Why did our ranking go up, then drop down again?
-
Hello SEOMoz community.
I work for a website that runs a collectibles news service and sells collectibles online.
I recently renamed one of the pages from "Stock for Sale" to "Collectibles for Sale" anticipating this would help our ranking for the term "collectibles for sale". This changes the Title, URL and h1 to Collectible for Sale.
A few days later we were up to 5th on Google UK for that keyword.
But now after the weekend we've dropped off the face of the earth... Or at least somewhere low down in the rankings.
I imagine there could be multiple reasons for this, but what are the most likely causes?
There is not much text on the page, it contains an iFrame with image boxes that link to relevant collectibles categories.
Website: www.paulfrasercollectibles.com
-
We used to use a different style URL which just included the docid and catid. At this point we manually entered friendly URL redirects in the CMS.
At the beginning of this month we converted to an automatic friendly url system. The url is generated from the article title. Old urls now use the rel="canonical" to direct to the correct page which is always of the format:
www.paulfrasercollectibles.com/category/article-title/0000.page
I'm not entirely sure if we have the ability to make 301 redirects.
-
Hey everyone.
Can I just add something else. I changed the text on another page, adding more information about the service the company provides. The page is titled "Investment Newsletter" it was page 3 Google UK for that term and had been for a while.
It went up to page 2. And now its dropped away somewhere. This change was implemented over a week ago.
Why is this happening? Surely it shouldn't be a result of me changing the content on the page?
I've never seen anything on SEOMoz to suggest that improving a pages content will lose my rank in Google.
Any suggestions?
Can I also add, that we changed the Meta description on the home page from being the same as the title:
"Latest news from the world of high-end collectibles and investments"
to
"Free daily news for collectors plus antiques, memorabilia and investment-grade collectibles for sale."
This has seen us drop from 5th place on the 1st page in the UK. to the 3rd page on Google.
But the Meta description only has limited SEO effect and surely this is a change for the better?
-
Adrian,
We always see an initial high ranking that last about a week then goes back down sometimes a few pages..Over a 2 month period we see the ranking usually restore.
-
Hi Adrian
In regards to the other tags, I take it back, it was Chrome's view source code coloring, made tags look broken at quick glance. Sorry!
As far as the canonical, I was just curious why there are two URLs for that page to begin with? Is it that you need the '1850' in the URL to provide the GET call to the database?
It appears as if all your category level pages operate this way? You should be able to get a singular, clean URL and make your category call without the need for duplicate pages at all.
If this is not the case, you may want to 301 Redirect the '1850' page to the other page. There doesn't seem to be a need for both pages to be accessible by users.
Hope that helps!
-Dan
-
Hi Dan, thanks for the response.
I see what you mean about the two versions. It seems to be worse than that as well. The page was originally called "Stock for Sale" which is also indexed twice.
We were under the impression that using rel="canonical" would mean Google only indexed one url for the page. Even if older URL's are still used on the website. Should this other urls drop out of the index on their own?
As for the unclosed title and style tags. I don't see what you mean. To me they seem to be perfectly fine, and he haven't encountered any problems with these before.
Cheers
-
It appears as if you have two versions of the page indexed;
http://www.paulfrasercollectibles.com/Collectibles-for-Sale/1850.page
and
http://www.paulfrasercollectibles.com/Collectibles-for-Sale/
The rel="canonical" cites http://www.paulfrasercollectibles.com/Collectibles-for-Sale/1850.page as the page that should count in the index, however on your site its the other page which is linked to from the menu.
It would require a deeper look at things to tell what is going on for sure, but having duplicate versions of the same page in the index is certainly something of concern.
At quick glance I see a few other things that should be addressed when I view source; including a style tag and title tag not closing correctly.
-Dan
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Do product sub-categories compete with top level categories for rankings?
Hi All, This question is for an eccomerce site with a very large sku count (over 3million individual sku's). As the person responsible for SEO on the site, I am often playing catchup to some of our web merchandisers. My question is this: Will creating sub-catagories that have a page title and H1 tag that include the top level category name plus a refinement be competing with each other and the top level category for rankings? The products that I am specifically talking about are Funko Pops! (some of you might collect them). There are different sub-sets of Funko Pops such as Funko Pop!: Rocks, Funko Pop!: Movies, Funko Pop! Television ect. Im worried that if I create many pages with these titles/h1 tags that they will end up competing for the query "funko pops"... something I worked hard to rank above Amazon for. Any thoughts would be appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | Jason-Reid0 -
Can you use multiple keywords for on page for ranking?
I understand using a keyword (or phrase) and correctly building that into the site structure (URL, Title Tag, body, etc). So, this question is going to be elementary, but I am starting to question myself as I write content. I have a client, for example, that has a new site and a page for Chocolate cakes. Now the other pages they built out are for Cheesecakes, Cupcakes, etc. So we optimized the Chocolate cakes page with our keyword throughout (Getting an A+ on page content grade). But now they are asking me why they can't be found for chocolate eclairs, chocolate fudge cake, devils chocolate cake, double chocolate cake, etc. My first quick answer is that they should build more pages. But am I doing this wrong?
On-Page Optimization | | cschwartzel0 -
Some of my pages have KWs in common and google is switching those resulting in rank loss, how to fix that?
Hello, my site deals with pictures you can download and print for free. Because people search for it I have several page with similar content. For example: picture of dog free printing image of dog free printing painting of dog free printing picture of cat free printing image of cat free printing painting of cat free printing Just as an example. Now after tracking my ranks I found out that google changes those sites in the rankings. For example for the kw picture of dog free printing the site for picture of dog free printing is in the rankings but on another day it is image of dog free printing and on another painting of dog free printing. So those Google is switching the pages for one kw some times and it seems each time it does that I'm loosing rankings. I'm thinking it is because image of dog free printing and painting of dog free printing isn't as well optimized as the page that should appear: picture of dog free printing. With the more general kw of free printing it is even more complicated. I get some traffic through free printing (just an example) and all 6 example pages are being shown in the google search results from one day to another and again it looses some rank each time. What can I do to stop this?
On-Page Optimization | | SeeSharp10 -
Why are my rankings down?
My rankings seem to be going down all the time. Any idea why? www.rewardcharts4kids.com Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | nicolebd0 -
Authorship and 50% Drop in Search Traffic
Hi. I had some problems with my content being copied by other sites, and was suggested to claim my pages. Immediately after Google started listing the posts with my photo next to them my traffic picked up slightly but since, over the past few weeks, it has dropped by about 50%! It seems that the average position has declined (as has the CTR) At the same time as claiming authorship I added the post date to my articles which I have now removed. Does anyone have any ideas for me? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | ben10000 -
Yesterday our site had a page rank of 5, today not ranked.
All pages on our site as of today are showing current page is not ranked by google, we have been page rank 5 for about 4 years now, we still seem to be showing in google searches. Anyone have any ideas as to why?
On-Page Optimization | | wcuk0 -
Dropped 12 after following SEOMOZ Tips
I changed up my on page stuff via SEOMOZ tips, and I dropped like a rock in water 12 positions from 29 to 41 over night for homes for sale in casa Grande AZ. What did I majorly do wrong?
On-Page Optimization | | sansonj0 -
My report indicated that I have 340 crawl warnings. Not sure how to fix them. Please provide links on where I need to go to fix them.
My report indicated that I have 340 crawl warnings. Not sure how to fix them. Please provide links on where I need to go to fix them. http://pro.seomoz.org/campaigns/95663/issues#notice-issues
On-Page Optimization | | cyaindc0