No SERP Love

[Ripken]

I have a site which has produced about 3,000 pieces of content in two years. Some original, some press releases, some including a little content with a link to a page elsewhere in the mainstream media. We had some pretty nice page one rankings for some longer tail keywords, but since summer, we've dropped off the Google SERP map.

They're indexing pages, it seems, but we've lost about 3/4 of our Google traffic because of the whims of the mighty Goog. It's frustrating beyond belief. Can anyone help a relative neophyte in this area?

[GP200]

Look at your page titles.

Give Google some content.

Make your content worth reading.

Add more content than adverts.

If you are frustrated beyond belief about not being number one for anything, you need to bury that frustration and think about adding more than one silly tagline to each article you expect Google to be amazed at.

If i saw it by mistake, I'd be gone fast.

[Ripken]

GP, I'm completely confused by your response. We have over 800 pieces of 500-plus word original content in addition to the short summaries and links we provide to other stories. We were getting significant SERP attention for two years, and deservedly so because of that original content. Lots of longer tail keywords ranked on page 1. Now..that's disappeared. I don't expect our short summaries with links to other stories to be highly ranked. I don't understand why the other material has lost its respect.

[GP200]

Sorry my post looks dismissive, it wasn't mean to be.

Forget two years etc. things change.

I'll say it again: look at your page titles.

Next:

Your text links look like paid text link to me.

Bet they look the same to Google ( Google no likey anymore)

Start there.

[Anissa]

As far as the articles on the main page are concerned...

I think GP is trying to tell you that you need to actually start the article on the main page under the title and then lead them, by a link to the full article on another page.

I followed the first article. Dull as far as content is concerned. You need to proof read as well.

case in point:

"If there is one thing most brick-and-mortar sports card shops have discovered in recent years, it's that you <u>can</u> be just a sports card shop. It's all about diversifying to survive."

Shouldn't that be "can't"?

You needed to interview the owners, get their take on why they are not just a card shop. When was the shop started? Did it start as a card shop and expanded? If so, when? Include research on the collectors' industry to back up your facts, not just the info that you type and the listing of one shop.

Autograph Lineup Set for Chicago Sun-Times Show

There are a lot of quotes in that one. Did that come from the paper or did you get those quotes. If it is from the paper, you need to cite your sources. This is very important in order to be credible.

[GP200]

ty Anissa

[Ripken]

Anissa,

The card shop story was a summary, with a link to a story appearing elsewhere (click the blue, highlighted text inside the story text to get to the original source). You are clicking on the titles to open the story summaries are you not?

The site aggregates news for this industry, so those types of summaries are common. But again, I'm not EXPECTING to get ranked for those types of stories. If you'll dig deeper into the content (which Google bots have obviously done in the past), you'll see there is plenty of content. Dozens of original articles. The site is content-BASED. I've published more information (lists, content, articles,etc) than anyone in this industry over the past two years. Our format was essentially developed by a programmer I work with.

Regarding the quotes in the card show story...that was a news release issued by the promoters and the quotes are theirs. They are indeed attributed so I'm not sure what you're referring to there.

[GP200]

Stop being so defensive. You either play by Googles rules or you don't.

If you are so sure of your methods why are you asking?

Your articles seem of very low value, s has been pointed out. Your page titles contain duplicates and are of no value to you.

You seem impossible to help. And I for one am sorry I bothered.

If you think some magic coding gltich has you where you are you are mistaken.

You could have great content, I couldn't find it, can Google?

In your current format I think your site is sitting where it warrants.

Not sure about others but i am not going to give a step by step when your attitude and experience reflects nothing i care about.

Good luck.

[seopo]

Seen this happen before when an error was happening from a feed provider.

Do you use Google's webmaster tools? You should check out your reports to see if there is any errors etc.

[quantikev]

Hello Ripken.

One area of potential improvement I see is your code.

1. Clean up long links
2. Switch to a DIV based design vs tables
3. Try a template which prioritizes the content - so it appears above the menu in your code (when you click view source).
4. Make any relevant updates to title & description tags at this time.

It's a significant recoding project, but I think it will pay off in terms of indexing.

Do you currently have any type of content management system? If not, try MODx - it's a bit cumbersome to use at first, but extremely reliable and flexible.

[cbosleeds]

As a second opinion, you're title tags definitely need tailoring more specifically to each page, the content of each article that I can see needs to be much longer (if you look at the source code you'll see a smattering of textual content burried in a mountain of code. Really needs some attention to this, and the finer detail as well. With 17000 inbounds and nearly 4000 webpages this site would be doing great if it were backed up with the content.

[frost]

I have to agree with the content comments.

The first thing I tried to read - Colorado Shop More Bullish on Comics, Coins | Sports Collecting News, Memorabili*-*Sports Collectors Daily - looks like it is all ads, I had to look twice to find the actual story which is really short and then links off site.

I would really suggest cutting back on the ads, keep the ones that are making money but you should clean up some of that clutter.

[Terry Van Horne]

Originally Posted by Ripken

We had some pretty nice page one rankings for some longer tail keywords, but since summer, we've dropped off the Google SERP map.

Site is being indexed. I would agree with GP200 the titles are weak, that said, have you edited them since the slippage started. Either way they could use some work. IME, repeating the same term twice is likely not as effective as say:
Sports Collectors Daily: Latest Sports Memorabalia Collecting News
That may get truncated at 65 chars. If the News keyword is an important keyword modifier move it closer to the beginning of the tag.

Originally Posted by Ripken

They're indexing pages, it seems, but we've lost about 3/4 of our Google traffic because of the whims of the mighty Goog.

How old is the site and how many IBLs do you have? Occasionally sites get found in the long tail early on but that wanes as the site ages and no links are being found. Hate to say it but if the content isn't generating IBLs then you gotta' beg for IBLs or improve the content in ways that drive more direct traffic which leads to pro-active links.

[Big Juice]

The site looks like a thin affiliate site and if I am not mistaken Google doesn't like those. It doesn't matter that you had 500 word articles on the site in the past - what have you written for Google lately?

Also - As I read your post and the responses of others, it looked like you were trying to defend your previous efforts rather than listen to the advice that was given. You can rationalize all you want but if that isn't working and you are unwilling to heed advice then what?

[Webnauts]

Allow me to add my findings too:

Total pages indexed: 3780
Total pages in the main index: 347
Total pages in the supplemental index: 3433

What's the problem and how to solve it?
Boost your rankings with Pagerank Sculpting

[MikeRosart]

A few things I would want to fix include

-the addition of a site map
-duplicate title tags you don't really need <title></title> and <meta name="title"> tags that might be seen as spammy
-you may want to re-order the meta tags on your site to read title, description, and then keywords and move the author and generator tags below the more important meta tags for the bots.
-I would also suggest cleaning up the SEO meta tags, tie up a clearer theme between your title description and keywords tag so the bots know exactly what they are going to find on the page
-I would want to clean up the many parsing errors in the code
-I would also want to make the navigation a bit more user friendly, I had trouble finding real content. I kept going in circles of menu links before I found a real page. That was a bit frustrating.
-I also have to agree that manyo fthe links could have the appearance of being paid for.
-The software I use for anaysis is finding links that it considers hidden, so I would pay attention to the links with the color color=#ff0000 in your code. The SE's don't like hidden links.That's where I would start, the on page optimization needswork too...

I hope this helps you out

[2fk]

I'll add some more..since you are using images on your site be sure to include alternate text to your images cause spiders can't read image alone...you can also use css on your targeted keywords especially H1 in order to help you rank on SERp..try to use goolge adword tool in order to fetch keywords which has searches...Goodluck

[ami_iss]

You can never tell with Google, so it is good to follow the rules. Then, like the righteous man who is struck by lightning, you can at least be satistfied that you did the right thing.

This site violates most of the rules, so it is a good example of a bad example:
1- All javascript should be externalized to files when possible.
2- <TITLE> should be first tag thing in your header, followed by description, followed by keywords. Eliminate duplicate title and junk in head
3- Article title for a page in the text. should should be H1 heading.
4- Avoid duplicate building only duplicate text. Make sure you keep adding real pages as well as the junk.

Here is your header:

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />


<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/templates/xplike.plesk.blue.2/css/template_css.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/templates/xplike.plesk.blue.2/css/left.css" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/templates/xplike.plesk.blue.2/favicon.ico" />

<style type="text/css">
.pollstableborder {
border: 0px solid;
padding: 0px;
}
</style>

<title>Habs' Centennial Includes Autographs, Living History | Sports Collecting News, M&nbsp;-&nbsp;Sports Collectors Daily</title>

<meta name="title" content="Habs' Centennial Includes Autographs, Living History" />
<meta name="author" content="Administrator" />
<meta name="Generator" content="JoomSEO by Phill Brown (http://www.joomseo.com)." />
<meta name="keywords" content="Off, Memorabilia, Fans, Canadiens, Autographs, Theyre, Over, Packed, Fame, Isnt, Full, Great" />
<meta name="description" content="Tired of grumpy autograph guests and memorabilia without a soul? Head north, young man." />
<meta name="Generator" content="Joomla! - Copyright (C) 2005 - 2007 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved. JoomSEF SEO by Artio (Information systems, databases and web applications-ARTIO) - databases, information system and web applications, sponsors: Battery King (BatteryKing.eu - Home) - Accu, Batterij, Camera; Dr. Steven Morris (Plastic Surgery Institute - Birmingham and Midland Premier Doctor - Michigan Cosmetic Surgeon - Steven M. Morris) - Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery in Michigan and Anwalt f&amp;uuml;r Deutsche Firmen und Privatpersonen in den USA (Firmengründungen USA, Deutscher bleiben, Visen USA, Greencard, Arbeitserlaubnis USA, U.S. citizenship, deutsche Titel in den USA vollstrecken, Erben in Deutschland oder den USA, Scheidung in Deutschland, German Law Expertise, inheritance in Germany, ) - USA ANWALT, IMMIGRATION, USA RECHT, FIRMA GR&amp;Uuml;NDEN USA, DOPPELTE STAATSBUERGERSCHAFT USA" />
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />
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<script src="http://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/mambots/content/pcajaxcomment/moofx/moo.fx.pack.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
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var xajaxDebug=false;
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function xajax_jcxUnpublish(){return xajax.call("jcxUnpublish", arguments, 1);}
function xajax_jcxUpdateComment(){return xajax.call("jcxUpdateComment", arguments, 1);}
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<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/components/com_jomcomment/xajax_js/xajax.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
window.setTimeout(function () { if (!xajaxLoaded) { alert('Error: the xajax Javascript file could not be included. Perhaps the URL is incorrect?\nURL: http://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com...ajax.js'); } }, 6000);
</script>
<script type='text/javascript'> /*<![CDATA[*/ var jc_option = "com_content"; var jcxURI = "http://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/index2.php?option=com_jomcomment&no_html=1&task=xa jax"; var jc_autoUpdate = "0"; var jc_update_period = 240*1000; var jc_orderBy = "1"; var jc_commentForm; var jc_livesite_busyImg = "http://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/mambots/content/pcajaxcomment/busy.gif"; var jc_picBusy = new Image(); jc_picBusy.src = jc_livesite_busyImg; /*]]>*/ </script>
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<base href="http://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Sports Collectors Daily" href="http://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/index2.php?option=com_rss&amp;feed=RSS2.0&amp;no_h tml=1" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/images/favicon.ico" />

<META name="y_key" content="f6b4081067d552b2" >

</head>
Whew!

You have two generator tags and a description that has nothing to do with the page.
I like this one especially:
<meta name="Generator" content="Joomla! - Copyright (C) 2005 - 2007 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved. JoomSEF SEO by Artio (Information systems, databases and web applications-ARTIO) - databases, information system and web applications, sponsors: Battery King (BatteryKing.eu - Home) - Accu, Batterij, Camera; Dr. Steven Morris (Plastic Surgery Institute - Birmingham and Midland Premier Doctor - Michigan Cosmetic Surgeon - Steven M. Morris) - Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery in Michigan and Anwalt f&amp;uuml;r Deutsche Firmen und Privatpersonen in den USA (Firmengründungen USA, Deutscher bleiben, Visen USA, Greencard, Arbeitserlaubnis USA, U.S. citizenship, deutsche Titel in den USA vollstrecken, Erben in Deutschland oder den USA, Scheidung in Deutschland, German Law Expertise, inheritance in Germany, ) - USA ANWALT, IMMIGRATION, USA RECHT, FIRMA GR&amp;Uuml;NDEN USA, DOPPELTE STAATSBUERGERSCHAFT USA" /
and also:
<meta name="description" content="Tired of grumpy autograph guests and memorabilia without a soul? Head north, young man." />
What keywords are in those? Grumpy?
Ratio of html to text is very high. Do you have to have those generator tags?

By the way, just because Google puts things in a supplemental index, doesn't mean they ARE really duplicate text. I have seen a lot of pages put in supplemental index for no evident reason.

More tips:

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

[LiveSurf]

Your site looks quite spammy and the page headers shown above confirm it. Your page filenames are a bit on the long side for my liking. Cut out the repetitive stuff, write for your audience, cut out the tricks, titles, keywords and description should be relevant to the page and unique and build links.

Good luck to you!

[Ripken]

Thanks to those of you who have spent enough time on the site to provide thoughtful advice. The title tag adjustment recommendations have been made today by my programmer via Joom SEO and hopefully will show up soon. Our CMS is Joomla and there are some problems inherent with that I believe. Please know we're not intentionally spamming anything (I wouldn't know how, to be honest).

We do have a site map (not published). I was told it's OK to do that. Our content archive is searchable and also placed under specific categories inside the link in the upper left as a way of organization. I do use ALT tags on most images. Not all have been tagged. I do utilize the AdWords keyword tool a lot and try to utilize those keywords/phrases in the original articles I publish. Maybe the improvements in the title tags will help us perform better in that area.

We are a news aggregator--accumulating relevant news & putting it in one central location. I don't expect to rank well for the short summaries wrapped around outbound links but I would at least hope that sort of thing wouldn't be held against us. So many blogs do the same, but we also have hundreds of original articles and limited-issue press releases that don't link anywhere.

We do have banner ads on the site--luckily many are paid ads, which is the goal of most for-profit sites. In fact, many businesses come to us, wanting to be a part of it. To take them down--and remove our affiliate links would kind of defeat the purpose. TV station websites are crammed with ads and limited content in many cases, yet they seem to do OK. That I don't understand. So how do you find a happy medium?

I'll be discussing the advice we've gotten here so far with my programmer and see what we can do to get us back in Google's good graces. If Google is truly interested in sites which provide relevant info and links to other sites doing the same thing, I hope once we make some changes we'll get our stuff back out of the supplemental index. I can honestly say there isn't a site in this industry/hobby providing the quantity and depth of information we are whether the bots think so or not. But...we'll try to follow some of the good advice here and see what happens.

[Peopleunit]

Try dumping your eBay Rover feeds, they seem to be misbehaving. If you look at your webpages with JS turned off you'll see a very messed up... mess.

[confettiguru]

Originally Posted by GP200

Stop being so defensive. You either play by Googles rules or you don't.

If you are so sure of your methods why are you asking?

Your articles seem of very low value, s has been pointed out. Your page titles contain duplicates and are of no value to you.

You seem impossible to help. And I for one am sorry I bothered.

If you think some magic coding gltich has you where you are you are mistaken.

You could have great content, I couldn't find it, can Google?

In your current format I think your site is sitting where it warrants.

Not sure about others but i am not going to give a step by step when your attitude and experience reflects nothing i care about.

Good luck.

It's not necessary to be rude. This guy is new and if I were him I'd think this was a very unfriendly group. What's the point of a forum?