Ranking Fluctuations
-
I need your help. My rankings have been on a wild roller coaster ride since I started optimizing the site with standard on page optimization changes. (No keyword stuffing or over-optimization...) I have only made positive changes for the content on the page; I created unique descriptions for every product. I redirected some urls that weren’t readable into a more user- friendly format.
I am only doing completely organic link building, really.
Yet for some weird reason the rankings initially rose and then steeply fell and ever since have went back up to the top and right back to not in the top 50 results.
Just to give you an example this is a graph of one of our main keywords: https://www.diigo.com/item/image/3vpdp/gd2q
This is another keyword that we admittedly never were in the top 5 results but usually we were in the top 20. Check out the wild fluctuations. If it wasn't the main keyword we were going after, I would probably laugh. https://www.diigo.com/item/image/3vpdp/rcy9
I asked an expert he said he think it might be from a major issue with internal competition. The keywords that seem to fluctuate the most, have numerous landing pages that compete for the same keyword.
Since we sell the same object in many many different sizes, thicknesses and colors it only makes sense that we have the same keyword on many pages.
I would love someone that is an expert in this area to have a look at the site and give actionable advice so I can stop the craziness.
Do you have any suggestions?
Do you have anyone that you’d refer for this type of job/consulting?
-
The anchor text is for the whole site. The home page is not the only page I am seeing crazy rankings for. The site name is http://plasticplace.net.
Thanks so much for taking a look!
-
Is that for the whole site, or is it for the home page? Is the home page the only page you are seeing fluctuations for? It's quite difficult to assess what's happening without seeing the site, but some of these details might help.
-
Your 100% correct that I should remove as much poison links as possible.
Google doesn't recommend using the disavow tool if you didn't receive a spam warning. Additionally google wants you to try to remove the actual link from the web itself. This would be a huge job to do if I'm not completely sure what is actually causing the fluctuations.
I should do it as soon as I can but I first need to ascertain that this is indeed causing the volatile rankings.
-
edit: sorry my response was to Rachel here and not David. Didn't want this to be misconstrued:
Yeah I don't think this is necessarily accurate. Yes most sites will see their rankings plummet the day of an update, but the update isn't a one-day event. It carries over to every crawl Google does.
Therefore if your site slips through the algorithm, it isn't guaranteed to continue doing so. Perhaps the next time around the algo catches something it didn't before (for lack of a better visual.)
There is never any harm in removing poison links, that much we know for sure. So at least if you can get rid of those we can eliminate that as a possibility, right?
-
The recent updates have not been like the previous with 1 date of change- it has been rolled out over the summer with lots of fluctuations as you can see here.
You need to remove the bad and work on getting really good links to replace the old.
-
I sent you a PM
-
While I agree with you that there are some links I should get rid of, I don't think the ranking fluctuations have to do with back links because then I would have probably saw changes to my rankings on the days of the updates.
Please correct me if this isn't the case.
-
I think the keywords you are going after have bad toxic links with those anchor texts that are hurting you i would check into that
-
Can you please share the website URL and both the keywords? If possible, can you please check your Google Webmaster Tools and let us know about the internal linking for these two keywords as anchor text along with the number of back-links for each keyword?
The reason for such a HIT & Drop in the rankings may be due to the "Over-optimization" of the keyword as against all other keywords in the website. I've been getting the same results for one of my website for one keyword only which has reached the fourth page of Google almost 7-8 times in last one year; but never came in the top 30 rankings. Whenever I think this time the keyword will surely achieve rankings in top positions, the website goes down in rankings..as far as 15th page of Google. Analyzing this, I'm thinking about stopping the SEO work for this keyword once I get it in top #50 positions this time..and may be this keyword will be stable for few weeks..
-
It's actually not bad, here's a snapshot of the anchor text: http://awesomescreenshot.com/01f1k00j2f
-
You should consider using the disavow tool, when needed, but only after the a very thorough back-link analysis. This tool can be used for good
-
This probably has at least something to do with it. What does your anchor text profile look like?
-
I check the google wmt weekly. I have never seen a link warning yet. Additionally all the rank fluctuations didn't happen when there was google updates, which would have been a sign of a penalty.
In the past the company had an Indian SEO company posting links to our sites on really spammy sites. I tried to contact some of the sites but I couldn't get them removed and I am hesitant about using the disavow tool.
-
Ask your boss if they ever got a link warning in google webmaster tools about links - it could be you have a penalty you need to deal with or it could be you have some bad links that are hurting you now you need to disavow or remove -call me if you need more help
-
I sent you a PM with the domain.
-
What's the domain you are working on and what are the KW's you are targeting. Graph's work, but without actionable information, it's difficult to look over and help make a few suggestions
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
-
Unsolved I have lost SEO Ranking while removing www from domain
I have lost search SEO ranking for 4-6 core keywords while removing www from domain switch.
On-Page Optimization | | velomate
Referring domain: https://cashforscrapcarsydney.com.au/ Earlier the domain was in the format: https://www.cashforscrapcarsydney.com.au/ But when I checked the search result, search engines had not yet crawled to the new format. Let me know if the server change or any algorithm hit might cause it. Also please share the feedback on - does removing www from the domain losses keyword ranking. Helpful replies are needed.0 -
Google Is Ranking the Wrong Page
Howdy Folks- I have a case where Google is ranking the wrong page for a couple of different keywords. The home page is: http://healthtn.com Most notably, we're trying to optimize the home page for "Tennessee Health Insurance" but the below page is what continually ranks for it, and does so very poorly. We used to be page two with the home page, now we are page four and it ranks the following page. http://healthtn.com/tennessee/health-insurance/student I have started directing our Internal Linking to reflect the correct anchor text but succeeded in losing ranking for the term, but am still ranking the wrong page. Any thoughts or help would be much appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | CRO_first0 -
Home Page Keywords not Ranking and Assigned to Inside Pages
Hi, thank you for taking the time to read this. We have a few websites with the same problem. I will use http://www.prepared-meals.com as an example: The home page was ranking on page one for keyword "Prepared Meals". The site is about 6 months old. We use the Moz page optimizer on all pages of our websites to score an A rating. Recently we found the home page is no longer showing up in search results and the keyword "prepared meals" now points to an inside page that is not relevant: http://www.prepared-meals.com/Senior-Meals/Moms-Meals-Reviews.html this page shows up for Prepared Meals around page 15 in Google results. We have read keywords in the URL might be the issue, even though the page optimizer in MOZ says to do that. We are wondering if this is the issue or there is some other problem we are not aware of. Again, thank you for you for your time. -Craig
On-Page Optimization | | CraigSWD0 -
Can soft 404's hurt my rankings?
This post mainly pertains to soft 404's but I recently dropped a few ranks in my main keyword which I have maintained prior to this my better rank for well over 2 years. I participate in NO BLACKHAT and obtain links naturally. I want to describe a few issues that happened prior to my ranking dropping and see what you guys think. I started to receive about a week prior to my ranks dropping DNS issues with GWT. It was weird because when I would use Goole Fetch on those pages they would return just fine so I was not sure what was happening there. I use Google page speed server which did in fact decrease my load time (YEAH!!) so that was cool. About 1 week prior to my rankings dropping I enabled godaddy's Website Accelerator as well thinking that could help even more. Because of this I thought maybe this had something to do with my DNS issues with Google so I decided to turn off my website accelerator with Godaddy and just leave my Google pagespeed service on. I figure I don't need 2 of them anyways IMO. Also at the same time I started to receive a ton (31,000+) html errors with duplicate metadescriptions and titles. I discovered I had an error with my code which was displaying 2 different sets of descriptions and titles for each of these pages. I since then have fixed the issue and waiting for Google to index those pages. Here is were I think I might have been hurting from the drop in rankings. Some months ago (maybe 2) I decided to redirect my 404's to my homepage. Yes I know this is not good now and I have created a proper 404 page which returns the 404 code. I recently started getting a ton of Soft 404 errors in GWT which is what brought my attention to this issue. My question is, could my action of redirecting my users to my homepage as a 404 which obviously was returning a 200 on a page that did not exist be possibly the culprit to my ranks dropping?
On-Page Optimization | | cbielich1 -
Why Am I not Ranking ?
Despite having a A in the on-page report card. The keyword I am trying to optimize my site for is not ranking at all in Google. What could cause this ?
On-Page Optimization | | Pzabarko0 -
Help With Disappearing Rankings
Hi Guys, I am stumped!!. I have been asked to look at this site http://www.quarrymotors.co.uk. Which has lost rankings for "BMW Parts" since a redesign of the site. Through a bit of detective work I have managed to get hold ot the wayback machine version of the old site here http://web.archive.org/web/20080520104847/http://www.quarrymotors.co.uk/ And according to the onpage factors I have compared with SEOquake, the keyword density, title tag, description is almost identical. I have checked webmaster tools and analytics (I only have data from June 22nd) So I am unable to confirm what traffic was available before the redesign. All other keywords:- BMW Breakers BMW Spares Are on the first page but this keyword "BMW Parts" is on page 22??!?. I have checked open site explorer and it's not a case over optimisation of anchor text as a majority of the keywords are pointing back to the url and it's one of the cleanest profiles I have ever seen. The only issue, which it can't be is right at the top left corner of the site is a piece of text "Used BMW Parts & Spares" Any help would be gracefully appreciated Kind Regards Neil
On-Page Optimization | | nezona0 -
301 Redirect to mobile site effecting rankings
On my site I redirect users when on a mobile device to be redirected to my mobile version of my site. In the last couple weeks I added that redirect in my htaccess file. I just realized today that I am doing a 301 redirect. In the last few weeks my ranking have gotten lower. I am starting to think that because of the redirect my mobile site is not as optimized as my regular site and therefor is effecting my rankings. My question is how can I redirect my users to my mobile site but not use a 301 AND how do I get google to use my main site content for ranking on the mobile side. I want to go back to getting my search rankings on the mobile side using my main sites content. Can I simply remove the 301 on the redirect? Hope that makes sense.
On-Page Optimization | | cbielich0 -
Are Forum Links To Website Causing Rankings To Drop ?
For many years our top keywords hve ranked in top 5. Usually top 3 for a few in particular. The last few months those particular keywords have dropped to 25 +. Our other rankings are doing pretty decent and are remaiing the same. We are members of about 6 forums since they relate to our website and sometime we have contests on them. I do know that the forums are based on those particular keywords and are linking to our website, as well as other forum members linking to us. Each forum has roughly 300 links to our website. It does not seem as if our competitors are affected by this, as they are members of the forums as well. What could be causing this for these certain keywords? If those forums were affected by Google's new algorythm would this have an affect on our website?
On-Page Optimization | | hfranz0
