Find out why your site experienced a significant SEO traffic loss.

1. Where do I
start looking
first if my
Organic Search
Traffic falls
dramatically?

2. First thing, keep calm!
It can happen to you,
it can happen to me,
it can happen to all of us,
I'm trying to see
It's a little too late,
I've made a little mistake,
it can happen to anyone,
so don't be afraid
Volker Hinkel (Fools Garden) wasn’t thinking about a Google Penalization
when he first wrote this wonderful song, but lets pretend he did.
SEO – SEM– Social

3. Before starting
When you have an organic search traffic drop, you should use this 5-
question checklist to identify the underlying cause of the loss of
traffic.
Before starting, make sure that the problem is actually an organic
search issue.
To do this go into Google Analytics and check your last 6 month trend
of the organic search traffic in:
Traffic Sources->Sources->Search->Organic .
Sure it’s a search engine traffic loss? Let’s start with the 5-questions
checklist then!
SEO – SEM– Social

4. 1. Has the website been
changed significantly?
A redesign could utterly wipe out rankings, especially if there isn’t a valid
redirect strategy.
Removal of content, changes in the taxonomy (site architecture) and other big
alterations could also affect rankings, negatively or positively.
Last but not least, check if your Google Analytics (or whatever analytics
software you are using) is still in place. Seems a stupid thing to suggest, but my
experience tells me otherwise.
Check when those changes occurred and see if it matches with the decrease of
traffic.
SEO – SEM– Social

5. 2. Has the website been hacked?
This is one of the most difficult questions to
answer if you don’t have some good SEO
experience.
Ingenious hacking methods perfectly adopted on my client’s website took me
away hours of sleep lately, so I know what I’m talking about.
Modern and sophisticated spammy attacks don’t necessarily affect the “good”
pages.
New directories of content are created, making it very difficult to find.
SEO – SEM– Social

6. In other cases, the spammy content is added to the
“good” pages but with a cloaking strategy (only search
engines see the spammy content, normal users will
continue to see the good content).
When a search engine discovers this hacked content, two
things could happen:
1. Your site gets listed as hacked and you get a warning
in webmaster tools,
2. Your site gets de-weighted and the entire website
looses rankings, with no warnings.
SEO – SEM– Social

7. Use the Google and Bing Webmaster Tools
to diagnose hacking problems.
Another way to diagnose a hack is by doing a
crawling report with the Google user agent
(Screaming Frog is a perfect tool to use).
You will have to look for spammy external
links from your content.
Rescue a hacked website could be a
nightmare, but if you are lucky enough it
would involve loading a clean backup (you
have a backup, right?) and changing all ftp,
user, and database passwords.
SEO – SEM– Social

8. 3. Have you been hit by negative
SEO?
If you have many enemies you are powerful. At least this is what I’ve been
told.
Negative SEO occurs when a competitor automates a large series of spammy
links at your website, which can result in site-wide rankings drops.
How to spot negative SEO? You have to perform a complete link audit. You
can use Webmaster tools and external tools like Open Site Explorer, Majestic
SEO and Link Assistant.
Google and Bing Webmaster Tools have a Disavow Links Tool which can be
used to tell search engines what links should be disavowed, because spammy.
I’ve done this once for a client and it worked perfectly. The client regained all
its rankings in less than 3 weeks.
SEO – SEM– Social

9. 4. Have you been hit by a
Ranking Penalty?
The first thing you should do to see if you have been hit by a major penalty is
to perform a site:www.yourdomain.com query. If your site doesn’t show up,
you have probably been banned.
Use Google or Bing Webmaster tools to check for warning messages. In most
cases, if you have been hit by a penalty you would receive a message.
Many penalties typically revolve around a sudden influx of bad links or
spammy content.
Conduct an SEO audit to ensure you are following best SEO practices and use
the reconsideration request tool (in Webmaster Tools) when you have fixed
the problem.
SEO – SEM– Social

10. 5. Has there been an
Algorithm update?
If you didn’t spot any problems yet, there is a good chance that your site has
been affected by a normal seasonal algorithm update.
Search through the major Blogs and Forums (Search Engine Lang and SEO
Roundtable are the most updated for Algo changes).
Additionally, have a look at “official” sources like the Google Webmaster Blog.
SEO – SEM– Social

11. Simone Luciani in a nutshell
I’m a Digital Marketing Consultant specialised in SEO
& Search Marketing in English and Italian Markets.
Based in the UK, London.
I have a degree in Internet Marketing and a Master
in Digital Marketing (The Institute of Direct and
Digital Marketing – London).
I’m a Google Qualified Individual certified for
Adwords and Google Analytics.
I have worked for 4 years as SEO Manager in eBay. I founded Studio Web Luciani
in 2009, working for companies like HomeAway, Expedia, RAI, Amadori,
Groupon, Fila, Piaggio, CESVI, REPLAY and more.
I’m the Author of Rankfirst – SEM Blog, and an occasional collaborator of Search
Marketing Standard (USA) and Search Engine People (Canada). I’m also a
teacher for the Bewe Academy (Social Marketing Master).

12. Thank You!
Contacts:
Mobile: +44 (0)79 00 46 26 12
Landline: +44 (0)20 81 80 21 03
Email: simone@studiowebluciani.com
Web: http://www.studiowebluciani.co.uk
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/studiowebluciani
SEO – SEM– Social