Indexed pages are declining

Our pages was indexed by (14.01.2008) 25,000 an fall to (17.02.2008) 16,300. (site:elo-forum.org - Google-Suche= )The advertising revenue (google-adsense) are also around $ 10-15 per day declined.
A Sitemap is installed.
The average visitor from approximately 6,000 to 3,883 declined. Although most visitors came about google.
In December 2007, we were with the keywords: ALG II, erwerbslos, arbeitslos, hartz IV -
always on the first 2 pages of google. The page-rank is from 3 to 4 fallen. We are using google-analytics

What could be the reason?



Martin

Ok - let's go over this in detail.

Firstly, we do expect your index page count to initially drop. This is a part of the process as duplicate pages get removed from the index. This is a good idea. But this count as measured in the Google site: query is also inaccurate in the sense that it fluctuates at all times. We recommend that it be used only for general trend information over a longer time period, spanning months. You will look forward growth in the average # of indexed pages reported over this time.

Some questions:

• Have you done any other changes to your forum at or about the time vBSEO was installed?
• Did you experience any downtime for your site during the past 2 months?
• Do you have the vBSEO sitemap generator installed?
• Using Analytics, check to see which pages where receiving the most traffic for you prior to installing vBSEO. Was it archive pages, or main forum pages?
• How many unique visitors were you getting before vBSEO was installed (per day). When did you notice a decline in this #?
• How many different keywords were generating traffic for your site prior to vBSEO, and how many are generating traffic now (from Analytics)?

Some comments/tips:

• Your site seems to be a bit overloaded with ads. I would like to see your template improved as well. You might consider using the vBSEO template, and following some of the guidelines for optimized AdSense placement listed here in our forum.
• I see that you have converted your welcome headers into an image, and you are using our Relevant Replacement feature. This is excellent.
• What is your forum theme? How many of your sub-forums are closely tied to this theme? How many are off topic?
• For the terms you are ranking for, do they lead to specific thread pages or content pages of another type?
• I would recommend using the replace showpost with permalink option.

Thanks for the detailed response. My answers to your questions are in italics

Some questions:

• Have you done any other changes to your forum at or about the time vBSEO was installed?

Yes, we installed VBadvanced CMS

• Did you experience any downtime for your site during the past 2 months?

no

• Do you have the vBSEO sitemap generator installed?

Yes

• Using Analytics, check to see which pages where receiving the most traffic for you prior to installing vBSEO. Was it archive pages, or main forum pages?

both

• How many unique visitors were you getting before vBSEO was installed (per day).

About 5.000-6.000 vistors per day

• When did you notice a decline in this #?

At the last 2 weeks

• How many different keywords were generating traffic for your site prior to vBSEO, and how many are generating traffic now (from Analytics)?
  
  We use google-analytics since the vbseo-installation.

Some comments/tips:

• Your site seems to be a bit overloaded with ads. I would like to see your template improved as well. You might consider using the vBSEO template, and following some of the guidelines for optimized AdSense placement listed here in our forum.

I did use the relevant placement. How many ads are optimal?

• I see that you have converted your welcome headers into an image, and you are using our Relevant Replacement feature. This is excellent.
• What is your forum theme?

Unemployment and social follow, social fight, alternative to regular work, law enforcement

• How many of , your sub-forums are closely tied to this theme?

Nearly all

• How many are off topic?

Only One, an some intern-sites. They are block via htaccess and robots.txt

• For the terms you are ranking for, do they lead to specific thread pages or content pages of another type?

e.g. http://tacheles-sozialhilfe.de, http://www.gegen-hartz.de , www.arbeitsagentur.de/sgb2 , Hartz IV 4 - Arbeitslosengeld II - ALG 2

• I would recommend using the replace showpost with permalink option.

Do you mean, only showpost?

The vBA could possibly have some impact if your homepage was ranking for terms in the forum names and/or descriptions.

What did you use for comparative stats before you installed vBSEO, if you just started using Analytics with vBSEO?

• For the terms you are ranking for, do they lead to specific thread pages or content pages of another type?

e.g. http://tacheles-sozialhilfe.de, http://www.gegen-hartz.de , www.arbeitsagentur.de/sgb2 , Hartz IV 4 - Arbeitslosengeld II - ALG 2

You have listed other sites? I don't understand. My question was "which pages on *your forum* were getting the traffic"?

You can search our forum for AdSense to find the optimization threads. There are several about placement and optimization, etc.

What did you use for comparative stats before you installed vBSEO, if you just started using Analytics with vBSEO?

We used a pagetoolservice Kostenlose Homepage erstellen mit Kostenlose Homepagetools von pagetools.de

You have listed other sites? I don't understand. My question was "which pages on *your forum* were getting the traffic"?

Sorry my mistake.
The ranking was:
1. News / Diskussionen / Tagespresse
2. ALG II
3. Abwehr von Behördenwillkür
4. Information

Martin

Hi Martin,

There is an issue with using Google Analytics to compare with statistics from another package.

There may often be large discrepancies depending on what method they use to get the stats, particularly using cookies vs. using log files.

However, we do know that you've seen drops for certain keywords, so this would certainly contribute to a real drop in traffic, and not one just presumed by a different in stats software.

Were any of the terms you ranked for within your forum names and/or descriptions?

Hi Joe,

they were ranked within the terms of forum-name/description

Martin

Ah - so my leading theory is that installing vBA moved these terms off of your homepage.

You should experiment with one of several options:

- Find a vBA module that allows you to feature specific forums on your vBA homepage, and link to those forums that include the terms you've lost position for.
- Write a vBA text block for the homepage that includes the terms and links to either internal forums and/or thread using the terms as anchor text.

You need to get them back onto the homepage full time to see if you can restore the traffic.

Once those terms disappeared from your homepage, you lost position for them. Installing vBA makes huge changes to the SEO characteristics of your homepage. So, this is one of the possibilities that we must watch for.

Once thing we can do beforehand, is do an analysis to find out which terms are actually sending traffic to our homepage. Obviously, if we remove them, we lose that traffic, so we have to be very careful (and strategic) about it.

Hi Joe,

Thanks you very much for your detailed response and spending time. I Think, we'll fist your last proposal.

In Germany it is late in the evening an I have to go sleeping.

Martin

In terms of money, try not to compare December's revenue with january or february. Unless you have a Valentines Day niche site, expect better advertising dollars to be spent in the holiday season than after it.

I found a mistake: When I e.g. Thread: Werbematerial - Erwerbslosen Forum Deutschland an individual contribution as a true Permalink call everything is ok. (Http://www.elo-forum.org/technische-...utschland.html # post4089).

But if I show the post-Link (# 3) take (Wieviel darf mir ab 01.07.2005 gepfändet werden?,) is a totally other thread open. ?
Could that be the reason?

I fixed that problem

Greeting Martin

Today, 19,300 pages were listed in google.

12 days later

google: 20,800 (from 16,300)
yahoo: Pages (56,500)| Inlinks (12,200)
msn: 925

What change in traffic has occurred now?

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

What change in traffic has occurred now?

It has become, unfortunately, not much changed. Between 3.600 and 5.000