Ranking dropped by 7 positions for many keywords
-
Hey,
Since yesterday my ranking dropped by in average 7 positions for most keywords. iIm not 100% sure whats the matter. I rank under the top3 for a quite comptetitive keyword since several months. During the last 4 weeks it wasn't that stady (between 2 - 4) because the competition is using an aggressiv link building method.
I'm adding constantly new content and the link building is also quite natural. Maybe I linked the same sites from some of my blogs too often... and Google may see it as a "link network". I experience the same for two of those sites. Maybe I should remove those links?Any suggestions?
Thanks!
-
It's been a month or so since this was posted. Do you have any updates? Have your rankings changed? Did you figure out what might have happened? Anything for us to learn from or clues to try to help you more would be great.
-
I just read that other people have the same prob. Since Tuesday their rankings dropped as well. Could it still be Panda? I noticed that our content gets copied quite often. Alone one paragraph on the front page can be found over 1300 times on Google.com. Could that be an issue? But Google should acutally recognize which site published the content first...
-
Ok, if any new content has been added to the main website I'd check if the linking structure has changed too. That means, for example, to check out if before you were linking the ranking pages from the index page or side wide and now, with the new content added, those links have gone or shifted to secondary locations.
While for the "link network" you should work also on gaining inbound links from other C-blocks so that you diversify and certainly acquire more trust.
-
This happened to me, almost all of my keywords dropped several pages all at once. It took a lot of digging, but I found out what was causing it, at least in my case.
I had been ignoring some pretty obvious crawl errors for a few weeks. After my keywords got dropped, I decided it might be a good time to go fix the crawl errors. Within a day of fixing them, my keywords reappeared and crawled back up to their original positions within a few days.
Again, not saying this is your problem, but it's pretty obvious to me that Google doesn't like crawl errors.
-
Lets hope the good results return.
-
We have a fully staffed editorial team. We update content constantly. I have seen a resurgence of newer spammy referral sites pop up as well as some other rather bizarre results. Query best strollers in google. You should see Conde Nast's homepage as the 5th result which is completely irrelevant.
Check out this other users comment on this URL http://forums.ebay.com/db2/topic/Ebay-Partner-Network/Googles-Algo-Panda/5100011135
I believe this to be an algo tweak/update,.
-
Actually we dont have any keyword domains. The guys who are ranking now on 2,3 etc. are doing so with one page of relevant content but 100s of keyword backlinks.
Maybe I will remove a few of the links on blogs from which I link to those other two sites as well.
Justin, are you continuing linkbuilding + adding new content from time to time or do you change anything else on your sites?
-
I've seen similar drops for my site as well. Many different categories where we used to rank 1,2 we are now in the 6,7,8 range. I do see lots of keyword domain referral sites popping back up. I'm assuming its another tweak.
-
Hey,
Yes, the main site is on Wordpress, but I added an aditional blog to the site on which we post new articles every week. We also have a forum with around 2k posts. I only added an image to the front page and linked from the blog to one of the pages from the main site.
The strange thing is that it also happened to two other domains for which I placed links...Do you think google recognized it as a "link network" and therefor the ranking drop?
-
Hi Netminds,
I'd check if any changes have been made to the internal link structure of your website. Is it blog (Wordpress) based?
-
Hey Netminds,
did you update any code for the page(s) on that keyword? sometimes google will knock you down, and then after a spider cache or two it will return to normal (assuming no massive difference).
hope it returns! :>)
-
Thanks Ryan. However, other sites which are also linked from some of those blogs are still ranking as before... Would you just continue with link building and adding content as before (of course keeping the sites separated) or would you also remove some links? A few weeks ago I even got a backlink from bbc.co.uk...
-
If you dropped 1-2 positions then it can be your competition improving their sites.
If you dropped 30+ positions I would suspect your site is under a penalty.
Dropping 7 positions leads me to first look at your site's links. There is a strong chance some important links to your site have been devalued. This could be due to reasons unrelated to your site, such as the source has been penalized. It could also be for reasons related to your site. I would suggest a careful examination of your links.
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
-
Too Many links in a Ecommerce website
Hello, I am running a website, which is a kind of e-commerce website. We are providing doctors appointments and online consultations in Pakistan. I am checking my page's SEO using moz tool, it shows me too many links on the page. My question is how many links should we have on a single page?. As on my website every single doctor has a link to his profile, I am using paginations plus i have added internal links to other pages which is related to same specialist doctors. looking for the answer to this question
Link Building | | MuhammadNoman-Imam0 -
Sudden big drop for keyword ranking this month -Numerous possible factors... which is most likely?
Hi I have a fairly new site (domain around 1 year and 6 months old) and in December it was sitting on Google's second page for our main keyword "cv writing service" In late December we had a couple of stories picked up by the press and got some really good contextual links from a handful of well known media sites with DA60 and above. Naturally I thought this would have a positive effect on our position for our keyword so I checked and was shocked to see that the site is now sitting on page 4... A drop of 2 pages Also my site has dropped one point in DA on the Moz open site explorer I have some possible theroies for the drop but would really appreicate if anyone could point me in the right direction for the possible cause of this drop and what I need to focus on to fix tihs issue. Theories.... I made some big changes to the copy of my homepage and aboutapge a few weeks before the stories were picked up - although the copy is still similar content and optimised for my keywords I had some early SEO work done by a freelancer in the early days and I now realise that a lot of the links are very weak and on quite poor looking sites (although they are not flagged as spammy in OSE, I think they are spammy) The story that got picked up by the media was slightly off topic - it was about jobs rather than CV's - could this make google think that my site is not relevant? Prior to these stories being picked up - we took a short break from link building for a few months due to resource issues So if anyone knows if any of these factors are likely to have caused the drop I would be grateful to know! Thanks Andrew
Link Building | | Fennzil0 -
How to find keyword related questions to answer?
Is there any search operator to find keyword relevant questions on yahoo answers and on other websites? So that I can answer those and put my website link.
Link Building | | Green.landon0 -
DMOZ Directory Impact on Rankings
For about 5-10 years ago many SEOers said that it is in particular important to be in Dmoz. What about nowadays?
Link Building | | kitoks
Moreover is it still working and accepting new projects. I suggested several of my projects but no news from them0 -
Why should I pay attention to sites that rank well in Bing?
If Google has the most market share, why would I use Bing to find backlinks. This question relates to Raven Tools using backlinks found on Bing for their Domain Research tool? Wouldn't that make their tool inferior to one that uses Google? Thanks, Sam
Link Building | | PGD20110 -
Ranking going down slowly please help
Hi I got a domain http://www.childrensfunkyfurniture.com/ and my main keyword is childrens beds. Use to be on first page for the last six years now drop to page 2, I am struggling to find the cause. Would appreciate if anyone could look into the website and provide some information. Many Thanks
Link Building | | conversiontactics0 -
Genuine Adult Product Site, Positive or Negative for Links?
We have client that have a non spam site that sells genuine adult products, that include penis pills and penis enlargement products. My worry is that as these products are often associated with spam and link from this site my have a negative impact if Google et al view them as spam, should i consider no-following these links?
Link Building | | EAOM0 -
One keyword per page?
I have a health insurance lead gen domain. One of the keywords I want to rank for are "student health insurance". If I have a related keyword like "aetna student health insurance", is it better to include that keyword and backlinks with that anchor text to my "student health insurance" page or do a separate page for that keyword?
Link Building | | yougotmymoney10