Sudden disappearance from visibility on Google

[gfiedel]

Our Google position had a sudden and precipitous drop from #3 to #15 in October for our two main keywords: "web design Santa Barbara" and "Santa Barbara web design".

I have steadily gotten it back to #7 by putting a lot of effort to our on-page SEO.

As of my December 24 SEOMoz report, it was #7, and as of my check yesterday, Dec. 28 it was #7. We were #3 for "web designers Santa Barbara" as of yesterday.

Today, i cannot even find our listing on the first 5 pages.

Recently, our partner company was engaging in some link building for us that may have just occurred and I'm worried that this may be the cause. I have not yet had a report and actually don't know for sure yet, it has even been accomplished.

We had also done some link building in October by a different company we subcontract to and there was a Google type hack of our site. Those were the two major changes that occurred at that time.

I thought it would be safe to have some more link building done now, since we'd already survived that first "sudden" increase of links in October.

Does anyone have any idea what may have happened and how I can fix this? I am trying not to panic.

Thank you in advance for any ideas to understand and/or remedy the situation!

[gfiedel]

Thanks, Dr. Peter!

[Dr-Pete]

I wouldn't go crazy on the local-specific pages, but picking a couple and building them up is probably a good idea. It makes sense to have a Santa Barbara page, as long as you can get some solid content on it.

[gfiedel]

More great help!

The title tag article is very helpful to me. Thanks for steering me to it.

I haven't had a chance to read the seomoz blog piece but am looking forward to it. I've been working on claiming my existing pages and initiating new ones through getlisted.org.

I have been studying your long response and trying to wrap my brain around the parts that are challenging for me. Some new concepts.. I've made quite a few changes to the site but am not done. A lot of pulling back.

Once again, thank you.

[vironc]

Thanks, Gina. Glad that I could be of help to you along with the others who gave their valuable advice here.

BTW, here is a link to best practices for Title Tags:

http://searchengineland.com/nine-best-practices-for-optimized-title-tags-111979

Also since you are aiming for local optimization the following post about citations will be of help to you:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/you-asked-i-answered-qa-from-you-probably-think-this-citation-source-is-about-you-dont-you

All the best.

[gfiedel]

Thank you! This is an enormous help.

The issues your raised about our on-page was a concern I'd had and I was probably paying too much homage to my good grades on the SEOMoz reports.. But man oh man, it was so tempting to keep at it as I watched our position move back up after the initial drop. Guess it backfired and I got stung. Great learning experience.

I immediately went in and made some changes with your suggestion in mind as a start.

Your comment also alerted me to the fact that many of our really great client testimonials (all legitimate) had dropped off the site to a widget issue. That is now fixed and we have a client testimonial on each page. Is it better to have them on one "Testimonials" or "Reviews" page? I am wondering if I should also create a  page and focus on the locals. Seems I probably shouldn't repeat any of the ones I have already used to avoid duplicate content. Is this correct?

We do have a few good reviews on Yelp. I will work on getting more and citations and claiming our business on more sites.

Thanks again!

[gfiedel]

I can't thank you enough! This is exactly the kind of information I have been hankering for. I have a lot to learn- not sure I am grasping all of what you are saying quite yet, but will study and apply. Your comments, combined with those from Dr. Peter J. Meyers, that I saw earlier this morning, give me lots of definitive things to work on. Just what I needed. I'm not sighing now: I'm excited to get to work on improving this situation. (I seem to be unable to "Reply" to Peter's comment, so putting my 'Thanks!!" to him here).

I had also been concerned that I'd hit too hard with the 'targeted' keywords and Peter confirmed that. For weeks, our position was steadily improving after the initial drop in October, so i thought I was on the right track. But then, according to Peter, I may have gone too far and tipped it over the edge. I was studying my competitors sites and responding to what i was seeing, but clearly, was missing some of the critical broader factors that you have pointed out. I will do some more precise competitive analysis as you suggest.

Due to Peter's comments, I also discovered that many of our client testimonials had dropped off the pages due to a widget issue and I was able to re-install those this morning. Our approach has been to sprinkle testimonials throughout the site and perhaps this hasn't been the best approach for SEO but I think it's been helpful for prospect visits to the site.  i am working on collecting testimonials to create a Reviews page focusing on local reviews and building our Yelp reviews.

Thanks for your encouragement regarding our 'Fat Eyes' position. I hadn't looked at it that way.

Our competitors are really really smart. They have done a lot with their sites, blogs, links that we haven't kept up with and have a knowledge base in this area that I don't possess. I am trying to keep up! Luckily, our design work is topnotch.

In gratitude!

Gina

[vironc]

Hi Gina,
I am not sure why exactly you were ranking well for those keywords. But the reason that you are not ranking well could be because of either one of the below factors or because of a combination of both:

(1) Your competitors got smarter and started tweaking their SEO and Google started noticing them now and gave more weight/authority to them for those keywords.

(2) Google had some updates/changes in their Algorithm and now they see you as an authority for the keywords "Fat Eyes" and less as an authority for the keywords you were targeting. Basically this means that even though you were trying to target your keyword, you were inadvertently optimizing your website for the word "Fat eyes" through your external and internal SEO strategies.

Basically you've utilized your website for the term "fat eyes". When you type this word in Google you are first among 339,000,000 results. That is awesome. You have gained such an authority for that keyword among that many competitors...Unfortunately, for the wrong keyword. So, use the same tactics you've using but this time build it up the same way with the keyword you are looking for. Just take a look at your competitors for the keyword that you are looking at and do a competitor analysis.

Do an in-depth competitor analysis and find out why they are ranking for that keyword. And then do your external and internal SEO based on that.

And, keep on adding more and more relevant pages. Google likes it when your website is active. And that is why it is even more imperative to have a blog and write genuine posts that include your keywords.

Yes, I understand that On-page SEO matters and that you were getting a good grade from SEOMoz for On-Page optimization.But, that only means that each page you are looking at is utilized for a keyword. It does not mean that one particular page is getting all the credits for a particular keyword. So you are confusing Google. Which page will Google decide to show when you yourself are not telling them that which particular page should they be showing among all your pages, when someone types for that keyword? To be more specific...If you've so many pages that are uniquely utilized (I repeat, uniquely) around a keyword (Around a keyword in a unique manner so that even though each page talks about a keyword topic it still talks about it in an unique manner) and then if these pages pass on the credit to a main page (which is the authority page within your website for that keyword) with the right internal anchor texts then Google knows that, that particular page is the main page with all the credits flowing in for that keyword from within your website.

Let us look at your website example for the term "web design santa barbara"

When I type into Google: site:fateyes.com "web design santa barbara" the first page it shows is: fatyes.com
Second page: http://www.fateyes.com/web-design-santa-barbara-or-santa-barbara-web-design/ - shows 404 <--- This itself you need to take care of
Third page: http://www.fateyes.com/on-target-web-design-santa-barbara/

So, basically in Google's eyes the page which is the first authority for that particular keyword term within your domain/website, is your main page: Fateyes.com

So with that in mind let us see how much weight you yourself are giving to that page from within your website and how much relevance you are giving to that page for that keyword.

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links.html?page=1&site=www.fateyes.com&sort=page_authority&filter=&source=internal&target=page&group=0

As you can see SEOMoz's OSE shows you have just 1 internal link (Well 2, but one of it is coming from that page itself) and that too with no anchor text which is really surprising. If this is your main page as well your home page there should be much more just like your main online competitor ndic.com has done.

So, let us look at ndic.com:
On Google when I type  site:ndic.com web design santa barbara, the first page shown is their main page ndic.com. So, in their case as well Google sees that page as the main page utilized for that keyword.

Now when you use OSE and check their internal links to that page it shows 221 internal links point to the main page ndic.com ...even if most of its anchor text is "Home" the links come from internal pages that has "web design" in their URL and from pages that are related to web design, web development etc.

Also, the second result page (which Google displays for the search site:ndic.com "web design santa barbara") links back to their home page, with the anchor text "web design" inside the article on that page. So, clearly it shows that their internal linking structure is done in such a way to optimize their home page for that keyword.

Now, you can clearly see the difference.

Another worry is that if you do a search on Google site:fateyes.com it just shows "Fat Eyes" on the title and is not showing the other elements in your title. Google is ignoring it and feels that your main page is more aligned toward "Fat Eyes" But yes, if you specifically type site:fateyes.com web design it shows the other elements, because you are specifically typing it. But it is not good that Google is ignoring the major keywords in your title when you type site:fateyes.com

For websites that are utilized for the right keyword even if you type just their website name for eg:- site:seomoz.org  Google will show the other elements like: SEO Software. Simplified. | SEOmoz

Basically, your on-page SEO is not properly optimized and you need to take look at your site architecture as a whole (including internal linking factors), not just the keywords on the page. Also, optimize your Meta Title Tags and content with SEO best practices and use a tool like Woorank to see other SEO Issues along with using the SEOMoz tools and other such good SEO tools including WMT.

Now as far as the Off-Site SEO goes:
As you can see Google is now seeing you as an authority for the term "Fat Eyes". So, now moving on from On-Site as to why this has happened, let us look at the off-site SEO.

If you explore your inbound links you can see that most of your anchor texts from the external links are "Fat Eyes". This could not have been a problem if all or most of the websites that were linking to your website with the keyword "Fat Eyes" were websites or pages that were talking about web design OR webdesign santa barbara OR web development or terms like that. But, since you are a web designer your clients are wide and varied and are not necessarily passing on links to your website from a page that is concentrated on such relevant terms. So either you could've used "Fat Eyes Web Design" or such branded keyword terms OR simply could've linked to you with the variations of the term "web design".

For example on one of your clients www.casadelherrero.com/ website it says: Site Design + Development: Fat Eyes  
Since the website Casadelherrero is not about webdesign, they should've been more specific in the anchor text. For example: Why they say "site design" ? why not "website design" ?) OR they could have said: Site Design + Development: Fat Eyes Web Designers (Thus it gives you the keywords as well as your brand name).

Again, if you do a competitor analysis using OSE, on the same - For example, your major online competitor (For the keyword "web design santabarbara) ndic.com, it shows that most of their 29,250 external links have anchor texts such as "Web Design Santa Barbara" "Web Design Ventura" etc. Basically the external linking anchor texts are utilized for those relevant keyword and its variations.

And in your case most of your 1703 external link anchor texts says "fat eyes" or "site design and development" etc. (Just to repeat what I said earlier above, why "site design" why not "website design" or "web design"?)

So, as I said earlier Google now sees you as an authority in "Fat Eyes". What you need to do is go about the same way you did (inadvertently) for the term "fat eyes" and also to keep on dynamically working on your internal seo structure (Internal links, creating authority pages within your website for a specific keyword,

Also keep on doing competitor analysis on your online competitors for a particular keyword and keep on updating your website by taking inputs from those analysis and also look at their Local SEO tweaking/listings etc.

I am sure that you'll get back there and anyway you have experience in tweaking your website for the term "fat eyes". So, you just need to change your targeted keyword and start working on that.

Also, since Google is constantly updating their Algorithm make sure your link building process is in line with it:

Use branded keywords like:
fat eyes website design
website design by fat eyes
And others like:
web design
web designing in santa barbara
santa barbaras best webdesign
creative web designers
etc.. Basically be natural and diverse

Here is an article that might help you in that process:

http://www.stateofsearch.com/penguins-anchor-text-and-headaches-what-do-we-do-now/

I know I've written a very long comment. But since I had some time in hand and since I could hear you "sigh" lol...I thought I might as well put these things out here. All the best to you.

[Dr-Pete]

Local is a tricky game, and on-page is mattering less and less over time, at least in the simple sense. In other words, it's not enough to just have "Santa Barbara" on your page - Google needs to see that you're a local business with reviews, citations, etc. They've definitely pushed harder in that direction this year.

You're hitting some of the on-page really hard, too - take your home-page title, for example. It's too long, you mention "Santa Barbara" twice, you have "Web Design" before and after it. Unfortunately, to a human, it just looks keyword-stuffed and borderline spammy.

At the same time, you have an internal link called "Santa Barbara Web Design and Development", which really looks over the top to an end-user of the site. It also means you've got two pages that are essentially in competition - the home-page and a deeper page targeted to Santa Barbara. The deep page is fine, but then ease off on the home-page. Honestly, ease off all around. You're push into dangerous territory where your on-page could have tipped from helpful to harmful.

I think you need to look at some of your local-specific factors. Even a few solid (legitimate) reviews could really tip the balance, and easing off the keyword stuffing could help get you out of any filters. I'm not seeing signs of a severe penalty, but I do think your home-page has been devalued or filtered for certain non-brand terms.

[gfiedel]

HI,  it may have showed 16% for you because you may have been using the wrong business name. We are Fat Eyes on Yelp, but also appear sometimes as Fat Eyes Web Development and maybe occasionally Fat Eyes Web Design on some of the others. I loved that you pointed me to getlisted.org. Very helpful! While we have listings on many, I hadn't "claimed" our business on all of them and will follow-through with getting listed on the others.

Nope, sadly, no positive changes. This only just happened on Saturday, the 29th. We are now  below the top 50 for our 3 most targeted keywords after being # 7. We'd been #3 for years, had a drop to #15 in October and I'd brought it back up to #7 with a lot of on-page work. I was getting 'A' report cards from SEOMoz. Sigh.

The really sad thing is that we are a good company, with an outstanding local reputation, tons of local high profile clients who love us, very high integrity.........SIGH.

[gfiedel]

Hello again,

Thank You to those who took the time to respond to my query. You've offered really great information and I've learned quite a bit.

I am still looking for the cause of this literally overnight drop for my most important keywords and would like opinions as to whether you think the following, is correct:

The conclusion I am reaching is that it is possible that our on-page SEO is no longer having a positive effect (or any effect) on our targeted keywords. Could this really happen overnight?

If this is the case, other than the obvious long-term SEO strategy refocus,  the only short-term remedy I can think of is to go back and re-word the anchor text of our existing links to contain the keyword phrases we want to re-target on whatever sites we are able to. The majority of our links are coming from client sites, so while tedious, this should be doable.

Having been #3-4 on Google for 14 years, and a great local reputation, it's a sad situation.

Thanks again for any assistance on this!

[vironc]

Hi Gina, thanks for the update...I wonder why it showed 16% to me and did not show your listings...anyway, glad to know that you have a listing score of 60%. And, nice to know that you are coming up with the blog.

BTW, with regard to your original query about the keyword ranking...have you seen any positive changes?

[gfiedel]

Thank you for taking a look and passing on the information. I just tested it myself and got a listing score of 60%.

We do have a Google Business listing for Fat Eyes Web Development.

Our Yelp  account is 'Fat Eyes' and the link: http://www.yelp.com/biz/fat-eyes-santa-barbara.

According to our 12/24 SEOMoz report, we were ranking 5 on Bing and Yahoo for "web design Santa Barbara" and 10 on each Bing and Yahoo for "Santa Barbara web design".
Thanks for the tip to "claim" the business listing.

And yes, I agree about the blog. We are currently stockpiling articles and will be adding the blog in the near future.

Thanks again!

[vironc]

Hi...Out of curiosity I just took a look at your website on getlisted.org (SEOMoz's latest acquisition) and I see that you rank just 16% when it comes to local optimization. Shouldn't you be taking a look at this?...Especially since you are looking to rank for a keyword which has a local factor "Santa Barbara" in your desired keyword? I see that you have no listings on Google Business, Yelp, Yahoo, Bing etc. Recommend that you take care of this...16% is not good at all.

Also, on a side-note: Have you thought about starting a blog on your website? Since you are a web design company I am sure that you can write a lot of posts (which includes images and has social share buttons),  that passes value to the readers/ visitors. That way you also get more pages to target keywords in a natural manner, provide engaging content, pass value to visitors which leads to social sharing etc...You know that social signals are a search-engine factor now and I see that your website has only 29 Facebook likes.

BTW, here is the article about the latest Panda update (May be this had an effect on your website):

http://searchengineland.com/official-google-panda-update-23-impacting-1-3-of-queries-143271

[gfiedel]

Thank you for taking the time to outline this for me. I have to say I am very reluctant to follow this particular advice for a number of reasons. It did spark a couple ideas for me though, and I'm grateful for that.

Meanwhile, I'm watching Whiteboard Friday (thanks for the recommend) and hope to actually be able to understand. I confess to feeling very much on shaky ground for much of this. A lot of it is outside my knowledge base and expertise.

If anyone out there has any other thoughts on why this occurred, I would really appreciate it. The mystery is maddening.

[DarinPirkey]

If your company is ranking #1 it's not a penguin problem (links) it may be a co-citation problem.  Make sure that your links are varied as Mathew has said.  I'd explain more but Rand put it very well in a Whiteboard Friday a few weeks back.  Watch the video really quickly and you'll understand it a little better.

I'm going to make a suggestion here that will make some SEO's furious.  I rank one site for 40 keywords (all in top 5) with this method.....

Stick to one keyword to a page

For instance, your home page is ranking for "fat eyes" so I would keep it that way.  Everything you find on the SEOmoz report from h1s to alt tags etc should be "fat eyes"

I would set up a separate page entitled "www.fateyes.com/santa-barbara-web-design and everything on that page should be SEO for "santa barbara web design" (you don't need a page for "web design santa barbara" because you can link to it both ways and get rankings) It helps having the keyword in your url, which this creates naturally, and you won't "confuse" Google to what you are trying to rank for.  Is it "Fat eyes", "web design santa barbara" or "santa barbara web design"?  Don't let Google figure it out, TELL THEM.

Mathew is right though, I looked through OSE and saw that nearly all of your anchor text is "fat eyes".  You can also use WMT for this (more robust) and see all your links to make sure the links you have coming in are quality.

[gfiedel]

Thank you so much! Our site is http://www.fateyes.com

#1 My title length is too long and I am aware of that but didn't think it mattered much as some of my competitors sites also have long titles and are ranking higher than we are.

#2 Our company name is still ranking #1 from what I can see- unless I don't understand your point.

#3 & 4 - I checked on WMT and no messages....

[DarinPirkey]

Hey Gina,

Can you provide the name or a link to your site so we can go through it.

There are a dozen ideas but we'd need to see it first to give accurate guidance.

1. Check your Title Length.  I've seen some correlation with some of the sites we work with that had long titles dropping

2. Make sure your anchor text is varied and not just business.  I've seen a lot of people rank for their name #1 and not their keyword because of the way they link to their site (If you haven't done so yet, make sure your company name is still ranking)

3. Check Google WMT to see if any messages have been reported to you.

4. Check Google WMT to see any HTML improvements you can make (under Optimization)

[MarketingOfAmerica]

Hello Gina,

It seems that Google has had an update.  I have been following very closely and analyzing everyone's site that has had similar problems.

This is what I gathered so far.  It seems that everyone that was ranking with onpage SEO tactics before is no longer ranking due to them.

For example, In the first 10 pages of your backlinks on site explorer I couldn't even find your keywords used as an anchor text in any of your backlinks.

This is the 16th out of 17 sites I analyzed that claimed they had issues like this and everyone site is all similar; they had a sudden drop in ranks like yours.

I am curious to see if yours return, because theirs haven't yet and it's been 1 week to 2 weeks for all of them.

I am willing to bet their are 1000's of others as well out there that haven't realized it yet.

I could be wrong, but it seems like something that is trending and it's obvious with your site.

Have a great day and sorry for your ranking loss.