When rankings dip what's the best diagnostic procedure?
-
Bonjourno from 10 degrees C lighly raining Wetherby UK
Every so often SEO feels like a game of snakes & ladders. One minute your rankings go up and then then within the click of a mouse they drop back down. Like a Greek play you begin to feel our mortal lives as SEO pundits is controlled by the Google Gods.
A case in point is illustrated here in this graph:
http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/lincoln-drop_zpseeb04690.jpgNow if i want to explain why the rapid dip has occured for target term "Lincoln Solicitors" here's is what i'd do:
1. Go to webmaster tools and check for crawl errors
2. See if a Google algo change has changed the rules of engagment
3. Check another site administrator hasnt tinkered with the original layout
But i wonder what process do other SEO practitioners follow to explain to a disgruntled client - "Why have my rankings that i pay you to look after nose dived?"
Any insights welcome:-)
-
I would check where those 500-errors originate from. Your website does not handle errors well do - i.e. the link to "/About-Us/Partner-Profiles/Partner-Profiles/Anna-Mosey.aspx" throws a 500 and should really be 404's or 410's.
When I do the search (from South Africa), the search term is on page 1, 4th position.
I would perhaps have a look at validating HTML as well - found it quite strange that the anchor-texts in the have so much trailing whitespace.
-
Well, firstly we can do a simple check against dates of known algorithm updates and see if that matches the drop.
So, you have a good rank on 17th July and have dropped at the next rank check on the 26th July.
Panda 3.9 hit on July 24th so there is every chance the site was flagged in this update so that would be my first port of call to see if this seems a likely case.
It's very hard without a link, but start with the dates and if you find something that seems like it could be the case then review the page to see if it is weak, or a near internal duplicate or some such.
I have checked the 14th result for that search term and the page is pretty weak, I am not sure if this is your client but if it is (first two letters of url are www.bm) then these are very weak pages with little to no unique content beyond the address so this is a page created pretty much entirely for search engines so is typical panda fodder.
So, to resolve? Make this page better along with other similar ones and if that is the case, then it should help resolve matters.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
N.B - Looked into webmanster tools and found this:
http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/server-errors-langleys_zps10c62870.jpgWould i be right in suggesting this has played a significant part in ranking demotion?
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
-
Should I create a new site or keep company on parent company's subdomain?
I am working with a realty company that is hosted on a subdomain of the larger, parent realty company: [local realty company].[parent realty company].com How important is it to ride on the DA of the larger company (only about a 40)? I'm trying to weigh the value of creating an entirely separate domain for simplicity of the end user and Google bots: [local company].realtor They don't have any substantial links to their subdomain, so it wouldn't a huge loss. I have a couple options... Create an entirely new site on their current subdomain, leveraging the DA of the larger parent company. Create an entirely new site on a new URL, starting from scratch (which doesn't hurt you as much as it seems it once did). Create two sites, a micro site that targets a sector of their audience that they really want to reach, plus option (1) or (2). Love this community!
Technical SEO | | Gabe_BlueGuru0 -
100's of Footer Links... what is the safe play?
Hello, One of my clients wants to know what you guys think is the best solution. He sells 100's of templates a month that have a footer link on it pointing to our homepage. Anchor links are "keyword" & "Brand Name" Some are different than others. Do we update the templates so those are no-follow links in the footer? Do we just make all the links to: Brand Name and have them follow? I understand Brand Name is the business name but I am also afraid that Brand name is so close to the money making keyword in the industry and Google might think we are trying to game the system. Looking for your expert opinions!
Technical SEO | | MoosaHemani0 -
Duplicate Content issue in Magento: The product pages are available true 3 URL's! How can we solve this?
Right now the product page "gedroogde goji bessen" (Dutch for: dried goji berries) is available true 3 URL's! **http://www.sportvoeding.net/gedroogde-goji-bessen ** =>
Technical SEO | | Zanox
By clicking on the product slider on the homepage
http://www.sportvoeding.net/superfood/gedroogde-goji-bessen =>
First go to sportvoeding.net/superfood (main categorie) and than clicking on "gedroogde Goji bessen"
http://www.sportvoeding.net/superfood/goji-bessen/gedroogde-goji-bessen =>
When directly go to the subcategorie "Goji Bessen" true the menu and there clicking on "gedroogde Goji Bessen" We want to have the following product URL:
http://www.sportvoeding.net/superfood/goji-bessen/gedroogde-goji-bessen Does someone know´s a good Exetension for this issue?0 -
Which one is the best
Dear Seo experts, 1,5 month ago i started a informative website, i started it with a blank registrated domainname. Now 1 month further I've stacked the website with content and did much linkbuilding. Yesterday i ve bought a domainname from quarantine, its a domainname around 6 years old and has a bunch of backlinks already. What to do next? The first one has good content and good recent linkbuilding done. The second is a better domainname and is old and has old backlinks. And also higher PA and DA then the first one. Should i now go for the first one and 301 redirect the old domainname to the new one. Or should I do it the opposite way, 301 redirect the new website to the old domainname and move all content to the old domainname and try to move all linkbuilding to older domain? Hopefully anyone could give me a great answere, thank you so much! Kind regards, Menno
Technical SEO | | MennoO0 -
What does it mean by 'blocked by Meta Robot'? How do I fix this?
When i get my crawl diagnostics, I am getting a blocked by Meta Robot, which means that my page is not being indexed in the search engines... obviously this is a major issue for organic traffic!!! What does it actually mean, and how can i fix it?
Technical SEO | | rolls1230 -
What would you do if a site's entire content is on a subdomain?
Scenario: There is a website called mydomain.com and it is a new domain with about 300 inbound links (some going to the product pages and categories), but they have some high trust links The website has categories a, b, c etc but they are all on a subdomain so instead of being mydomain.com/categoryA/productname the entire site's structure looks like subdomain.mydomain.com/categoryA/productname Would you go to the effort of 301ing the subdomain urls to the correct url structure of mydomain.com/category/product name, or would you leave it as it is? Just interested as to the extent of the issues this could cause in the future and if this is something worth resolving sooner than later.
Technical SEO | | Kerry220 -
Switching ecommerce CMS's - Best Way to write URL 301's and sub pages?
Hey guys, What a headache i've been going through the last few days trying to make sure my upcoming move is near-perfect. Right now all my urls are written like this /page-name (all lowercase, exact, no forward slash at end). In the new CMS they will be written like this: /Page-Name/ (with the forward slash at the end). When I generate an XML sitemap in the new ecomm CMS internally it lists the category pages with a forward slash at the end, just like they show up through out the CMS. This seems sloppy to me, but I have no control over it. Is this OK for SEO? I'm worried my PR 4, well built ecommerce website is going to lose value to small (but potentially large) errors like this. If this is indeed not good practice, is there a resource about not using the forward slash at the end of URLS in sitemaps i can present to the community at the platform? They are usually real quick to make fixes if something is not up to standards. Thanks in advance, -First Time Ecommerce Platform Transition Guy
Technical SEO | | Hyrule0 -
Duplicate titles OK if page don't need to rank well?
I know It is not a good idea to have duplicate titles across a website on pages as Google does not like this. Is it ok to have duplicate titles on pages that aren't being optimised with SERP's in mind? or could this have a negative effect on the pages that are being optimised?
Technical SEO | | iSenseWebSolutions0