Big Daddyhoo]

I am 100% new to developing my website and am learning as I go, but what exactly do you mean by this? I guess I had always assumed traffic was traffic. Is organic traffic not as good as traffic generated other ways, or is it just one of those things you need want to be diverse in?

Search engines compete for customers (who might click on advertisements, resulting in money) with search results. If your site is considered a good search result, you are rewarded with a better position in the results. When you are no longer considered good, you get less traffic. Means less income.
Some problems with all your traffic being organic:
1) You won't know when the free traffic stops so you won't be prepared to replace it.
2) Your business model doesn't allow for paid traffic? No more business. Got overhead? HAHA
3) If Google wants you out, you're out. Commandment of Control.

How good is organic traffic compared to other kinds?
It's not free. You pay for it in time. Your time spent on SEO is time away from other things. Others' time spent on SEO costs money. You should consider the same things you would consider in paid traffic.

Bottom line:
Never have a single point of failure. No single marketing channel, no too-big-too-few customers, no unreplaceable employees, contractors, whatever.
(Single point of failure - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

 

[healthstatus]

Hopefully your margins are such that you can buy traffic.

Without any knowledge of your site or your market it is going to be hard to make any predictions. Are you signed up to Google Webmaster Tools? If you make them mad they will send notices there. Otherwise you may just be getting out hustled.

 

[biophase]

Ok, Our repeat buyers are really the great thing. Some of them are back to us again and again. We've only had 2 refund for last 8 years.
Facebook has a good potential for our business. However, our products aren't a good idea for fastlane story. The store is just my 1st step in my pesonal business. I'll start my new project in soon, but i'm not going to leave my old stuff while it gives me income. Also i'm not gonna buy any traffic. I can easy move to ebay where i'm ok.

If you can move to ebay, why aren't you currently doing it? What about amazon? Why not buy PPC ads, you are paying ebay 9%, which is essentially the same as buying traffic.

 

[biophase]

Any business model is ok if it brings income. Why buy traffic outside of ebay if ebay works ok for me? Really, it's better to sell my products at ebay or amazon than on my own store. Because when i sell one item from the store i delete its url, and this is bad for seo.

Ok makes more sense now. You are selling one off products, like going to a garage sale and finding an antique whatever. So you don't have unlimited inventory or multiples of the same product. I can see where ebay or craigslist would be a better option for you.

However, if you get a steady supply of one-off products, you could create a good brand and become a site known for unusual finds and having only one of each would create good demand.

But the question is still out there. If you sell a product for $100 on Ebay and they take $9. Can you sell that product in your store using less than $9 worth of PPC ads?

 

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[jpeirce978]

To the newbies on this thread...

I started out just like you with an e-com store. I did all the on & off page SEO work myself from creating the site, articles, spinning them, plastering them all over the web, building web 2.0 properties, blog posts, videos, etc etc etc. I jumped up in the serps and was making money. Everything was great and I started outsourcing all my back linking and off page SEO work. I made great money from this one site and took over positions #1, 2 & 3 of Google. It was set it and forget it free money coming in for over a year.

I then was hit with the Google updates which totally shut everything down with the flick of a switch. All traffic stopped which meant no money.

I spent hundreds of hours doing SEO work myself and spent thousands of dollars on outsourcing SEO work. And for what? It was over just like that. To help you understand what some of these veteran marketers are trying to tell you here is this....

Relying on Google, Bing or Yahoo (organic SEO traffic) can and will end you overnight. It's not a matter of "if" it's "when"

Also...the thousands I spent on outsourcing SEO is money thrown out the window now. What if I had used those thousands to buy traffic? I would have made sales (profit) and had them as a future repeat customer (more sales). Not to mention the backend sales by having them on your store mailing list.

I've learned my lesson and could care less about organic traffic anymore. I will take it, but I won't put any effort into getting it.

I understand you are just starting out like we all did. You don't have a bank roll to fund paid traffic. Take whatever you can afford and do PPC. This will give you instant traffic with quick sales. You can keep tweaking the campaign to make it more profitable. Take that money and keep rolling that profit back into paid traffic. Heck you can even get $100 free adwords coupons and it won't cost you anything but 10 minutes to set up a new account. When it runs out...get another coupon and set up another account. Gmail and adwords accounts are free. It's instant gratification with money in yo pocket.

Once your rollin' with PPC traffic, scale your paid traffic efforts. Depending on your vertical, the sky is the limit. You can't fathom the amount of traffic that the web can send to your site. There are people making 100k to 400k per day in sales. Yes per day! On one single product! There websites have less than 5 pages. (This does not include the income they make from the same product offline)

I'm not blowing smoke up your a$$ either. One kid that was doing it was 18 and he was even on the news. "multi-millionaire at 18"

Take our advice on this thread or not. It's your business and your life. Either way, I wish you the best and you will win if you want to win. It won't be an easy road and don't let obstacles slow you down, cuz you will hit many.

Jon

 

[The-J]

I'm no SEO guru. But I can tell you one thing: the fact that ALL your traffic is organic is really detrimental to your business.

You gave up your control to Google and now the algorithm updates plus growing competition have kicked your a$$.

My recommendation is to diversify your traffic sources. Build an advertising plan, social media strategies, maybe an affiliate program, I dunno. You can't expect to get 100% of your traffic from Google anymore... not that you ever should have expected it.

Good luck. Google hates SEO and wants to get rid of it.

 

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[sigurdur]

Did you allow people to subscribe to your mailing list?
(Most e-commerce software I know of offer mailing lists)

If you do have people on your mailing list, have them do some fun social media stuff for prizes to get your social signals up.

 

[healthstatus]

Healthstatus,
No, we cannot buy traffic. All our traffic is organic. Google didn't send a worrying message.

Your margins are so thin that you cannot buy traffic that will provide more profit than cost?

If that is the case you don't have a business you have a hobby.

 

[healthstatus]

Ok, I have the "hobby" that brings me money. Do you really think all online stores buy traffic?

I know that depending on free traffic from another source is a MAJOR violation of the "control" principal MJ recommends. Look at all the motels on Route 66 that went out of business when the Interstate system went in. No traffic, no business.

Do you have an email list of previous buyers? Can you email them about a new product or deal and generate some traffic. Can you email them and promote your social network pages, and get likes and twitter followers as Google is looking more and more at social signals?

You can't find any low cost traffic in your niche and generate a 100 users for $5.00 that will produce 2-3 sales and make you at least $6.00?

 

[avr]

There have been numerous Google search algorithm updates over the past year or so that have really changed the SEO game. Penguin / Panda updates have really impacted many many people in the industry.

A big hit has been exact match domain names getting less weight in the search engines, where before you just needed to have a domain name with your target keyword in it to boost your site ranking position for that keyword, irregardless of quality content of site.

Was your site an exact match domain? That would explain your drop potentially, as lower quality exact match domains have been particularly hit, but high quality lots of good content sites with exact match domains have not.

Its becoming harder and harder to do SEO, google wants to eliminate SEO in reality, and they are going as far as to punish sites with backlinks that do not look 100% legit, or accumulated naturally over time..

Bottom Line from what I have read... spend your time doing a little long-tail keyword research, and find phrases within your niche and write an article with that keyword in the title or something similar, and put some time into writing a good article about your topic / niche. Write many good articles and you will start to get a good amount of long tail traffic, and slowly google will look at your site as a high quality site.

More than ever, Content is King

and oh yeah the social web of facebook likes, google plus and twitter interaction about your site / content is a rocket booster for search rankings.

 

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[Eskil]

There are options to get your site rankings back. Slightly change your SEO strategy to build out more diversified anchor text backlinks along with various social media signals, press releases, etc. I know of some paid (quality) link services that have been able to recover sites following Panda/Penguin, but of course nothing is ever guaranteed.

 

[Milkanic]

PM me the site and I'll see if you are breaking any major rules

 

[Nick]

Losing serps rank might happen due to circumstances outside of your control. It's not that you did something wrong on your website that lead to you losing rank - which might be something that you could fix- because the penalty is too low. (if you did something wrong, you would usually get kicked harder than a couple positions.)

Probably sites that linked to you (article directories, or where did you get your links in the first place to rank so high) have been penalized and now the fact that they do not pass as much link juice as before is reflected in your new serp position as competitors out-seo-ed you.

I think you should focus on improving your website's serps using current seo techniques (quality niche guest blogging, social signals) rather than looking for the mistake that lead you to get booted out. Sites get kicked out of top 10 all the time, otherwise how would new sites rank in google?

 

[Milkanic]

What is google webmaster tools telling you? Your robots.txt was a bit of a mess to be honest.

It might be worth it to pay someone a few hours to do an audit of your site.

 

[nzerinto]

Our online store was in google's frontpage with many great phrases during 4 years. But we've lost all our best possitions during last 2 months. I don't know what's happening. Please any ideas how we can back our best positions?
Please I'll be glad for any good advice. Sales are dropping very fast.

A lot of guys have offered some great ideas, although perhaps not answering your question directly, so let me try:

1. Run a SEO audit on your site. If you don't know how to do this, find an expert who does from ODesk or Elance. You (or they) need to look at:

- The terms you WERE ranking for, and where are you ranking now
- Compare with the sites that are now ranking on the first page for those terms

2. For the sites that are ranking on the first page, run a full analysis on their links, and compare them with the links pointing to your site. Sign up to the free trial with Cognitive SEO (http://cognitiveseo.com/) to do this. Don't get overwhelmed by the information you'll get - just compare all the data, and try to note the patterns of difference between your site and the ones that are now ranking.

3. Pay close attention to differences in the links - types of links, anchor text being used, and ratios of anchor text.

4. Emulate the link profiles of the sites currently ranking. This might mean getting your own toxic links removed, but more importantly, build new ones that are high quality and relevant.

After all of that, it may never work to bring it back, and this hits on the points the other guys have been saying - the business is based on a parasitic model that essentially completely relies on Google.

My recommendation - build out other sources of traffic while you are at it. Good luck man.

 

[jpeirce978]

Stranger

Sounds like u were hit with one of the Penguin updates. My e comm site went thru the same situation. I got hit and dropped from #1 to a few pages back.

The good news is u can recover from Penguin. All Penguin does is look for sites with more than 50% links with same anchor text. Well somewhere around 50% anyway. And then penalizes them by knocking down in ranks and happens immediatley unlike Panda.

There was an isolated test done on this where a site was hit and sat for a couple months. Then they built 10k diversified links overnight with thousands of different anchors and within 48 hours the site was back.

I hope this helps get u back in business cuz my site is 100% organic traffic like yours. I know how u feel to lose that jingle in your pocket.

Jon

 

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[Big Daddyhoo]

Big Daddyhoo, any tips on spinning product descriptions? I keep googling about it but I just keep finding expensive options that will spin an article a thousand times. That's overkill, for me, I just need to spin a manufacturer's product description once. Should I just do it by hand?

Just once? By hand sounds like a no-brainer.
Or is it multiple articles spinned once? You might try asking around if their software has such capabilities.

That being said, I'm not an expert on this and don't know what I'm talking about. Sorry, no real answers!

 

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[stranger]

Me too. Irrelevant.

If you were referring to my post above, I wasn't denouncing organic traffic or your business, just educating a (self-described) newbie.

My post wasn't addressed to you personally.

 

[stranger]

any tips on spinning product descriptions? Should I just do it by hand?

Article Marketing Robot software was the best one a year ago. I used it.

 

[Anthony_44]

Search engines compete for customers (who might click on advertisements, resulting in money) with search results. If your site is considered a good search result, you are rewarded with a better position in the results. When you are no longer considered good, you get less traffic. Means less income.
Some problems with all your traffic being organic:
1) You won't know when the free traffic stops so you won't be prepared to replace it.
2) Your business model doesn't allow for paid traffic? No more business. Got overhead? HAHA
3) If Google wants you out, you're out. Commandment of Control.

How good is organic traffic compared to other kinds?
It's not free. You pay for it in time. Your time spent on SEO is time away from other things. Others' time spent on SEO costs money. You should consider the same things you would consider in paid traffic.

Bottom line:
Never have a single point of failure. No single marketing channel, no too-big-too-few customers, no unreplaceable employees, contractors, whatever.
(Single point of failure - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Thank you very much for going into such detail on my question!! Really appreciate it

 

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[JamesS88]

Just once? By hand sounds like a no-brainer.

You're right. I'm just now learning about all this.
Speed +

 

[stranger]

Our online store was in google's frontpage with many great phrases during 4 years. But we've lost all our best possitions during last 2 months. I don't know what's happening. Please any ideas how we can back our best positions?
Please I'll be glad for any good advice. Sales are dropping very fast.

 

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[stranger]

Healthstatus,
No, we cannot buy traffic. All our traffic is organic. Google didn't send a worrying message.
Yes, i use google webmaster tools, and they didn't send a worrying message.
Really, I've found some issues with the site, but these issues were a year ago as well and google didn't boot me for this.
Also i've not discovered new websites my niche - all they are "my old friends". However, they are ok and not booted out by Google.

-------

MJ DeMarco,
Yes, i was in the top 10 during 4 years, as i said. Now i'm from 11-24. My best was 3rd and now it dropped to 11.
The problem is i don't know where my problems are. I'd like to fix it but what things i must fix?!

-------

Avr,
Our domain has no one keyword, and it's registered in 2000.
I think my mistake was i put keywords in URLs in my store's categories and sub-categories.
Probably, i have more articles than all my competitions all together. The niche, where i'm in, is very small for writing a ton of articles.

-------

Eskil,
The biting irony is i started promoting our store with facebook, google+ and youtube 2 months ago too. I've made a few sales on facebook - i called it the "handmade" sales. However, i like old damned, bloody, fu..ing google's traffic.

 

[stranger]

Did you allow people to subscribe to your mailing list?
(Most e-commerce software I know of offer mailing lists)

If you do have people on your mailing list, have them do some fun social media stuff for prizes to get your social signals up.

Thank you for a good idea. Repeat customers get our month news mail.

 

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[Eskil]

Your margins are so thin that you cannot buy traffic that will provide more profit than cost?

If that is the case you don't have a business you have a hobby.

I was wondering the same. Unless, he is selling tobacco or firearms or something along those lines. There are certain product markets that no advertising network want to touch with a ten foot pole.

 

[stranger]

Your margins are so thin that you cannot buy traffic that will provide more profit than cost?

If that is the case you don't have a business you have a hobby.

Ok, I have the "hobby" that brings me money. Do you really think all online stores buy traffic?

 

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[stranger]

Losing serps rank might happen due to circumstances outside of your control. It's not that you did something wrong on your website that lead to you losing rank - which might be something that you could fix- because the penalty is too low. (if you did something wrong, you would usually get kicked harder than a couple positions.)

Probably sites that linked to you (article directories, or where did you get your links in the first place to rank so high) have been penalized and now the fact that they do not pass as much link juice as before is reflected in your new serp position as competitors out-seo-ed you.

I think you should focus on improving your website's serps using current seo techniques (quality niche guest blogging, social signals) rather than looking for the mistake that lead you to get booted out. Sites get kicked out of top 10 all the time, otherwise how would new sites rank in google?

We get 70-75% of our traffic from google. It's not about how to improve the store, it's about i try to understand why google did it with our website.

 

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[stranger]

I know that depending on free traffic from another source is a MAJOR violation of the "control" principal MJ recommends. Look at all the motels on Route 66 that went out of business when the Interstate system went in. No traffic, no business.

Do you have an email list of previous buyers? Can you email them about a new product or deal and generate some traffic. Can you email them and promote your social network pages, and get likes and twitter followers as Google is looking more and more at social signals?

You can't find any low cost traffic in your niche and generate a 100 users for $5.00 that will produce 2-3 sales and make you at least $6.00?

Ok, Our repeat buyers are really the great thing. Some of them are back to us again and again. We've only had 2 refund for last 8 years.
Facebook has a good potential for our business. However, our products aren't a good idea for fastlane story. The store is just my 1st step in my pesonal business. I'll start my new project in soon, but i'm not going to leave my old stuff while it gives me income. Also i'm not gonna buy any traffic. I can easy move to ebay where i'm ok.