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Considering new WP theme after loss of traffic

by Jorge Ram
7 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
    • |
Hi Warriors,
So after 5 months of adding content to my blog and gaining decent traffic we have now lost significant traffic and are now considering other options.

First let me give you some background, we started a blog back in April and had gained a nice amount of traffic in the past few months. We were getting about 200-300 uniques on a daily basis, but traffic recently dropped on Tuesday (9/4/12) to about 40 visitors a day,still wondering why though.

We are three editors that try to contribute to the site. In the site we usually post any relevant hip hop news, along with the occasional press releases that they send us and we also post upcoming artists along with their music. We also conduct product reviews for fashion and technology as the hip hop crowd is always interested in staying up to date with both fashion and tech trends. In all of the reviews and posts that have upcoming artists we usually link back to the product or the artists so our audience can also check out their webpage in case they want more info about them. is this hurting us?

We've never bought any links or traffic because we wanted to do the website the correct way and build organic traffic through Google, so we refrained from doing anything that may give us the google slap, besides we were thinking about longevity with this site so we didn't mind seeing small results every week. But now it seems that have have taken a long jump back. I appreciate anyone's feedback on this.

The website: Hiphopfirstclass .c o m

Also I was told that perhaps the fact that I am using a free wordpress theme may be affecting the loading speed and our traffic. And I was told to fix the WCS errors. to make the site load faster but I have no clue as to how to do that.

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.
#loss #theme #traffic
  • Profile picture of the author ArcherWylde
    Are you posting unique content as far as the news goes? Or copying news stories from other sites?

    Your loss in traffic could be a result of the some minor updates (non-named) to Google's algorithm.

    The page does load somewhat slowly, but it's still not as bad as some "authority" sites that I've seen lately. There's just a good amount of pictures on your home-page so this is to be expected. Switching themes may give you an increase, it's worth a try.

    I had to laugh though at your meta keywords:
    "rap, hip hop,k pop,k-pop,k-drama,k drama, rap music, hip hop music, rap music videos, hiphip, rap video models, hip hop news, rap news, hip hop honeys,hip hop honey, hip-hop, hip hop models, rap video girls, hip hop girls, hip hop videos, rap videos, music videos, celebrity, photos, hip hop music news, music news, hip hop downloads, celebrity gossip, hip hop mixtapes, music, videos, hip hop gossip, hip hop rumors, hip hop beef, hip hop photos,music review, product review, fashion, fashion review"

    Those seem a bit redundant and "stuffed" if you will.

    I am in no way saying this is the whole reason your traffic dropped, but it's probably not helping your case any.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jorge Ram
      We post unique content, we really want to stay on Google's good side even though its very hard to do so. And copying content would not beneficial to our long-term plans, plus we dont want to get into any legal lawsuit battles somewhere down the line, with articles that have been copy written.

      Should we cut down on the meta keywords? How many should we list?

      Here is a list of the things we were told may be the issue, but we're not sure if that would make a difference, also we would not even know where to begin fixing those issue's.

      Thanks again for the help.

      [Invalid] Markup Validation of http://hiphopfirstclass.com/ - W3C Markup Validator
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      • Profile picture of the author Sid Hale
        Hi Jorge,

        I think you've gotten some bad advice, so far.

        First, congratulations on a very good looking, and well laid out site!

        As for your drop in traffic... did you ever consider that nothing caused your rankings to "drop" in Google, but rather that maybe your competition just stepped up their efforts to outrank you?

        That is more likely to be the problem, than anything that may have happened on your site.

        While I think that there is some duplication of keyword phrases that might make it appear that you are keyword stuffing, that is more likely to impact rankings on other search engines, as Google pretty much ignores that meta tag.

        Do you know that Google was the source of your previous traffic? Do you know where your current traffic is coming from?

        I think that your on-site efforts are good, and would totally ignore the W3C Markup Validation with regard to traffic (most of the validation errors are because of non-standard G+ ranking code and/or javascript errors). What I'm seeing there just won't come into play.

        Your primary on-site optimization (IMHO) should be to make sure that you 1) create related posts (i.e. another piece of news on Erica Mena), and 2) cross-link between the two posts. You will be creating more content, as well as on-site links. Your site will receive significant benefit in the search engines, and your readers will stay longer to read the related content.

        Your second problem (not traffic related) is your monetization method. You are showing ads that are not related at all to the content. I'd bet you're not getting rich off this, but it is also the one thing that detracts from the professional look of your site, and could discourage visitors.

        What have you done with regard to off-site optimization?

        I'm guessing that is your biggest single problem, and would suggest that you look at guest blogging (or some other form of article marketing) on some of the larger sites, in order to establish some backlinking to your site. after you have published a new post, offer that post to an authority site as additional content (with a link back to a related post on your own site).

        Not only are the resulting in-bound links a source of highly targeted traffic, but they will contribute significantly to your status in the search engines, and help bring you more traffic from the search engines.

        Hope this helps,

        (edit) - there is nothing wrong with your theme
        Signature

        Sid Hale
        Coming Soon... Rapid Action Profits (Pro)

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        • Profile picture of the author Jorge Ram
          Hi Sid,

          Thank you for all that great advice. And thank you for the positive comments.

          When we got the theme for the site we first wanted to make it real fancy, but decided against that at the time and opted to concentrate more on content.

          I never considered that the competition had stepped up their game and outranked us, mainly because we lost rank over night. I used Rank Tracker to check our keywords and we were ranking 15 on Google for Hip hop honey and 30 on Google for Hip Hop Beef. I also use Stat Counter to check our incoming traffic and most of it was from Google as many were coming in looking at our Hip Hop honey sections and pictures. Also we were ranked anywhere from 1-10 on the girls that we have listed as hp hop honeys.

          Most of our traffic now is still coming from Google but none of the searches that come in have rank. Also, we get some visitors from facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon.

          Could it be that we are now constantly changing the featured posts (posts that slide at the top of our landing page)? At one point we had two of the hip hop honeys on our featured posts, so perhaps that is what drove our rankings high for that keyword. We add content to our site about every 3 days so the top posts on the landing page are constantly changing.

          Yeah our ads don't really bring us much, maybe about 11 cents on a good day. Even with over 300 hits we were only getting about 12 cents.

          ***What have you done with regard to off-site optimization?
          I can't say we've done much on this department,except for social platforms.

          I you have time and are up to it I would love to speak with you about we can further improve our site. We like the site and want to keep it long term. If you charge for your help send me your pricing.

          I really do appreciate your time and help on this. You can reach me at either email-
          jorge -at- hiphopfirstclass dot com
          georamjr -at- hotmail

          thanks again for your advice.
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        • Profile picture of the author whland
          Originally Posted by Sid Hale View Post

          Hi Jorge,

          I think you've gotten some bad advice, so far.

          First, congratulations on a very good looking, and well laid out site!

          As for your drop in traffic... did you ever consider that nothing caused your rankings to "drop" in Google, but rather that maybe your competition just stepped up their efforts to outrank you?

          That is more likely to be the problem, than anything that may have happened on your site.

          While I think that there is some duplication of keyword phrases that might make it appear that you are keyword stuffing, that is more likely to impact rankings on other search engines, as Google pretty much ignores that meta tag.

          Do you know that Google was the source of your previous traffic? Do you know where your current traffic is coming from?

          I think that your on-site efforts are good, and would totally ignore the W3C Markup Validation with regard to traffic (most of the validation errors are because of non-standard G+ ranking code and/or javascript errors). What I'm seeing there just won't come into play.

          Your primary on-site optimization (IMHO) should be to make sure that you 1) create related posts (i.e. another piece of news on Erica Mena), and 2) cross-link between the two posts. You will be creating more content, as well as on-site links. Your site will receive significant benefit in the search engines, and your readers will stay longer to read the related content.

          Your second problem (not traffic related) is your monetization method. You are showing ads that are not related at all to the content. I'd bet you're not getting rich off this, but it is also the one thing that detracts from the professional look of your site, and could discourage visitors.

          What have you done with regard to off-site optimization?

          I'm guessing that is your biggest single problem, and would suggest that you look at guest blogging (or some other form of article marketing) on some of the larger sites, in order to establish some backlinking to your site. after you have published a new post, offer that post to an authority site as additional content (with a link back to a related post on your own site).

          Not only are the resulting in-bound links a source of highly targeted traffic, but they will contribute significantly to your status in the search engines, and help bring you more traffic from the search engines.

          Hope this helps,

          (edit) - there is nothing wrong with your theme
          All great advice here. I agree, there's nothing wrong with your theme. It's a really great theme.

          Best of luck.

          Chad
          Signature
          WebMasterBabble.com Webmaster Forum
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  • Profile picture of the author RobinInTexas
    The site looks good, but I think Google would be happier if you fixed the errors found by the The W3C validator. It can't hurt. That could be a matter of changing the theme (free ones are fine, not all of them generate valid code).

    The home page takes a long time to load, you might cut down on the number of posts you display on the front page.
    Signature

    Robin



    ...Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just set there.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sid Hale
    Hi Jorge,

    Sorry, but I don't offer this sort of service.

    Just too much to do on my own projects.
    Signature

    Sid Hale
    Coming Soon... Rapid Action Profits (Pro)

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