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Google HATES My Website

by NoBody Special
24 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I used to get a few hundred visitors per day, at my 4 year old site. After that last update 2 months back, I now get like 20 visitors. Clearly, something is wrong. Webmaster for Google and Bing do not show anything unusual. The site itself is a quality, seo friendly site that retains visitors who have me bookmarked, and return on their own. I add content regularly.

So, with my side being generally solid, and webmaster sites giving me a generally clean bill of health, how in the wold do I find the problem?

Last year I hired an SEO Guy, who did relatively uninteresting work. While possibly he hurt me, I doubt he did anything truly bad. If anything, it was poor links. I cant see how that tanked my site.

I would also add that when I search certain keyword phrases, I completely dominate the top 10+. But, no where is my site itself, only other sites like facebook, meetup, etc that have my name attached to it.

If you care, it's www. theartofretouching .com (Not plugging for traffic)

Random ideas welcome. Thanks.
#google #hates #website
  • Profile picture of the author rmolina88
    Google hates every website. What else is new?

    Find other ways than SEO to promote it.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by rmolina88 View Post

      Google hates every website. What else is new?

      Find other ways than SEO to promote it.
      Bought one too many fiverr gigs.
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  • Profile picture of the author blackli0n
    Either way, your site appears to be low content quality. There are many ways you could be improving it before expecting to be at the top of rankings.
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    • Profile picture of the author Nightengale
      Forget about Google and SEO! Chasing that is a never-ending, UNWINNABLE race. Period.

      You control absolutely nothing and are at the mercy of Google, which is ALWAYS changing. No sane businessperson expects to build a business with methods he can't control.

      Google and SEO should be at the BOTTOM of your marketing to-do list. Seriously. Focus on other marketing methods you DO control. Methods like:

      1. Social media marketing
      2. PPC
      3. Video marketing
      4. Article marketing
      5. JVs
      6. Direct mail
      7. Etc.

      Drive your own traffic and stop expecting Google to deliver it. They won't. At least, no enough to sustain your business.

      Hope that helps!

      Michelle
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
        Originally Posted by Nightengale View Post

        Drive your own traffic and stop expecting Google to deliver it. They won't. At least, no enough to sustain your business.
        Hmmm - Every time I check Google for keywords that get traffic I see sites that Google is delivering traffic for. Hmm rarely ever a crappy IMer's site. I wonder what the problem with IMers could be?
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        • Profile picture of the author paulgl
          ROTFLMAO! (Google that, if you must)

          Because your website is not ranked #, or even close, in no way,
          shape, or form, means google hates your website.

          How many slots are available for #1? Think now...ummmm...one.

          Google obviously hates millions upon millions of websites. You are
          truly nobody special...

          Speaking of hate...I hate dug up old nonsense threads.

          A drop in traffic could be a case of many, many things.

          And if google loved all pages it puts in SERPS, the internet would
          be a lame place...

          Paul
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          If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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  • Profile picture of the author Slin
    You hired the guy to do seo for you? Does he not work for you anymore?

    If you stopped working on your seo, that could be a reason why your rank has dropped.
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    • Profile picture of the author TanM
      I would definitely try PPC & video marketing, but need to spend carefully at the beginning. Control the budget & keep the ROI in mind.

      Cheers
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  • Profile picture of the author Stefan Shields
    Maybe you need to step up your social networking activities and produce quality content on a more regular basis.

    Google will prefer the competition if they are creating better and frequent posts.
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  • Profile picture of the author promo87
    Banned
    Everything looks fine from here, i think you need to build more back links and yes have a look onto the social media. What i am seeing is you have a very low social influence i.e. 7. I am sure something is wrong with your website but i exactly can't tell.
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  • Profile picture of the author NicholasCage
    why you redirected .com to .com/blog ???
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  • Profile picture of the author deepakrawat2789
    You should make your brand popular among people so do social media optimization and engage your targeted audience by posting informative content and post regularly.
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  • Profile picture of the author georgefuller
    Agree with Nightingale - Never focus on just one Search Engine, We still have yahoo and bing. and there are thousands of website wherein you can get a good traffic, actually there are numbers of factor why your website decreases its traffic. one of them is the content. the user is not satisfied with what they are seeing. also your link. you need more fresh link and quality sites. also check the domain authority.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    1. Your content sucks (sorry, is horrible)
    2. You have low quality inbound links (eg Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended Student and Teacher Edition oem : Fotopunkt)

    Why are you forcing me to the blog? Where's the home page?
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  • Profile picture of the author NoBody Special
    All along, I had been thinking it was anchor text. I was just listening to Empire Flippers where they started talking about it. If I had to guess, that may be my google problem, as I have been struggling for the past year. Is there any way to fix this? Go find the old links and delete them?

    Why do people keep saying the content sucks? I had 4 "update" type of things on top. You know, links to guest posts on other sites. This may be the cause. I have removed them from the front page, now it's just video and articles.

    I have 5-10 minute videos, with 1000 word posts, all giving the specific answers to questions people always ask. I have an audio podcast about freelancing (that can be hit or miss, but people comment about liking it). I also have 1000+ articles on topics for freelancers.

    What more am I suppose to do?

    I send people to the /blog because it is what I am known for, Photoshop Tutorials. I feel I would confuse visitors if it dumped people into my portfolio or /studio site. They are not going there for that. If the visitor wants to see it, the nav bar link lets them.

    Ultimately, I think it's all just shooting fish with rubber bands. I could be at this all year, and not get anything good to eat. I'm better off going to a Photography Forum, and just saying "Hello", here is my retouching portfolio.
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    • Profile picture of the author Samuel Adams
      Originally Posted by NoBody Special View Post

      All along, I had been thinking it was anchor text. I was just listening to Empire Flippers where they started talking about it. If I had to guess, that may be my google problem, as I have been struggling for the past year. Is there any way to fix this? Go find the old links and delete them?

      Why do people keep saying the content sucks? I had 4 "update" type of things on top. You know, links to guest posts on other sites. This may be the cause. I have removed them from the front page, now it's just video and articles.

      I have 5-10 minute videos, with 1000 word posts, all giving the specific answers to questions people always ask. I have an audio podcast about freelancing (that can be hit or miss, but people comment about liking it). I also have 1000+ articles on topics for freelancers.

      What more am I suppose to do?

      I send people to the /blog because it is what I am known for, Photoshop Tutorials. I feel I would confuse visitors if it dumped people into my portfolio or /studio site. They are not going there for that. If the visitor wants to see it, the nav bar link lets them.

      Ultimately, I think it's all just shooting fish with rubber bands. I could be at this all year, and not get anything good to eat. I'm better off going to a Photography Forum, and just saying "Hello", here is my retouching portfolio.
      And, it seems you have taken some time to think about what could be causing this. And, as you say, this could very well be related to the constant use of the same anchor text. With more recent algoritghm updates Google started penalizing sites that use only one phrase or word for their backlinks as it appears very artificial. So some people are just using the 'click here' and 'mysitename' type backlinks interspersed with other keywords being used. If you can find the bad backlinks, clean them up, that would be a good first step. If not, then get more respectable backlinks.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sean DeSilva
    Compared to other sites I've seen the content isn't anything to be ashamed of. It may be that you just got an unlucky reassessment during the new update, and your competitors scored better while you stayed constant. Have you taken a look at who suddenly moved ahead of you? Any common themes you can identify?
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  • Profile picture of the author petjelly
    Your websites looks fine. Check if you have used duplicate content? you should be building links and content everyday. have you website dropped for keywords that were bringing traffic ?
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  • Profile picture of the author Jeffery Moss
    Don't rely solely on Google for your traffic as you can see, Google can and will fail you.* You mentioned having access to photography studios, so why not tap that resource for visitors?** You might have better success with the social media route, whether Facebook or forums now for your blog than relying just on search engines to provide the traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author patco
    I am really curious how did you understand that Google HATES your website? If you did something wrong (like spammy backlinks!), this could be a reason for a ranking drop... Be sure to check your backlinks (Ahrefs for example could help you a lot!)
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  • Profile picture of the author warriordream
    I think, your site appears to be low content quality.
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  • Profile picture of the author GrowFast
    Bad for you. You should check for the keywords used for back links, whether that are available or not. Then check the content repetition shouldn't be there
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  • Profile picture of the author jinx1221
    When did you set it up to redirect to /blog? Because if you started seeing droppings after you did this, then it's probably because all your previous backlinks are pointing to your main site, but now there is no main site, no content there. It all comes down to, if it ain't broke, don't fix it
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Looks like OP has been messing with redirects. His Home page redirects to the blog, but the Home page has a Google Cache while the blog doesn't have a cache (redirects back to the Home page).

    Major confusion going on there.

    Redirected home page:
    • theartofretouching.com


    Redirected Google Cache:
    • cache:theartofretouching.com/blog/
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