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

S

stranger

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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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healthstatus

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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.
 

MJ DeMarco

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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.
 

avr

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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

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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.
 
S

stranger

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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.
 

The-J

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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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Milkanic

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

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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.
 
S

stranger

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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

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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.
 
S

stranger

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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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Nick

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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?
 

healthstatus

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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?
 
S

stranger

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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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S

stranger

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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.
 

biophase

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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.
 

healthstatus

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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.

If you go this route, you are chasing ghosts. Google makes the rules for what shows up. They don't publish the rules and they change them constantly. It is a bad business model. Biophase nailed it as well, if you are paying commissions to eBay, you are buying traffic. Why not buy traffic outside of eBay?
 
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kwerner

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Build more quality, contextual, links. Build links to them. Rinse and repeat.
 
S

stranger

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If you go this route, you are chasing ghosts. Google makes the rules for what shows up. They don't publish the rules and they change them constantly. It is a bad business model. Biophase nailed it as well, if you are paying commissions to eBay, you are buying traffic. Why not buy traffic outside of eBay?
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.
 

MMatt

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This thread is great. I am planning my first attempt at e-commerce and testing the market and there are some great ideas in here.
 
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S

stranger

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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.
I disagree with you here. Payed traffic is an easy way to get visitors, but your website will not look naturaly if you only get payed visitors.

Google hates SEO and wants to get rid of it.
What do you mean? SEO is a very wide term.
 

Milkanic

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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.
 

healthstatus

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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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S

stranger

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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.

yes, it's what i'm going to do. I've found some problems which i must fix.
 

biophase

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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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The-J

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I disagree with you here. Payed traffic is an easy way to get visitors, but your website will not look naturaly if you only get payed visitors.


What do you mean? SEO is a very wide term.

1) "Look naturally"? What does that mean? I'd rather get 20% from SEO, 40% from paid and 40% from referral than get 100% from SEO.

2) Google doesn't like the idea of new Web sites getting to the first page because it means they are not paying for PPC.

It's all about the money.

I can't make a recommendation for you because I'm currently trying to figure out how to get traffic to my site. But 100% organic is bad. You have zero control and you're likely to get the boot in another six months.
 
S

stranger

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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?

Yes, I sell collectibles. And it's why my products' urls change often. For example, right now the store is selling over 1500 different items. And every week i delete old/sold items and add new ones. On the other hand many our reapet customers came from ebay. We keep only 100-200 items on ebay.
 

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