Is this sandbox, penalty or what? Please advise

[EMAOneBillion]

I did a domain migration 7-8 months ago and before that my site was ranking pretty well. Well, after the migration the site took a huge loss in traffic and didn't recover.

At the beginning of October (two weeks before the Spam Update), I started to see a nice recovery but on the 15-16th it took another loss probably due to the update.

The only problem the site could have would be keyword shuffling. I had a decent amount of content loaded with keywords. I'm working to fix this now.

My problem now is that I can't figure out if the current situation is caused by a penalty or the sandbox due to the domain migration.

At the moment only the top-performing pages before the migration are still receiving traffic on the new domain. Like I have 10 pages ranking on 1st page while the others don't rank at all (not even in the top 100).

I must mention that these ranking pages also have plenty of keywords in them.

Strangely in GSC, I see that I receive 1-2 impressions on a lot of keywords per day and the report state those keywords are ranking on position 4,5,6, etc. but when I check the SERP they aren't there.

My guess is that Google shows my website for very few people (like from 100 people searching that keyword on a given day, only 1-2 randomly see my site on the first page and the others don't).

Any thoughts?

 

[tazarbm]

The only problem the site could have would be keyword shuffling.

that's not the only problem. 301 redirection is also a big deal, and if you've had many URLs that needed to be manually 301'd you've most likely screwed this part as many people do (myself included). Not wanting to insult your skill or anything, just trying to pinpoint the potential issues

My problem now is that I can't figure out if the current situation is caused by a penalty or the sandbox due to the domain migration.

I don't think it's sandbox. AFAIK sandbox only happens for new sites and sometimes for expired sites that get re-registered. I've never heard of migrated sites being sandbox, so I dismiss this possibility until proven wrong

This leaves us with 2 more options: google penalty (due to the SPAM update), or improper site migration / redirection.

To eliminate option 2 (improper site migration) from our list run a site audit with whichever tool you prefer (most people recommend Screaming Frog, which I believe it's free if you only have to crawl 500 URLs), but any half-decent site auditing / links crawling tool should be able to detect the issues, honestly.

So, run the audit and the check what the report says. If it doesn't find broken links, 404 pages, or other technical issues it means that your site is clean and, at that point, the only reasonable explanation for your site's ranking loss is the google update(s).

Although, I would also manually check a few URLs from the new site in google to see if they've been cached. Pick 10-20 URLs that used to rank well in google before migration and which now they're nowhere, and then type them into google in quotes and see if google outputs them, and if they do, click on those links and see whether the new URL shows up, or the old one.

If it's the old one it means that google has not cached the new URL and you should re-cache them (I don't know how, though, so you'll have to google it or figure this out yourself). If the new URLs are cached, then it's almost definitely a penalty resulted from a google update, at which point you just need to check what the update has targeted and then look up fixes for it online or on the forum (most big google updates are usually discussed in detail on BHW, so you're bound to find something that you can work with)

I must mention that these ranking pages also have plenty of keywords in them.

that's not necessarily bad and reason for a penalty. Lots of keywords can mean (the same few) keywords but which are mentioned excessively (which is bad because it's keyword stuffing), or it can mean totally different keywords (SEO entities as the new fancy term for LSI keywords is) but which are aplenty of, which is not bad. On the contrary, including as many SEO entities in your content as possible is good content optimization, so I don't think you should get stuck on the keyword stuffing / optimization issue just yet.

Strangely in GSC, I see that I receive 1-2 impressions on a lot of keywords per day and the report state those keywords are ranking on position 4,5,6, etc. but when I check the SERP they aren't there.

My guess is that Google shows my website for very few people (like from 100 people searching that keyword on a given day, only 1-2 randomly see my site on the first page and the others don't).

your guess is exactly my guess

Anyway, I would focus on the thing I mentioned above first, and if / when those things are clear you can look into more minor / hidden issues. But a site audit at this point is mandatory IMO

 

[HenryObi]

I did a domain migration 7-8 months ago and before that my site was ranking pretty well. Well, after the migration the site took a huge loss in traffic and didn't recover.

At the beginning of October (two weeks before the Spam Update), I started to see a nice recovery but on the 15-16th it took another loss probably due to the update.

The only problem the site could have would be keyword shuffling. I had a decent amount of content loaded with keywords. I'm working to fix this now.

My problem now is that I can't figure out if the current situation is caused by a penalty or the sandbox due to the domain migration.

At the moment only the top-performing pages before the migration are still receiving traffic on the new domain. Like I have 10 pages ranking on 1st page while the others don't rank at all (not even in the top 100).

I must mention that these ranking pages also have plenty of keywords in them.

Strangely in GSC, I see that I receive 1-2 impressions on a lot of keywords per day and the report state those keywords are ranking on position 4,5,6, etc. but when I check the SERP they aren't there.

My guess is that Google shows my website for very few people (like from 100 people searching that keyword on a given day, only 1-2 randomly see my site on the first page and the others don't).

Any thoughts?

Are you sure a huge chunk of your URLs are not returning error 404s?

This is actually a big deal and usually is one of the major reasons sites fail after migrating to a new domain.

 

[EMAOneBillion]

that's not the only problem. 301 redirection is also a big deal, and if you've had many URLs that needed to be manually 301'd you've most likely screwed this part as many people do (myself included). Not wanting to insult your skill or anything, just trying to pinpoint the potential issues


I don't think it's sandbox. AFAIK sandbox only happens for new sites and sometimes for expired sites that get re-registered. I've never heard of migrated sites being sandbox, so I dismiss this possibility until proven wrong

This leaves us with 2 more options: google penalty (due to the SPAM update), or improper site migration / redirection.

To eliminate option 2 (improper site migration) from our list run a site audit with whichever tool you prefer (most people recommend Screaming Frog, which I believe it's free if you only have to crawl 500 URLs), but any half-decent site auditing / links crawling tool should be able to detect the issues, honestly.

So, run the audit and the check what the report says. If it doesn't find broken links, 404 pages, or other technical issues it means that your site is clean and, at that point, the only reasonable explanation for your site's ranking loss is the google update(s).

Although, I would also manually check a few URLs from the new site in google to see if they've been cached. Pick 10-20 URLs that used to rank well in google before migration and which now they're nowhere, and then type them into google in quotes and see if google outputs them, and if they do, click on those links and see whether the new URL shows up, or the old one.

If it's the old one it means that google has not cached the new URL and you should re-cache them (I don't know how, though, so you'll have to google it or figure this out yourself). If the new URLs are cached, then it's almost definitely a penalty resulted from a google update, at which point you just need to check what the update has targeted and then look up fixes for it online or on the forum (most big google updates are usually discussed in detail on BHW, so you're bound to find something that you can work with)


that's not necessarily bad and reason for a penalty. Lots of keywords can mean (the same few) keywords but which are mentioned excessively (which is bad because it's keyword stuffing), or it can mean totally different keywords (SEO entities as the new fancy term for LSI keywords is) but which are aplenty of, which is not bad. On the contrary, including as many SEO entities in your content as possible is good content optimization, so I don't think you should get stuck on the keyword stuffing / optimization issue just yet.


your guess is exactly my guess

Anyway, I would focus on the thing I mentioned above first, and if / when those things are clear you can look into more minor / hidden issues. But a site audit at this point is mandatory IMO

Thanks a lot for the input.

Trust me, I have audited the site countless times already and never found a single issue with the migration. I also asked a dozen of SEO people and they found nothing wrong.

I redirected the whole site 1:1 so every single URL has been redirected correctly.

I check the server logs every day and all Google requests on the old domain are 301 to the new domain.

Neither on the old domain nor the new one I see no 404 errors in GSC. On the old domain, everything appears as redirected, and on the new one 200 OK.

I will check the thing with the cache, interesting point.

Also, regarding the penalty and sandbox:

1. Do you think it's possible to recover if there would be a penalty involved?
2. If there would be a penalty involved does it make sense to rank for a couple of solid keywords with medium competition? Wouldn't the site lose everything if it would be penalized?
3. If there's no sandbox but a penalty why do my articles appear for very few searches on 1st page and then they disappear completely?

Nothing makes sense, honestly.

Are you sure a huge chunk of your URLs are not returning error 404s?

This is actually a big deal and usually is one of the major reasons sites fail after migrating to a new domain.

Yes, I checked everything and all URLs are redirected properly.

 

[tazarbm]

1. Do you think it's possible to recover if there would be a penalty involved?

some penalties can be recovered from (actually, most of them can be recovered from), but it depends on the penalty, obviously. The worst that can happen is your site getting de-indexed completely, but I've seen cases (as recent as few months ago on this very forum) of people getting de-indexed and then re-indexed few days later after submitting the site for re-indexing consideration. So, it's possible to recover even from the harshest penalties if needs be. Just don't ask me how to do this because I'm clueless

This being said, I still think you've not been penalized... at least not at site level anyway. At page level penalties happen frequently, and you won't even notice them most of the time, but those soft penalties are called filters and google has a lot of them in place for all sorts of things (keyword stuffing, anchor text overoptimization, link velocity, technical issues, and so on). So, I don't think it's a sitewide penalty, but rather a smaller one, possibly at page level. But I obviously don't know what could be wrong, I would need to check in more detail and compare your pages against the various google updates that could have possibly impacted your site

2. If there would be a penalty involved does it make sense to rank for a couple of solid keywords with medium competition? Wouldn't the site lose everything if it would be penalized?

it depends on the type (severity) of the penalty, as I said. But you're making a good point in the sense that if the penalty was harsh you would probably not rank at all

So, no reasons to get concerned... yet...

3. If there's no sandbox but a penalty why do my articles appear for very few searches on 1st page and then they disappear completely?

I have no answer for this, just my own theories with which many SEO experts don't agree with anyway most of the time. But since they're just theories I'll keep them to myself, hopefully someone can answer this for both of us

If the cache is updated with the new URLs my next guess would be to check the keyword stuffing like you mentioned in your OP, but I would also check how your content fares against your competition's content. Check the number of words, keyword densities, number of H2 - H6 tags, etc. and look for patterns that need to be replicated or avoided.

And speaking of H2 - H6 tags, I remember that, not long ago (possibly 1 month or so), there's been someone on the forum mentioning how pages that have keywords in their H2 - H6 tags are now penalized by google. Whether or not this is true I don't know as I've not tested it, but it's something you could possibly want to look into..

EDIT: oh, and also check internal links. Orphaned pages (pages that have no traffic and no backlinks) fall out of the SERPs quite often, so this might be a cause, too

 

[EMAOneBillion]

Very informative @tazarbm. Thanks again for your help on this!