Any thoughts?

[MrManyHat]

I have a side project that's been running since around 2020.

Spent 2020 adding products to the site, some link building, etc.

Not really done a lot other than add a few new products here and there ever since.

Organic traffic seemed to just drop off last year and I've not been able to recover it yet. I've been adding more links recently.

Ads still pull in revenue. I don't see any manual actions within GSC.

I suppose it could be more competition these days and it's just knocked me out of the serps for tons of keywords?

I tried to tie it in with a Google update but the closest one to the drop off was the review update I believe - this site is ecommerce and doesn't feature any reviews.

Would love to hear any other suggestions people may have - I understand it's not a lot of information to go on but shoot any questions and I'll try and answer them as best I can.

Thanks in advance for any help!

PS. peak traffic in this screenshot is around 7,500 - 10,000 visits a month. Currently trending between 200 - 300.

 

[TheSplinter]

It's hard to tell. Whatever you're doing before, you just got to continue doing better. Sometimes falling a couple of spots is enough to see such change. No one guarantees you will keep your ranking forever.

 

[sageshark]

I don't see any manual actions within GSC.

It's strange but many times Google does not show anything there.

By looking at the graph the first thing that comes to my mind is that your site is clearly hit by the update.

Does your site has any informational content other than the products? If yes, how many articles?

 

[MrManyHat]

It's hard to tell. Whatever you're doing before, you just got to continue doing better. Sometimes falling a couple of spots is enough to see such change. No one guarantees you will keep your ranking forever.

I wish I could just carry on doing what I did before, however it was pretty much nothing:

• Site was set up
• Products added
• Couple of blog posts just for authenticity
• First sale comes in from ads (start increasing spend)
• First organic sale comes in (rankings starting to appear)
• A couple of years go by, nothing but a few more products added - sales growing
• 2022 - traffic drops (shown in Ahrefs and GSC) around the time Google updates were happening

I just can't tie the drop and the updates together as I didn't think it would have affected the site...

It's strange but many times Google does not show anything there.

By looking at the graph the first thing that comes to my mind is that your site is clearly hit by the update.

Does your site has any informational content other than the products? If yes, how many articles?

Yes, update was my first thought but it didn't seem like it would affect the site - maybe I'm wrong?

There's about 5 blog posts on there (they've never been a source of traffic).

Currently around 250 products. All main category pages have descriptions (many of which have been optimised and included information that competitors talk about). Some are just a quick description for the sake of it. Some others simply don't have any content other than the products.

Maybe that's the reason - my site might be considered 'thin' due to category pages having very little content? All my product pages have a description - although most share over 80% of the content (very similar products) with just a line or 2 that's unique on each.

It would be good to hear your thoughts. It might help me to try some stuff that I haven't even thought of.

Edit: just checked the dates. October 4th 2022 was when the traffic started to nosedive and by November 9th 2022 it was pretty much at the levels I see today. Screenshot below shows updates that happened around this kind of time - do you think it could be any of those?

 

[Mr. Blackhat]

Have you checked if your pages are still indexed in GSC? The pages tab should show when/if they got de-indexed. You should also check the crawl rate to see if Google spiders stopped crawling your site around that time as well.

 

[sageshark]

do you think it could be any of those?

Yes, now I am sure it is because of those Nov - Dec updates.

I have a website that suffered due to that update in Dec 22. I did the same thing, I had hundreds of affiliate products and no valuable content on those pages. Before Dec 22 that site was fetching 400 to 500 visitors per day. After Dec the traffic nosedived to 10-20 visitors per day.

So it is surely a thin content penalty.

Since that site was not my money site so it didn't bother me much. Also I did not take any efforts to reconstruct the site and undo the penalty. So I do not know at this moment if this can be reversed or not. But all in all it doesn't look like that harsh penalty because there were some informative posts in my site those are still getting some views. So I think if I rework on the site who knows I can revive it!

Same can happen in your case too. So do not get disappointed. Start rebuilding the site. Add good content and build some good backlinks.

If you could revive yours I will take heart from your story and will rebuild mine .

 

[MrManyHat]

Have you checked if your pages are still indexed in GSC? The pages tab should show when/if they got de-indexed. You should also check the crawl rate to see if Google spiders stopped crawling your site around that time as well.

I've just gone ahead and double checked - all pages that need to be are still indexed (over 450 pages which includes categories and products).

However, I've noticed a few indexed pages within GSC that shouldn't be there. They've not been created by myself, I can't locate them within Shopify and they're completely unrelated to the business.

One URL is a huge string, apparently within /collections/ and includes words to do with EA and fifa coins? Another is about casino and gambling - what are your thoughts on this? How could they have got there and, if they still exist, how the hell do I find them to remove them?

Does this indicate my site could have been tampered with?

Yes, now I am sure it is because of those Nov - Dec updates.

I have a website that suffered due to that update in Dec 22. I did the same thing, I had hundreds of affiliate products and no valuable content on those pages. Before Dec 22 that site was fetching 400 to 500 visitors per day. After Dec the traffic nosedived to 10-20 visitors per day.

So it is surely a thin content penalty.

Since that site was not my money site so it didn't bother me much. Also I did not take any efforts to reconstruct the site and undo the penalty. So I do not know at this moment if this can be reversed or not. But all in all it doesn't look like that harsh penalty because there were some informative posts in my site those are still getting some views. So I think if I rework on the site who knows I can revive it!

Same can happen in your case too. So do not get disappointed. Start rebuilding the site. Add good content and build some good backlinks.

If you could revive yours I will take heart from your story and will rebuild mine .

I was thinking thin content. I will put some effort into making sure every category page includes a description and maybe start going through the most popular products and adding some more text. I'll also try adding some blog posts and see what happens.

In terms of backlinks, I'll keep trying to shoot them at the website when funds allow as I imagine I'll need them too as the competition is way higher than it was 3 years ago.

I'll try my best to get the organic traffic back. Worst case scenario I can scale ads up because they still bring in revenue.

But I want the organic back so you can get motivated to fix yours too!

 

[onedaydayone]

Try to go through internal linking especially when doesn't get any impact from backlinks. Also, if you are in a competitive niche (like many of us xd) never don't stop working on articles. Add some new insights, keywords, and mark your own experience for EEAT.

 

[MrManyHat]

Try to go through internal linking especially when doesn't get any impact from backlinks. Also, if you are in a competitive niche (like many of us xd) never don't stop working on articles. Add some new insights, keywords, and mark your own experience for EEAT.

Thanks, I will certainly have another look through the internal links.

Will definitely get round to adding some more articles once the category pages are done!

 

[MrManyHat]

Realised I should check Bing too and it just so happens my rankings there are similar to what I had on Google before November 2022.

Looks like this is definitely Google punishing the site in some way.

 

[MrManyHat]

Gone ahead and ordered some more links to main pages.

Improved content on homepage and main traffic page.

Updated a few products in terms of content.

Internal linking added where necessary so far.

Added more content and images to current blog posts.