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
-
Reporting a Link Scheme to Google
Hi Mozzers, Two questions...
Link Building | | FDAitsupport
There is a negative article showing up in the SERPS for my boss name which we've been doing some rep management to get rid of. Well, someone started building links to that property recently, and it has pushed the result to the #2 spot. I did some research, and the property has never had a single link pointed to it until recently. There are 7 referring domains, all of which use the same theme, and have the same author for each article. Each property has over 1,000 articles in not even 2 years. All articles are based around the same topic. The property they are promoting negatively went from 0 backlinks to 55 in under 2 months. My Question is, is it okay to report this to Google? It seems like a cut and dry example of a link scheme. Second question, I have recently seen an increase of spammy links showing up in ahrefs. These links were likely built by a predecessor of mine as far back as 2010. I had been letting them fall off naturally, but now they are coming back (around the same time the above mentioned link scheme began). Do you think someone is re-indexing my links as a sort of attack? Or is it possible Google is re-indexing them? I'm going to contact the webmasters where I can, but seriously considering using disavow tool. My rankings started dropping when the links started getting indexed. And continue to drop. Negative SEO, or Googles recent "Quality Update"? Thanks for any and all input. Ryan0 -
How Does Google Treat Scapper Sites?
I have seen several sites that have data or some type of information about a website. Often the site appears to be trying show the value of a site. How does Google treat the links this scrapper type sites give? Should these types of links be ignored or should they be disavowed? Here is an example: http://www.sitetracer.com/www.tourexperience.com
Link Building | | Firestarter-SEO0 -
How to get Google to re-recognize a backlink that used to go to a 404?
I recently rebuilt my website last year, the address is enjoyparkcity.com. I used to have a great link from cnbc.com at http://www.cnbc.com/id/34977253/page/5, but when I rebuilt my website, that landing page url no longer existed (http://www.enjoyparkcity.com/search_featured.html). I recently rebuilt a page to catch that link again, and it works fine. Is there a way for Google to re-recognize it? I think its a normal do=follow link so Im guessing it should be valuable? Hoping it could help my rankings? Thanks in advance for any advice!
Link Building | | SeanMatyja0 -
What linkbuilding techniques are working right now after google's recent update?
I'm facing some issues after the google's recent update, been using blog networks, blog comments, web 2.0 submissions, directory submissions etc What techniques works now? i don't see any improve from web 2.0 these days may be we need to get enhance ? may be curated content? to what extent i understand this, i think they all are low quality backlinks which all the other blackhat markets use previous, and it even gets worst if we keep on doing this --- for the last 1-2 weeks i've stoped linkbuilding just searching for something concrete with this regard, because backlinks that are DoFollow is necessary to have! any thoughts on working techniques that won't harm my rankings?
Link Building | | caspiauk1 -
How might Google differentiate between an artificial link exchange and partners linking to each other?
Hi, All! Artificial link exchanges (contacting a vaguely connected site and requesting to exchange links to increase your PR) is, as far as I know, considered an outdated, not-so-smart technique, as Google might devalue them. Yet, for real business partners to exchange links seems to be an entirely accepted and encouraged technique. While that would be intuitive to a human who's viewing the pages. how might Google detect when two sites that link to each other are linking because they are trusted business associates (valuable) as opposed to when they are doing a link exchange (devalued)? Thanks! Aviva
Link Building | | debi_zyx0 -
Why is Google not following a 301 redirect on the robots.txt file?
Hi Guys, I recently posted a question on the Google Webmasters Forum http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=683e71557db7fd54&hl=en&fid=683e71557db7fd540004a4b4add8cbb6 and didn't get a satisfactory feedback so I thought I will put this to the SEO gurus on here. Perhaps one of you guys might good buddies with Matt and might be able to ask him directly. I actually posted on Matt's blog but he hasn't got back to me. Basically we did a URL restructure for client and set up 301 redirects and saw a huge drop in rankings over time. The 301 redirects seem to work fine and have been tested by many many people. We suspected that google might be ignoring the 301 redirects or devaluing them and so I reviewed the server log to see what is happening when the googlebot crawls the site and it showed that on many occasions the googlebot did not reload the page after hitting a 301 redirect. Sure.. you might say it probably queues it or Google might just be checking that the 301 redirect is still in place but why check so often (with a few hours to a day on the same URL) it even skips a 301 redirect on the robots.txt file i.e. from http://clientsite.com/robots.txt to http://www.clientsite.com/robots.txt. from non-www to www version. I don't think it is easy to dismiss the skipping of the robots.txt file - this 301 redirect should be loaded immediately to use the instructions the gooblebot requires to crawl the page. Any help will be appreciated. I can sent the server log to anyone personally but I am reluctant to post it on here. Regards, Zan
Link Building | | FRL0 -
Why isnt google picking up my backlinks?
Over the last 2 months, my company has had almost 10 articles placed on very established websites. When I search for my company's backlinks on Google Advance Search, its not picking them up. Why?
Link Building | | BYSM0