Mister Denial Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 Hi everyone, I need some advice and opinion from fellow Prestashop users, because for the past year, I have been dropping in rank with Google and I don't know why. For a long time I was in either n° 1 or 2 spot for the 4 main keyword phrases for my type of business, but now I am dropping to the bottom of the page. I don't use shady SEO tactics (at least not as far as I know), no blackhat SEO, I have no warnings in Webmastertools, and despite most SEO tools showing my website as being faster and better optimized than my competition, I slowly slip to the bottom of the page. And for the life of me, I can't figure why? My content is entirely original, unlike the competition that likes to scan catalogs, I do my best to avoid keyword stuffin, again, unlike many of my competitors who still believe that more keywords = better, I have a mobile optimized website, and roughly the same incoming links profile as my top competitors. The only thing where they have me beat is Facebook followers, they're usually in the 100K range where I have 10K. I am raking my brain trying to figure what I could do better, or what I might be doing wrong and why Google prefers other websites over mine. So maybe someone else from this forum might have an idea? My website is https://www.the-black-angel.com Thanks in advance for any word of advice! Dan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DazzieG Posted March 15, 2016 Share Posted March 15, 2016 Sitespeed can sometimes be an issue, also schema is definitely playing a part more and more, if you are matching them in terms of link profiles. They might be doing black hat that is not apparent to non-seo's. If you want you can private message me the keywords you have dropped for and I can take a quick look at the serps. Are you aiming for google.com market mainly? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Denial Posted March 16, 2016 Author Share Posted March 16, 2016 My sitespeed averages at 2-4 seconds according to Analytics. Most other site speed tools rank my website even faster. For example, Gtmetrix puts my website at 2.5 seconds average, whereas my competitors usually rank at 6-8 seconds. I also should have an advantage due to domain age, in my case 16 years, and most competitors clock in at 8 year max, maybe 10. What do you mean by schema? Do you mean the markup or something else? PM is on it's way! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DazzieG Posted March 17, 2016 Share Posted March 17, 2016 Those above you are bigger sites in terms of numbers of pages indexed - one is 40 times as big the other 100 times as big. So they have internal pages that will interlink back to the main search terms within the site. You do have a lot of the same link profile but there are a few gaps which I will pm you about. The advantage you have is that they are sub pages ranking from the authority of the main site. You can be more specific to just your niche and with the right links you can climb back up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Denial Posted March 17, 2016 Author Share Posted March 17, 2016 I know some of the websites that are no ranking above me are big corporate websites, I am not surprised about them. But a lot of much smaller websites have overtaken me too, despite having younger domains, being less optimized SEO wise, slower websites, non-mobile friendly, and using keyword stuffing. Those are the ones I don't understand why I am losing ranking to them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DazzieG Posted March 17, 2016 Share Posted March 17, 2016 I sent you excel sheet to your email. Might give you some more link targets. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Denial Posted March 22, 2016 Author Share Posted March 22, 2016 Thanks, I guess that despite all the optimization efforts and hyped ranking signals, the good old link building is still THE most relevant ranking criteria. Even when the competition has poorly performing websites, duplicate content and resort to keyword stuffing, if they have more links, they'll still outrank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DazzieG Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 (edited) Yes. The right quality of links and of the right niche. People can still rank with unrelated links but the main ones will be from related sites. A few high quality links will beat hundreds or thousands of lower quality ones. Some of the image sites might get you high quality linkbacks and in a related area that your target customers might already be on. I'm thinking tumblr and deviantart particularly, but there would be others. Getting onto reddit or imgur would also be worth looking into, but you would need the right angle of story to not look like a spammer. I hope this helps. Edited March 22, 2016 by DazzieG (see edit history) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now