Help! Google rankings seriously dropped since may

[feeky1973]

hi all

i have always been in the first 1-4 pages before may, since then i have noticed i have slipped away sometimes not showing up until page 30!

in may i joined up with the web marketing group for a level 2 seo service
i added info pages on my home page and product pages and changed the wording slightly on some of the title pages

my website is:
www.main-source.co.uk
can this be the reason for slipping down so far?
surely not
any help would be truly apprecciated

thanks
raf

[leehack]

Google have been doing some updates over the past 2 months, so you can be pretty sure that either your SEO company or the google updates or in fact both are reasons for this.

[Duncan Rounding]

What's the SEO company say the reason is?

[feeky1973]

^
they are saying it might be because i adjusted the wording that they sent me to put on the home page.

i barely changed it and if anything added more relevant words so it didnt sound so generic

im not happy with their service to be honest and wont be using them anymore

i need to try and sort the problem though
any ideas anyone?

thanks
raf

[leehack]

Get back to where you were would seem a better starting point, than starting where you are now. Do you have an old snapshot?

[leehack]

Make sure it's been some time since the changes too, it might just be part of the reranking process and all could end up rosey. Although given that 149/150 SEO companies do not do what they say they will, stats are somewhat against that idea.

[Mike Hughes]

Boy, these seo companies are making money for old rope.

1. There's no real content on your pages.

2. Your images (try the nike page) are all ridiculously sized. something like 160 images just 124 x 93 yet 45K Bytes each. That's 7 MBytes of images and leads to a slow loading site. (What does google say about your website speed?).

3. You appear to be using norlist. Looking at what it's doing, I don't like to see the whole list of navigation with only a small portion being visible. It looks too much like hidden content to me. Especially in comparison to the lack of real content on the page.

Mike

[feeky1973]

if anyone has the time to look through and see if there is something obviously wrong with what is on the site, i would be most grateful

lee, i cant see going back as an option now i might wait like you suggest

does page load times make that much of a difference?
i did added seodoctor to firefox and it said my site was slow

[Mike Hughes]

does page load times make that much of a difference?

Absolutely.

Google now tracks and tests load times. They want their users to visit sites that offer a good experience and fast page loads is a key factor.

7 Mbytes of images is 56 Mbits. ie it will take over 28 seconds to load on a 2Mbps connection.

Log in to google webmaster tools and look at what they say about your website speed.

Mike

[feeky1973]

^
do you think this is a new priority since may and might be why ive dropped down then

at the moment photoshop takes my large images and batches them to 400*300, i save it on 'quality 8 high'

i could make this lower to say '5 medium' would this be enough?

[Mike Hughes]

According to this it was introduced on 9th April 2010.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html

It could well have been rolled out over a 2-3 week period.

As the other guys have said, there have been a few changes in Google's rankings recently and you could be seeing the effects of several of them.

The three things I've mentioned above are all bad for your website. If it was my site I'd fix them all.

Mike

PS. Your image size isn't a problem on your product page. It's that you're using the same image on the section pages when they should really be smaller ones.

[feeky1973]

^
it automatically uses the main picture for the thumbnail pics so im not sure how i would go about changing this

when you say i need more content, do you mean more information about the product in the section i call 'details'

thanks for your help mike

raf

[feeky1973]

and the third one..

3. You appear to be using norlist. Looking at what it's doing, I don't like to see the whole list of navigation with only a small portion being visible. It looks too much like hidden content to me. Especially in comparison to the lack of real content on the page.


i have no idea what all this means. lol

[feeky1973]

also for content does it matter that for example i have 24 different colours of vans 106 vulcanized but the details are the same for each shoe

does google penalise me for this?

[Mike Hughes]

a) Content => Relevent text on the page that google thinks it's worth sending visitors to read. If you have no content on your home pages or section pages then they have no interest to the search engines.

b) Norlist / hidden content.

Your home page uses this for the navigation:

<!-- body content left column -->
<div class="page_body_content_left_column">
<!-- left column section -->
<p class="text_heading_left_column_new">&nbsp;&nbsp;BRANDS</p>
<!-- norlist code start V107 -->

<ul class="menulist" id="Menu_Root" style="border:0px solid #FF0000; margin:0; padding:0;">
<!-- start the list items -->
<li><a href='acatalog/Nike.html' id="1">Nike</a>
<!-- end the list items -->
<ul class="menulist2" style="display:none; border:0px solid #FF0000; margin:0px;">
<li><a href='acatalog/max.html' id="58">max</a>
<!-- end the list items -->
<ul class="menulist2" style="display:none; border:0px solid #FF0000; margin:0px;">
<li><a href='acatalog/Nike_Air_Max_90_White_Cement_Infrared_Trainers.html' id="896">Nike Air Max 90 White Cement Infrared Trainers</a>

+ 500 more items, give or take.


<!-- finish the list -->
</li>
</ul></li></ul></li>
</ul>
<!-- norlist code end -->

Less than 20 of the 500+ links are visible on the page. To me that's hidden content.

Google might not be penalising you for these, but I wouldn't be surprised if they rewarded you for them earlier but have now removed any benefit from having them there. Hence your drop in rankings. PS. This also an awful lot of code, another 140KByes or something like that, which is also slowing down your page loading.

The bottom line for me is that your home and section pages

- Have little content
- Are very slow to load
- Might be suffering (or not benefitting) from hidden content.

If it's your product pages that concern you then Google has also dropped off a load of 'insignificant' product pages that previously did well. The solution there is to get more links to those pages (and drop the product links on your home page that go via the cgi-bin).

it automatically uses the main picture for the thumbnail pics so im not sure how i would go about changing this


Sorry, not my area of expertise. I'm sure others can help here.

Mike

PS. It looks as if you're using an old version of norlist that doesn't work with IE8 (which might explain why I'm surprised to see so many links that don't do anything). Visit Norman's support site here http://www.drillpine.biz/forums/viewforum.php?f=9

[feeky1973]

so for just one section on my site ( nike dunks) ive added lots lots of new content, ive changed the title tags and added h1 tags.

it will be interesting to see if this section picks up on google compared to my other nike sections

how long do new changes take to show up on google?
also im trying to find a tool to see what page a keyword is showing up on, but cant find one, any help?

thanks
raf

[AndyBorrett]

Some times it can hapen within a week, normally it takes about a month to see the benefits of your changes.
You can see what keywords drive traffic to your site using google anylitics or webmaster tools.

[bekyed]

Hi Feeky.

Ok, you have no h1 or h2 tags to emphasise the content in the title and on the home page, your meta description matches your keywords, I know G doesn't take the meta tags into account now, however this needs fixing too - see below.

<meta name="keywords" content="Retro trainers are available at Main Source for online purchase. Buy designer footwear brands. Our retro trainers range include Nike, Adidas and Vans" />

<meta name="description" content="Retro trainers are available at Main Source for online purchase. Buy designer footwear brands. Our retro trainers range include Nike, Adidas and Vans" />

Your site has a pagerank of 3 so I don't think the website has been penalized in any way.

You also have canonical problems below which may not be helping
http://www.main-source.co.uk/
and
http://www.main-source.co.uk/index.html
and
http://main-source.co.uk/

Change these in the .htaccess file to point at the main domain.

I also checked your backlinks, none of the links really reflect the keywords you are going for, they look a bit spammy.

I am so surprised your SEO firm have not picked up on this.
I have been working in SEO for 14 years and have lots of succesess, this is just basic stuff an SEO company should sort out.

PM me if you want to see client results.

Thanks.
Wayne.

[feeky1973]

Hi Feeky.

Ok, you have no h1 or h2 tags to emphasise the content in the title and on the home page, your meta description matches your keywords, I know G doesn't take the meta tags into account now, however this needs fixing too - see below.

<meta name="keywords" content="Retro trainers are available at Main Source for online purchase. Buy designer footwear brands. Our retro trainers range include Nike, Adidas and Vans" />

<meta name="description" content="Retro trainers are available at Main Source for online purchase. Buy designer footwear brands. Our retro trainers range include Nike, Adidas and Vans" />

Your site has a pagerank of 3 so I don't think the website has been penalized in any way.

You also have canonical problems below which may not be helping
http://www.main-source.co.uk/
and
http://www.main-source.co.uk/index.html
and
http://main-source.co.uk/

Change these in the .htaccess file to point at the main domain.

I also checked your backlinks, none of the links really reflect the keywords you are going for, they look a bit spammy.

I am so surprised your SEO firm have not picked up on this.
I have been working in SEO for 14 years and have lots of succesess, this is just basic stuff an SEO company should sort out.

PM me if you want to see client results.

Thanks.
Wayne.
^i would if i knew how to