Slapped by Google update
-
Last couple of days we read things about Google algorithm and some things about companies or people doing "negative seo"..
At first, nothing was wrong... if you play the game by the rules you won't get penalized you think... right?
Today I checked rankings for some sites we're optimizing, and I fell of my chair! A site that was building better rankings week by week just dropped heavily and we have no clue if it's the algorithm update...
Attached there are some screenshots, the first one showing the ranking for one of the most important keywords for that business, the others are link profiles & moztrust & rank for that root domain.
As you can see, link profiles are much stronger that competitors, but that important keyword is dropping in rankings...
We still have to do some on page optimizations (double title tags & some some canonical tags that have to be added, but that can't be the reason for this major drop??
Or am I missing something??? Any ideas? Are External Followed links growing to fast?
(The blue line in screenshots is the site we're working on)
-
will do! How many moz-points do you have atm?
-
Glad to hear it...Any chance you could give me a "Good Answer" on this? It seems like my perspective was helpful, and I'm trying to reach Journeyman status ASAP.
-
2 weeks later the rankings have recovered and are getting higher step by step, so I don't think we got penalized... Thank god
Another lesson learned: be patient, and believe in your own seo-strategy
-
Thanks for the answers & tips! It scared the hell out of me, because we were getting closer and closer to our objective, but it's true that it isn't the first time rankings dropped.
I will keep you updated on any changes next week.
-
Interesting on the link building. Do you guest post on blogs and forums? A lot of my products get in the news because of illegal uses of it LOL
-
Good call on the Google Alerts! Everytime I add keywords to my campaigns, I set up Alerts. Actually, I use that for link building prospecting as well.
-
If you want to see if something is happening in your niche. For example I got a huge surge in my traffic after the cinnamon challenge. I had no Idea why until it was already starting to die out. I would suggest setting up Google Alerts for your niche keywords. Google will scan for new posts and webpages with those keywords. So if your keywords hit the news you will be the first to know. -Great answer Zeph
-
It's doubtful that you are the victim of negative SEO, as you would have seen a spike in links (that is what negative SEO is, they attach spammy links to your site).
Seeing some variation in the rankings is not uncommon...Especially with the recent updates there is going to be an adjustment period. The rank dropped this week. They could very well get back on track next week.
Another question. Did anything big happen in your niche recently? Maybe there was a big announcement, and that changed the SERP's. News stories can change the rankings significantly because of Google's interest in providing fresh content.
Also, if you notice in the rankings graph, you did have a previous drop in rankings, only to have it come back again. So don't panic. As long as you are doing the right things, you should be fine.
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
-
How to Increase Website Visibility on Google and Bing?
I am working on an e-commerce niche website and I aim to rank higher on Google to drive more traffic to my website. Any suggestions?
Link Building | | digitalenginehub0 -
Unnatural link Manual Penalty by Google
Hi, Our product Quiz Maker help users to create quizzes and can share, embed etc. We have a link in our embed code which was DoFollow and we've got many doFollow links from the websites on which our quizzes got shared but these links are too old like 2009, 2012 etc. After that, to complying with Google policies, we've changed the dofollow link to nofollow in embed code. Here are two scenarios: 1.) We've too many dofollow links which are too old and we don't have control over it as these are the natural links, given by our users before we changed the embed code link. 2.) Now, we are getting nofollow links from the widget as the embed code consists of nofollow link. Our embed code is editable and user can change it to dofollow or nofollow as per their requirement. Moreover, some people shared quizzes on their website (without using embed code) with dofollow link. But, now, google is taking manual action penalty against us. How we can resolve it as it seriously affects the overall performance of our website. Thanks
Link Building | | SameerBhatia2 -
How to Recover From a Google Penguin Penalty?
My web site is hit by penguin penalty and got the mail from Google to my web master tool saying. "Google has detected a pattern of artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site. Buying links or participating in link schemes in order to manipulate PageRank are violations of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
Link Building | | tinyinnovative
As a result, Google has applied a manual spam action to xxxxx.com/. There may be other actions on your site or parts of your site.
Recommended action
Use the Links to Your Site feature in Webmaster Tools to download a list of links to your site.
Ensure that unnatural links pointing to your site are removed.
When these changes are made, and you are satisfied that links to your site follow Google's Webmaster Guidelines, submit a reconsideration request. If you're unable to remove links pointing to your site, please provide as much detail as possible in your reconsideration request.For an updated list of manual actions currently applied to your site, visit the Manual Actions page. If no manual actions are listed, there is no longer a need to file a reconsideration request."0 -
Is anybody else noticing a dramatic change to their 'links to your site' section in Google Webmaster Tools?
Hey,
Link Building | | ChrisHolgate
Over the last six months or so we've been going through our backlink profile and cleaning up links from poor quality sources. Week by week there have been small changes in our Google Webmaster Tools 'links to your site' section to reflect this. I logged on this morning however and there has been a dramatic shift in the information displayed. Pretty much every bad link has been removed from the list including sites I know for a fact are still linking to us as they didn't communicate at all to our removal requests. Additionally, rather than showing the top 1000 links to our site as it used to, WMT is only showing 73 linking domains. The remaining 73 domains are good natural links from high quality sources. I'm guessing Google are just in the middle of an update and that the remaining linking domains (including the bad ones) will reappear shortly. This isn’t a request for advice or help but I’m just curious as to whether anybody else is seeing anything similar?0 -
Why Would Google Webmaster Tools State More Links Than Details Show?
I am trying to clean up links. I've gone into webmaster tools and it reports that I have 216 links from a particular domain. When I click thru to get details it reports all the links point to 1 page, then when I click on that page it only reports 1 inbound link. The links are coming from a directory site which appears to have been penalized. OSE doesn't report any links from this domain. Should I be overly alarmed? How can I determine what is correct, and whether I should take action (the site wants to charge me to remove each url). Thanks in advance. Alan
Link Building | | rmsmall0 -
Google Webmaster Link drop
Checking Google Webmaster it looks like my links dropped in half? Yet I have been ranking very well the past 2-3 days? Is there any explanation for this? I have been doing Pr's, Blogs, manual link building, and concentrating on the social side of it as well, facebook, twitter, google+ can that have anything to do with better rankings? or is it still considered a minor part? Thanks!
Link Building | | TP_Marketing0 -
Link Building Management Tool That Syncs Sweetly With Google Analytics
Hi, I would like a link building management tool that syncs with Google Analytics, so that I can Easily see traffic referrals from link acquired sites Easily see traffic from keywords that were anchored in the link acquisition Browny points for the tool to be a CRM as well. Raven Tools cant do this. Does anyone know of a tool? Or do I keep building custom reports in Google Analytics! Thanks.
Link Building | | DigitalLeaf0 -
My google rankings went down
I've been working with a company to get some incoming links since April 2011. We are targeting only 2 keywords. For one keyword I was ranked number 1 until a couple of weeks ago. In fact, most of my rankings went down including those keywords that the company was not working on. They are writing 5 articles per month and posting them to their proprietary network. Could those backlinks could harmed my rankings?
Link Building | | cardif0