My competitor pushed me down the SERP out of nowhere. How do I fix this?
-
Hi, my ecommerce site used to rank #2 (my homepage) for my primary keyword on Google for over a year. #1 has always been my competitor's homepage. Since Monday 10/10, my competitor's Shop page -- which uses this keyword only 6x within the content of that page and has NEVER been ranked -- is #2 bumping me down to #3
I feel this is a result of the last Penguin update. My best guess is their homepage popularity -- due to backlinks and being #1 SERP rank -- has transferred popularity to their Shop page. Is that normal for Google to do that?
Any advice or guidance would be much appreciated.
-
This can be anything but I'm suggesting to do comparison: links, anchors, content on your website and his website. Then with data you should improve your website. Can content be better? Correct it. Can links be better/stronger? Add them. Etc etc... I know this looks like general advise but if you need help with comparing top10 websites with your website, can help you.
There're more possibilities than penguin.
-
Thank you, Bernadette. But if my links got devalued, why does that make my competitor's Shop page appear out of nowhere? It's never been ranked before.
And regarding keyword density, I've always read good content and backlinks are the 2 primary factors in SEO ranking. So how can content be good if it doesn't refer to the keyword? How does Google recognize good content relative to keyword usage? Is there a primary SEO factor I'm forgetting?
-
Taylorw, you mention the number of times the keyword is mentioned on the page, 6 times... which really has very little to do with search engine rankings anymore. Generally speaking, keyword density and how many times a keyword is mentioned on a page is not a major factor now.
You alluded to links, and you're right, there is a good chance that your search engine rankings have changed due to the Penguin update that recently occurred. It could still be other factors, though.
I wouldn't think necessarily that it's your competitor pushing you down--it could be, in fact, that your site's rankings went down because of certain links that you have that have been devalued, dropping your rankings. Without specific knowledge about your URL(s), there's not much anyone can do to give you more specific advice.
I would, though, take a careful look at all of the links pointing to your website, especially looking for low quality links that may need to be removed and/or disavowed.
-
Can you share the query ?
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Site appearing and disappearing from google serps.
Hi, My website is normally on page 2-3 on google consistently. Over the past month it has been appearing and then completely disappearing from the serps. One day it will be on page 2, then the next day completely missing from the serps. When i check the index it seems to be indexed correctly when doing site:mysite.com. I don't understand why this keeps happening, any experience with this issue? It doesn't seem to be a google dance as far as I can tell. When my other sites dance they typically just go up or down a few ranks for a couple weeks until they stabilize. Not completely fall off the search engine.
Algorithm Updates | | Chris_www0 -
Google sets brand/domain name at the end of SERP titles
Hi all, I am experiencing that Google puts our domain name at the end of the titles in SERPs. So if ia have a title: "See our super cool website", Google would show "See our super cool website - Betxpert.com" in the SERPs Well. This is okay. Apart from the fact that i myself often put the brand name in the title AND the fact that Google mispells the site name. The brand is BetXpert with a upper case X...so when i get a SERP with "See our super cool website - BetXpert - Betxpert.com" I am annoyed 🙂 Any one out the know how to tell Google the EXACT brand name, such that they do not set a value the site owner does not want to have? -Rasmus
Algorithm Updates | | rasmusbang0 -
Pages fluctuating +/- 70 positions in Google SERPs?
I've got some pages that appear somewhere around #25 in Google. Every now and then, it just goes away from the top 100 results for a few days (even up to a week) and then it comes back. I've got other pages that rank around #8 which falls down to about #75 for a while and then it comes back. But while a page may be gone from the top 100 results in the US, it still ranks at about the same place everywhere else in the world (+/- 10 positions). I've seen this happen in the past but never it happened so often. What gives?!?
Algorithm Updates | | sbrault740 -
Getting squeezed out of SERP by local results
Hi All, I wanted to get some opinions on a phenomenon that I know others are dealing with... We have a client who is an online-only business (though they do have an office/warehouse location). The on-page is great, and the site has good domain authority for its niche. The issue is that Google is localizing most of their search terms - And our client is getting squeezed down and out in the SERPs by the local listings. How is everyone dealing with this issue? It seems like we'll never get the site to out-rank the local listings in a given geo. Thanks, Lee
Algorithm Updates | | vectormedia0 -
I need help with drastic SERP difference between Bing and Google
One of our sites that has been around for a couple of years has about 60,000 pages showing on google, however, bing only shows 90 pages for the site. This same phenomenon has been happening across the board for our sites. Any ideas to improve our indexing results for bing?
Algorithm Updates | | atuomala0 -
SERP and SEO Moz ranking
Until a couple of months ago the predicted SEO Moz ranking for a specific keyword was fairly close to what I actually experienced with my website. However, since then the correlation has not been good. For example, according to SEO Moz I am ranked #1 for a specific keyword with google.ca and google.com yet my site actually shows up consistently at #3 for that keyword. Has anyone else noticed this divergence?
Algorithm Updates | | casper4340 -
Title of home page is changed to domain name in SERPs
Hi, We have a unique problem, we are getting a totally different title in Google serps for a large site. When we search with domain name with space in google.com. We are getting title as domain name with space. We don't have any Open Directory listing. We don't have any cannonical issues and other pages with title as domain name. Can you please tell us what we have to do get our original title back in SERP ? Thanks, With Regards,
Algorithm Updates | | semshah1430 -
What's the best way to discover which search terms competitors are highly-ranked for?
I'd like to know for which search terms competitors appear in the top 10, but I haven't found an efficient way to do so. Any help is appreciated...thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | actionagainsthunger0