Decline in ranking for a particular theme of keywords after Penguin 2.0
-
Hi everyone
Last month we found on of our clients rankings were seeing significant declines in ranking (like from 3 to 28). This occurred around the time of the Penguin 2.0 update.
After further investigation we found that only a collection of keywords were affected. If we were hit by the algorithm update we would expect to find all keywords declining.
We have not been manually penalized and other keyword themes are seeing moderate day to day ranking improvements.
I know that rankings jump from day to day but a sudden decline of around 20 places for a theme of keywords isn't what we would expect.
Thanks all.
-
I had the same experience on a few sites. Ranked #1 for over a year, dropped same day as penguin, but bounced back the next day.
-
I'd be tempted to hang fire a little while before "fixing" the problem, and give it a while longer to shake out.
We had something very similar around the time of Penguin 2 on one of our sites, and like you for only a selection of our keywords. Half of the dropped keywords have returned to roughly where they were. Of the other half most have increased, but are still down compared to pre-Penguin.
One keyword went from 3rd to not in top 50 and back to 4th this week.
Aside from burning a fair bit of time trying to figure out what was going on and if we'd been partially Penguined, I'm not sure I'm any the wiser! Nothing notable going on with key competitors, nothing news worthy or topical in the sector - just temporary obliteration of around a quarter of keywords.
-
Thanks everyone. They keywords have hovered around the drop zone for a while now.
The unusual thing here is that the set of keywords have the same sort of back link profile as the rest of the keywords. We recently inherited the SEO work for this site and the previous agency used PR sites religiously with exact anchor matching text. I'm surprised that the site hasn't been hit as hard with the penguin update.
The industry is highly niche and so I doubt it will be revolving around a news story or current trend. Nevertheless we have lined up a competitor analysis.
Apologies for the lack of detail, the keywords effected mainly revolve around 'Carpet Protection'.
So the question here is whether we should take the risk and try removing these PR links (perhaps with Google disavow) or not.
-
Without knowing the site and the keywords (why is everyone so protective over these, even within this community??), it's almost impossible to say.
3 to 28 is quite a jump, but if the terms revolve around a trending news story or a seasonal term then that's not unusual at all. I would be happy to look further if you want to provide more specifics.
-
Did you build backlinks from certain domain names for those keywords? May be Penguine 2.0 hit those sites who were providing you link juice and support such keywords.
Thanks
-
There's some other things to consider (which you may have already done.)
What other changes can you see in the SERPS for your affected keywords, in particular what's happened to your competitors. Are there new sites now competing in the SERPS?
By analysing the "SERP Landscape" after changes like this can (but not always) give you an insight as to whether it's just your site that's been affected, multiple sites or the entire SERP.
A 3 to 28 drop is pretty nasty. Has there been any movement since the drop or has the SERP remained stable?
-
Drop in a particular theme of keywords is not unusual. It is highly possible that the particular theme has more relevant content on other sites or you have probably done over linking with same anchor text for that theme of keywords.
We also saw the same trend happening for one of our clients, but we removed the links, improved the content, and the rank was back up.
-
What is your exact question?
It could be possible that you dropped ranking around the penguin 2.0 update. It doesn't necessarily have to do anything with penguin though. It could be that the user engagement around this area on your site has been less good because for example the information is out of date.
I could take a look at your site and see if i find anything which could have caused this if you give me the url and the set of keywords you have dropped ranking for.
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
-
Huge ranking flux that we cannot explain
Hello, SEO experts from around the world. We need your help; we have seen massive ranking flux across our website and others. We cannot explain what is causing this ranking flux. The content marketing is top quality, so we don’t know why we are moving from 25 to 50th on Google and sometimes even beyond that. Can any SEO experts explain why our agency is moving so much within Google’s rankings? We don’t know whether to make changes or possibly wait. Any help would be fantastic; thank you all.
Algorithm Updates | | sarahwalsh0 -
What kind of impact does a 404 have in a sitemap regarding ranking?
We recently had a site update where our robots file disallowed our sitemap for about two weeks. When we found the problem and resubmitted the sitemap to Google Search Console, it found a 404 error. Does this have any impact on ranking or visibility if we are still recovering from the disallow?
Algorithm Updates | | GaryBlanchard0 -
Google: What factors contribute to rank a landing page in a specific country?
Hi community, I would like to know what is the criteria to rank a landing page in specific country Google search. For example, if we want to rank our landing page for "GDPR Australia", what are the factors which will impact beside writing the cotent related to the above mentioned keyword? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google keyword tool
I was quite happy with google keyword tool for basic and accurate searches for keywords. Can anyone suggests a new tool that will give accurate search volume on google ( country specific ) I am not interest in info for adwords, and find a keyword planner tool way out in traffic results, compared to Keyword tool. Is the keyword tool completely gone?
Algorithm Updates | | summer3000 -
What are tips for ranking on Google Maps?
I have another thread going where everyone is saying to keep both the Places profile as well as the Google Plus Local profile I have for my company. I have another person telling me that it has a negative effect to have both accounts at the same time so I'm assuming thats why the listing never comes up on places unless you zoom all the way into the map to the address of the storefront. With that being said, can anyone provide some good tips for ranking first page on google maps? Goole Plus Local - https://plus.google.com/114370561649922317296/about?gl=us&hl=en Google Places - https://plus.google.com/103220086647895058915/about?gl=us&hl=en
Algorithm Updates | | jonnyholt1 -
Is it normal to receive 2 mails from Google?
I filed a reconsideration request that was answered in less than a week. Subsequently I was told that no manual penalty was in place but various algorithm factors might be causing my heavy drops in ranking. Then I got a second email which was even more specific. This was great, really heartening stuff and a total surprise as it was very helpful. Is it normal to receive 2 emails from Google with such clear information? I have been very pleased by the comments they have made as it has shown me that they're more customer focused than I had been led to believe by all the research I had done pre reconsideration request. Has anyone else had a clear outline of what they needed to fix and has their site subsequently rebounded post fixing?
Algorithm Updates | | swimwithfishes0 -
Penguin Update and Long Tail Keywords
Since the Penguin update, organic traffic for our site; oxygenconcentratorstore.com
Algorithm Updates | | chuck-layton
has dropped almost 25%. The thing I cannot figure out is that when I compare April 1<sup>st</sup> to May 15<sup>th</sup> (before the update) and June 1<sup>st</sup> to July 15<sup>th</sup> (after); 8 of our top keywords are up. Our 2 main keywords are up 15% and 11%. Where we lost most of our traffic is from our longtail keywords. We have almost 1000 longtail keyword phrases that we got visits from in the April/May period that we did not get in the June/July period. Is there a reason why our top keywords would continue to improve while we most of the longtail keywords?? If Google penalized us, won’t all of our keywords be dropping and just not the longtail. Any help/info would be awesome. Thanks.0 -
Difference in which pages Google is ranking?
Over the past two weeks I've noticed that Google has decided to change which pages on our site rank for specific keywords. The thing is, this is for keywords that the homepage was already ranking for. Due to our workload, we've made no changes to the site, and I'm not tracking any additional backlinks. Certainly there are no new deep links to these pages. In SEOmoz dashboard (and via tools/manual checking with a proxy) of the 24 terms we have first page ranking for, 9 of them are marked "new to top 50". These are terms we were already ranking for. Google just appears to have switched out the homepage for other pages. I've noticed this across a couple of client sites, too, though none to the extent that I'm seeing on our own. Certainly this isn't a bad thing, as the deeper pages ranking means that they're landing on the content they want first, and I can work to up the conversion rates. It's just caught me by surprise. Anyone else noticing similar changes?
Algorithm Updates | | BedeFahey1