Restoring Traffic in the Financial Industry

In this post, we will try to present our achievement related to restoring traffic after a complete loss of rankings.

Do you want to rebuild traffic on your website? Do you want to regain lost rankings after a Google update? Do you want professionals to take care of your website?

Click here, we will take care of it!

The client decided to work with our company in April 2019, which was the moment when the organic traffic generated had practically dropped close to zero. Having many years of experience in international SEO - we set to work on the analysis! When analyzing these types of cases, it is worth starting your work by checking the search engine algorithm update history, e.g., moz.com, searchenginejournal.com, etc. When comparing data, it is worth taking location into account; major algorithm updates can roll out over months between specific data centers. Currently, minor or major updates happen almost every week; it is worth following community reports on seroundtable.com, while official information can be found on Google's official profile on Twitter.

The analyzed website recorded its largest drop in early October, which could have been the aftermath of the August 2018 update that affected YMYL (Your Money Your Life) websites.

TIP

If you notice major or minor drops, and your adopted strategy does not involve harmful activities, it is worth holding off on major changes to the site. Some algorithm changes can be rolled back within a few weeks; it is worth analyzing your website, but if you do not notice any major issues and find lower-quality sites in the top 10, you can quietly hope for a return to your previously held positions. Competitor analysis showed no major drops on domains that had previously been direct competitors of our client. Assuming that we knew what could have caused the drops, we prepared a strategy that step-by-step eliminated further factors that could have caused a penalty imposed on the site.

1. Comprehensive link audit and disavow file preparation
2. Technical website audit
3. Content analysis and correction
4. Link profile optimization

Link Audit and Disavow Preparation

This allowed us to understand the current profile of the domain. Paying attention to DR, anchor texts, traffic, and more importantly the thematic relevance of the domains, we prepared a dedicated disavow file containing about 10% of the domains linking to the client's site. During the analysis, we also paid attention to a rather rapid link growth, where within 5 months we recorded a 400% increase in links. In this case, these were thematically related domains with high DR. However, our attention was drawn to posts marked as sponsored articles, which could indicate unnaturally acquired backlinks.

Due to a possible algorithmic penalty associated with an unnatural link profile, we decided to change and redirect some of the most suspicious URLs. This type of filter can prove helpful in critical situations.

Technical Website Audit

Here we tried to eliminate all possible errors that were made during the development and further work on the site. Our biggest suspicions were raised by errors related to the implementation of aggregate rating, which is structured data that allows star ratings to be displayed in the SERPs, similar to the screenshot below. Incorrect implementation of these types of elements can result in a penalty and, consequently, the loss of hard-earned rankings. If you decide to implement this type of solution, do it in the most natural way possible using structured data suitable for the page type; in the case of reviews of, e.g., loan companies, we can apply review schema, where we can even indicate the author to build their authority.

Content Analysis

After analyzing the content on subpages that had previously performed very well in the results, we decided to make some of the copy more natural. This was done by desaturating them from an excessive amount of keywords, which were often used in their exact match target form. Currently, a very helpful tool that compares your competition in terms of length, saturation, and many other elements is Surferseo.com.

Link Profile Optimization

Because the existing profile was mostly based on sponsored articles purchased by the client, we decided to make the links more natural so that

As you can see in the screenshots below, day by day subsequent subpages were regaining positions lost over a year earlier, jumping from positions 19-20 directly to spots 1-3

At the turn of November and December, we managed to fully recover the lost positions, recording further growth and generating traffic from additional keywords.

TL;DR

If you are facing drops, do not panic - review information regarding possible algorithm updates, re-audit your site to look for potential errors, and monitor competitor movements in search results. Analyzing your past actions and fixing previous mistakes (a given technique might have worked in the past, but today it is worth focusing on the most natural ways to optimize your website) can yield great results even after your site has been excluded from top rankings for over a year. It is worth remembering that if we stick to a well-planned strategy focused on improving our site, we should not worry about sudden drops. If lower-quality sites outrank you, the algorithm change may be rolled back and you can regain your previously held positions.

Do you want to rebuild traffic on your website? Do you want to recover lost rankings after a Google update? Do you want professionals to take care of your website?

Click here, we will take care of it!