Content Problem Or Link Problem Or ?

[Planet13]

Hi everyone. Long time no see...

I had a page that USED to rank ok. Around #8 in the serps and about 75 visitors a day:

Keyword: blue widgets
File name: blue-widgets.html

Then it crashed in April / May of 2012

I tried to clean up the content but that didn't work.

Changed the file name from:

blue-widegets.html

to

blue_widgets.html

(underscore instead of hyphen) WITHOUT doing any 301 redirects, and it STILL can't be found for the term blue widgets.

Still no improvement.

I hoped Penguin 2.0 would sort things out. Unfortunately, traffic to my site dropped again about 25 percent.


Searching for the keyword with my domain name like this:

mywidgetshop.com blue widgets

brings up my home page and a couple of unrelated pages on my site, but NOT my blue widgets page.

The other pages google lists are various sites that mention my site in one way or another - NOT actual pages from my site. There are even pages from competitor's sites that show up :(


Same thing happens if I use "" around the domain name:

"mywidgetshop.com" blue widgets

If I use the site operator,

site:mywidgetshop.com blue widgets

my blue_widgets.html page shows up around #7, with other pages from my site above it.

If I leave off the dot com, and just use:

mywidgetshop blue widgets

Google returns results for the SEPARATED domain name. Namely it says:

showing results for my widget shop blue widgets
Search instead for mywidgetshop blue widgets?

1) Any suggestions on what to do?

2) Is is possible that no page on my whole entire DOMAIN will ever rank for the words "blue widgets" again?

3) Is there any way to confirm at all whether this is a CONTENT problem or a LINK problem?

Thanks in advance.

[Planet13]

Ok, I see now that when I had written my original post that I left out the fact that I had waited from when the page crashed in March and April of 2012 until February of 2013 to change it from blue-widgets.html to blue_widgets.html

[Planet13]

Looking through my analytics, seeing as I was hit by both Penguin 1 AND Penguin 2, it appears that I have, at the very least, SOME sort of an ALGORITHMIC link problem, right?

There might be other problems, but I guess I should probably start there, no?

[martinibuster]

It starts with your site architecture which makes it difficult for the search engines to build a proper map of what the site is about. Without the proper site architecture you can't get links to high level sections because those high level sections dont' exist. The high level sections are what rank for your two to three word phrases and the individucal pages they link to rank for the more specific phrases (often referred to as granular or longtail).

I can prove it to you, too. Do a search for your domain name without the .com part of it. If you get a six pack the six pack will show you how Google understands your site. If you dont' get a six-pack, and you do not because I know your site and just checked it, this shows you how screwed up your site architecture is. In your case it lists your home page and beneath that four links to inner pages, two of which are wasted, one to the about us page and the other to a page about shipping. The other two links are to high level sections of your site that incidentally have nothing to do with the keyword in your domain name.

Now do this to your arch-enemy competitor, you know who I'm talking about. ;) They get a six-pack. Most of those links go to pages that are pretty damn relevant. That's a good site structure.

It seems like the site structure and the site map on almost every page lends a sort of flat structure to the site, which in my opinion might be watering down all the relevance but also not allowing the search engines to properly categorize the site from general top level sections to granular.

Here is another proof of what I am telling you. Download Xenu Link Sleuth and make it build you a site map. I did it and one section jumps out. Do you see which section jumps out? It's the one about converting to a particular religion. Now do a search for what's in your title tag, Xenu lists it about a hundred times. Is it no surprise that you rank number two for that phrase?

Your site architecture is killing you. You're racing a car with underinflated tires.

Now the other thing, are those testimonials real?

[Planet13]

The testimonials ARE real!

The site in question is split off from another site (Site A).

We sold two kinds of products on the original Site A: Doodads and widgets

We kept the doodads on site A, and split the widgets off to site B

The testimonials were from when we originally sold widgets on site A. When we moved the widgets to site B, I moved the testimonials RELATED TO WIDGETS over to site B as well...

~~~~~~

Right now, i just don't know what a "good site architecture" is for my site. If you have a quick suggestion please feel free to mail me about it.

[Planet13]

One other thing in searching for my six pack:

when I search (without parentheses) for "mywidgethouse" google shows results for "my widget house" (again, ignore the parenthesis here)

Showing results for my widget house
Search instead for: mywidgethouse

[netmeg]

I think you need to do some research on site architecture (martinibuster has done an awful lot of work for you already) I know we must have a ton of posts here (not in this forum necessarily) and you can probably find some information just by Googling it.