Dropped off google rankings cannot see why - robots, seo??

Using 1.5.5f (paying someone to upgrade to 1.5.7 soon if I can improve website seo)

I used to appear on first page on google for most of my products and get around 30 small orders per day. Over the past year it has dropped to around 2 per day if I am lucky. At this rate I may need to close the business after 15 years of trading.

The products are still popular and others selling similar are showing up, don't know if it's my seo or robots.txt etc

For seo I have completed meta-data for all products, renamed all images to show what they are instead of 177887ff.jpg etc, added alt text, added a cleaner theme instead of all my old dreamweaver created pages (done 3 years ago), set up a blog and a gallery and forum all linking to my main website.

For robots txt I have this:
User-agent: *
Allow: /
Disallow: /accounts/login/?next=
Disallow: /comments/flag/
Disallow: /login.php
Disallow: /?main_page=
Disallow: /index.php?main_page=login
Disallow: /search/
User-Agent: Googlebot-Image
Allow: /images/

I am ok hiring someone to sort this out as I know very little about zencart, but at stumped as to what has happened from thousands of daily visitors to hardly any.

website beeunique.co.uk

Any help appreciated as worried sick here.

Nickki

I believe that you're facing the 'samesite' cookie requirement that's now being enforced by browsers.

In each of your /includes/init_includes/init_sessions.php and /admin/includes/init_includes/init_sessions.php, find the following line

session_set_cookie_params(0, $path, (zen_not_null($cookieDomain) ? $domainPrefix . $cookieDomain : ''), $secureFlag, TRUE);

and change that to

//-bof-Setting samesite cookies (using older array notation due to PHP 5.3)
//session_set_cookie_params(0, $path, (zen_not_null($cookieDomain) ? $domainPrefix . $cookieDomain : ''), $secureFlag, TRUE);
$samesite = (defined('COOKIE_SAMESITE')) ? COOKIE_SAMESITE : 'lax';
if (!in_array($samesite, array('lax', 'strict', 'none'))) $samesite = 'lax';

if (PHP_VERSION_ID < 70300) {
    session_set_cookie_params(0, $path .'; samesite='.$samesite, (zen_not_null($cookieDomain) ? $domainPrefix . $cookieDomain : ''), $secureFlag, TRUE);
} else {
    session_set_cookie_params(array(
        'lifetime' => 0,
        'path' => $path,
        'domain' => (zen_not_null($cookieDomain) ? $domainPrefix . $cookieDomain : ''),
        'secure' => $secureFlag,
        'httponly' => TRUE,
        'samesite' => $samesite
    ));
}
//-eof-samesite cookie

What payment method(s) are being used on the site? Depending on how the payment-module connects to the payment provider, an additional change might be needed.

You seem to have a bunch of issues, possibly caused by your URL rewriter too. When I click on the Dye Cover product I get a partially blank screen on

https://www.beeunique.co.uk/dye-accessories/gloves-capes/dye-cover-elasticated?cPath=&

Also you have some javascript issues, you're not serving woff2 files, etc. Lots of things to fix.

lat9:

I believe that you're facing the 'samesite' cookie requirement that's now being enforced by browsers.

I'm interested.... what are the symptoms? I have a rather tricky one I have been working on

mprough:

I'm interested.... what are the symptoms? I have a rather tricky one I have been working on
The symptoms that I've seen are session timeouts during the 'checkout_process' step, especially for offsite payment methods.

lat9:

The symptoms that I've seen are session timeouts during the 'checkout_process' step, especially for offsite payment methods.

Thanks for the heads up =)

I think you are missing

<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />

in your html_header

I know it sounds wierd but I had similar problem and ading this solved my indexing issue

<?php if (defined('ROBOTS_PAGES_TO_SKIP') && in_array($current_page_base,explode(",",constant('ROBOTS_PAGES_TO_SKIP'))) || $current_page_base=='down_for_maintenance' || $robotsNoIndex === true) { ?> <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" /> <?php } else echo '<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />'; ?>

Say if it helped or not.

perfumbg:

I think you are missing

<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />

in your html_header

I know it sounds wierd but I had similar problem and ading this solved my indexing issue

<?php if (defined('ROBOTS_PAGES_TO_SKIP') && in_array($current_page_base,explode(",",constant('ROBOTS_PAGES_TO_SKIP'))) || $current_page_base=='down_for_maintenance' || $robotsNoIndex === true) { ?> <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" /> <?php } else echo '<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />'; ?>

Say if it helped or not.

Not necessary.

DrByte:

Not necessary.

I know but this fixed my issue, in the past when I upgraded.

TO BeePud

Other problems that may cause drop in rankings are:

1. MOBILE Friendly Design (you should finish your design)

2. PAGE SPEED (you have to follow best practices)

3. LARGE NUMBER OF PAGES WITH REWRITEN URLS (which will cause drop for a limited time until google re-craws the new urls, not after an year)

As I re-checked your site i've found some isues:

There are some links that dont work for example: "Dye Cover (Elasticated)"

Also do you need al this css ?

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/includes/templates/yourstore/external/slick/slick.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/includes/templates/yourstore/css/templatecss.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/includes/templates/yourstore/css/custom_style.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/includes/templates/yourstore/external/font/style.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/includes/templates/yourstore/css/devicecss.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/includes/templates/yourstore/external/rs-plugin/css/settings.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/includes/templates/yourstore/css/style_imagehover.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/includes/templates/yourstore/css/stylesheet_combine_css.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/includes/templates/yourstore/css/stylesheet_user_customcss.css" />

And all the javascripts for your design to work?

I would sugest removing every javascript as your design is having only 2 or 3 sliders for wich you can probably use custom js with a few lines not the heavy jquery.

Also pay someone to make your design look more proffesional, also you can probably combine your css files in one css, also remove every unused lines and for a perfect finish you can compres it. Make it as small as possible 20-40kb at most.

Try to check your meta title of before the problem started

There are a lot of issues that have to be fixed, so your site can rank in Google or modern SE in 2020 and after.

If you dont know what you are doing, you are better of finding someone who can fix your issues as you may do more harm than good.

for what it is worth,

1. Aside from technical issues that do need to be fixed as pointed out it is important to establish which urls are indexed by Google and how they are indexed (if you haven't already done so)
2. Then of course take into account the significant Google Algorithm changes made in October 2019 - a prime target was 'quality of content' as well as the volume of quality content on a site and not just product descriptions - quality articles and blog posts are even more important now than ever. (I went from #2 to #6 on one of my sites - quality content is the issue, but went to #1 with another site that has a lot of really great conten, articles etc.)

indxed pages;

I would try working with Google Search Console (old Google Webmaster Tools) - this is an obvious statement but make sure your site is listed your Google Search Console, if not do a search on how to set it up.

GSC will show you which pages are indexed and what the history is of number of pages indexed, i.e. the ups and downs over a period of time.

Check the sitemaps section - make sure Google is indexing from your sitemap - if you see a lot of 'indexed but not in sitemap' then the problem could be your url rewriter (as it was in my case some time back).

For pages not indexed use the 'inspect url' tab at the top of page - then if not indexed you can request indexing. If it cannot be indexed Google will tell you why.

Just a quick use of Chrome developer tools found 69 warning/errors in HTML, 227 errors in CSS with 1790 warnings, and 58 accessibility errors.

That's the main page. :ohmy: You also have two 404 and one 403 errors.

Your Lighthouse scores are 66 - 70 - 79 - 83

Use a web tool to turn off image display and you will see that a SE has no idea what you top main banners or products are. Remember that SEs cannot see an image. They must be told what it is.

Google and browsers will only bend so much before they break. :no:

My apologies for not replying sooner - I thought nobody has replied as had 'replies' turned on but no notifications.

I have no idea about zencart and have been employing someone to do the upgrades for me - I had no idea the website had this large amount of errors and assumed css sheets and javascript issues were being dealt with during the upgrades.

If any of you can sort out the issues mentioned here can you conatct me via PM with a price? The person I employ to do the upgrade is currently changing me from 1.5.5 to 1.5.7b but that should be sorted within a week or so, so the website issues can be sorted anytime after that.

I am slowly learning php and zencart so can do small work/maintenance on it, but things like combining css sheets and removing javascript etc is way beyond my ability.

Thanks again for the feedback and if you can help with the issues.

perfumbg:

I know but this fixed my issue, in the past when I upgraded.

That is only your perception as it is the search engine's default behavior.

~Melanie