Multiple keyword rankings declined dramitically. Why??

[DTOSI]

SEO Moz has reported 7 of my keywords declined dramatically overnight. One word even went down 18 positions in Google. I have a few ideas on why, but none of them really make sence.

1.) The night before the decline I deleted around 6 "test pages" from our website. None of them could be reached through our website but they could be found by typing in the url. Most of these pages only said things like "test", but one of them was a draft of a keyword rich page within my website that only included some of the keywords that went down in ranking. Could the fact that I deleted this page be the cause of the ranking decline?

2.) About two weeks ago I purchased a url volusion-store-design.com which is one of my keywords and forward the address to an internal page within my website http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Store-Design. Could have this hurt my rankings, like Google is considering it duplicate content or something?

If anyone has some ideas please help.

Here are the keywords that I lost ranking for:

volusion developers ---- down 18

volusion features ----- down 5

volusion store design ----- down 2

volusion templates ------ down 11

volusion designers ------ down 4

free volusion templates ------ down 4

ecommerce volusion features ------ down 3

Here are the pages these keyword were pointing to:

http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Store-Design

http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Features

http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Templates

[inhouseninja]

I see your point, Back Burner.

[eTundra]

Clarification: I'm not the one getting advice here, and I do think good help was offered for free, which should always be appreciated.

I just find anything that starts with sigh a little condescending - maybe it's just me, but I have encountered this condescension elsewhere in this forum from many very smart PRO members and I personally find it irritating.

Anderson probably doesn't even care and I probably shouldn't have said anything... No offense ninja just a pet peeve.

[Modbargains]

might be related to the new google algorithm update that happened yesterday. also happened to a specific high ranking keyword landing page for the company's domain site I work at.

went from rank #2 to #12 over night.

Keyword BMW Wheels

now our other landing page has taken the #2 spot, our BMW replica wheels.

http://www.webpronews.com/google-algorithm-new-updates-announced-2011-12

I think our site is affected by

"Related query results refinements: Sometimes we fetch results for queries that are similar to the actual search you type. This change makes it less likely that these results will rank highly if the original query had a rare word that was dropped in the alternate query. For example, if you are searching for [rare red widgets], you might not be as interested in a page that only mentions “red widgets.”" - Webpronews.com

any ideas? or am I wrong?

[EGOL]

When you get good advice it is generally best just to say "thanks".... and sometimes abrasive advice is a little more motivating - at least that is the effect that it has on me.

[inhouseninja]

I honestly think my response is constructive.   I stated my opinion and followed it up with my recommendations.  It's not like I called the guy names and didn't offer help.

[eTundra]

I agree with these recommendations, but your delivery coulda been a little more constructive...

[jeffreytrull1]

Was "volusion-store-design.com" a brand new domain you purchased? Assuming it is, forwarding it to your main site gives absolutely no SEO benefit to your main site. This is because this new URL has no authority so there's not any benefit to pass along to the new site.

Either way, it seems doubtful that either of the two things you described would hurt your rankings. Give it a few days and see what happens to your rankings before trying to figure out if you have a major problem.

[eTundra]

In my opinion - and it is just an opinion - trying to figure out specific reasons for fluctuations in ranking is an exercise in futility.  There are just way too many factors going on - both within your website and outside of it - that Google is using to determine rankings.

Not to say you shouldn't be concerned about the decline in rankings.  Here are two observations for you:

1. These are pretty competitive keyword terms, and the pages you have been using to target these keywords have a PA of 1, indicating to me that you will probably see ranking fluctuations until you get some quality links to these pages.  Compare your PA to the top 5 results, which all have PA in the 30s and 40s or more.

2. How long have you been tracking your rankings using SEOMoz Campaigns? Did you have steady rankings spanning several months and then see a decline or did you start tracking recently?  I ask because (at least in my experience) low PA pages targeted towards more competitive keyword terms tend to move up and down on a lot on the SERP, so if you just started tracking you could have come in on a peak and now be seeing the valley.

[inhouseninja]

sigh

First, short-term changes aren't something to worry about.  Google could be reevaluating your site, topic, and niche to see where you should fit in.  It does this with high ranking pages.   It happens. Relax.

Second, deleting pages that Google doesn't know about isn't going to affect your rankings.  Especially if they were relatively useless pages. You might want to block these pages in robots.txt or with a htaccess password so it definitely isn't an issue in the future.

Third, why did you buy a URL to simply forward it over to a specific internal page?  That looks suspicious. It's obvious you purchased the URL in order to boost your rankings for that keyword.  If Google isn't on to you already, it will be soon.  A better solution would be using the URL to build a small micro site (10-12 pages) about the topic, make the micro site rank, then link out from the micro site (1-4 links) to the specific pages on your main site.