Penalty or Google Algo Change

[goodroi]

One of my smaller sites is no longer ranking #1 for the site name (it slipped down to #4 in June). That is usually a sign of being penalized by Google but the overall Google traffic is steady so I'm not 100% sure what is happening.

The social profiles for my website & a national magazine article are now ranking above the site so perhaps Google increased the value of those sites.

The site is almost all white hat but it does have a few expired domains that I rolled into the site. Maybe Google changed how the positive or negative signals of old domains flow in redirects.

The site name is a combo of two generic terms like "Widget Library" so perhaps Google changed how the algo treats keyword rich domains.

Maybe Google has changed how they see certain words as generic keywords vs brand names. Possibly they think my site name is a generic keyword and the serp needed some variety.

Right now, I'm thinking it doesn't matter if my site is penalized or Google simply changed the algo. I need to increase the positive ranking signals for the site. What do you think? How would you handle it?

[robzilla]

I doubt the "generic" name or the expired domains would be a problem. And I don't think a name like "Widget Library" is all that generic, if it's similar to that. It's like Waffle House or Webmaster World.

What's the backlink profile like? Do those social profiles and the magazine article link to your site? Is it a recent article?

Since traffic has remained steady, have you checked the SERPs with different devices, the Search Console, perhaps other Google-powered search engines like Startpage? Do all of those back up the ranking loss?

[engine]

It has to be to do with the link spam update. I'm not suggesting you're involved, but, one or more of the sites passing "value" to your site is now no longer providing that value.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[goodroi]

Not sure this was part of a link spam update. There have been several updates involving links in recent weeks but the ranking drop happened in mid-June before the bigger ones rolled out. The site has an affiliate disclosure & labels the affiliate links to avoid offending Big G. If it was an update hurting the sites passing value to my site) then I would expect my traffic to go down. My Google traffic has not fallen, simply the ranking for the site name. The money keywords are still working fine.

My social profiles which are now outranking my site do link back & drive a decent bit of traffic through those links. The magazine article didn't mention me or link to me.

The backlink profile for my site is a bit light because it is in a smaller niche without many opportunities but it is stronger than the competition.

Haven't extensively checked the SERPs. I do see that Google traffic is down for my site name.

[engine]

If it was an update hurting the sites passing value to my site) then I would expect my traffic to go down.

Not necessarily. Other sites in the niche could also have been hit.
I'm assuming the traffic is still coming from Google, i'd look at robzilla's suggestion of the devices.

[robzilla]

Ah, I thought the magazine article was about your site.

It's certainly odd to be outranked for the site name. Would you say people entering that query are predominantly searching for your site, or does the magazine article provide similar value to them? Even if that's true, though, I can't imagine the social profiles would be more helpful than your site. Some sort of trust issue, perhaps. It's hard to say without specifics, and maybe you'll recover in time without doing anything, but just in case there is a problem I think I'd have a hard look at the pages ranking on page 1 that have nothing to do with your site. What's their value and how is that content presented? Is there anything to learn from those pages about query intent?

A stronger backlink profile never hurts. It can be difficult with small niche topics, but I'm sure you can think of something :-)

[goodroi]

I'd guess 70-80% are searching for us & the others are simply searching for a relatively generic keyword combo.

As for social, I've built up the profiles so I'm less dependent on Google. I've grown them to generate about 30% of my traffic & it converts very well.

Trust is a big challenge for this site. There are few opportunities to build up strong signals so I need to be very creative.

As for the sites ranking on the first page for my site name that I don't control, they are all relevant and understandable for Google to rank. The national magazine article is on topic and has good authority. Another site is a massive information site that has several pages on my industry.

Growing backlinks that will deliver converting traffic seems to be the answer regardless of the diagnosis :)

[KaseyM]

This lines up with our sites drop - hang in there - it may be related to the title changes.