Sudden drop in rankings
-
Hi there,
I've been working on this site for three or four months (it was a brand new site), and we were seeing some really great improvements in rankings. I've concentrated on writing lots of good quality content and building a network of links through blogging and social networks.
Then, last weekend (6th October), we got completely wiped off of the results. We went from rankings 2,3 and 4 for our target terms to not being in the top 100.
I assumed we'd been given a penalty from Google as we'd been SEOing too hard and removed a reciprocal links page we had and asked Google to reconsider. I just got a message back saying there hasn't been any manual penalty, so it's just down to the algorithm.
I'm running am SEOMoz analysis, but so far it's just coming up with things like page titles too long and too many links on pages, which I can fix, but don't seem like something that would completely destroy us so abruptly.
I think we really have the most and best content on the subject of becoming a model, which has taken a great deal of effort to put tgether, so this is crushing. If anybody can shed any light, I'll be extremely grateful, and I'd be interested to knwo if anyone else has experienced anything similar.
Thanks in advance!
URL: www.modellingadvice. info
Kat
-
I will add my two cents to whatever Irving will answer, while I'm here.
It is possible to get out from under a penalty, but it is difficult and usually takes quite awhile. This is especially true when the penalty is related to backlinks, as it is difficult to remove backlinks to your site. There is certainly merit to Irving's suggestion to simply start over with a new domain.
It is typical for drops from a penalty to be immediate and abrupt.
I will also mention that I disagree with Irving's suggestion to "never point to the homepage". I understand why he is suggesting that, but a website with no links to the homepage doesn't look very natural to Google. Also, there are many instances where you'll have to link to the homepage, such as if you are submitting to a high quality directory. I would just say to be very careful, and don't build links you might need to delete later.
To be honest, I think you will find it nearly impossible to build really good quality links as long as the site has that thing that looks like a squeeze page across the top. Very few high quality websites will want to link to a site where the real content is buried underneath an aggressive "sell" like that.
-
Hi Irving,
Many thanks for your comments. Are you saying that even if I fix the over optimisation of the site (which I'm doing now) this domain will always be penalised?
The thing I'm most confused about is how abrupt the drop was, pretty much overnight.
Kat
-
You killed the site with bad linking and over optimization. Fix the over optimization on the site, then deindex www.modellingadvice. info and buy a new domain and start over. Get a .com and not .info since .info domains have been primarily used as spam sites.
Don't engage in link building on the new site, allow it to gain some trust. Read up on link building before you do it, and never point to the homepage unless you are prepared to go to all the webmasters and get your links removed if penalized.
-
Many thanks Sergio, I'll read these articles as well.
-
Hi Kat,
Unfortunately, I agree with Adam. The website has been clearly penalized, due to wrong SEO performance. I'm not going to give you a list of things to do, but you can consult these two excellent posts by Jason Acidre, where you can find a lot of good recommendations.
Anti-Penguin Link Building Plan
20 SEO Strategies for Sites Affected By Google Panda
I hope to be helpful.
Sergio
-
Thank you Maurizio, I appreciate your input.
-
Thank you Adam,
This is really useful - I'll get on it, and hopefully Google will start to like us again!
Kat
-
Hi Kat,
I would continue to educate the client on why having the site setup like that is a huge barrier to success.
Here are some resources on building links that won't get bitten by Penguin:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/anchor-text-optimization-case-study-whats-natural/43404/
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/post-penguin-seo-link-building-the-naked-url-truth/46936/
Hope that helps!
~Adam
-
Hi
without evaluating your back link I went to see your home page.
i think that you must change something and for this can help you Semoz Tools , On page in your campaign.
First your Title seems a Keyword tag
Second, the description is too long , max 150-160 characters
Third, in the tag keywords , the words are separately by comma and newlines, if you want inset keywords just put commas but Remember that Google does not consider the tag Keywords.
Ciao
Maurizio
-
Hi Adam,
Many thanks for your reply. I'll make the changes you suggest - reducing the occurances of the keywords in title, links and in general.
I can't remove the call to action from that position because the client is insisting on it.
I'm not sure what to do about the backlinks - do you have any suggestions?
Do you think if I make those changes, we might recover our previous rankings? I really was trying to have good quality content at the core of my campaign, and am gutted to feel penalised like this without really knowing what I've done wrong.
However, I want to do things right, and make sure the SEO is solid and future proof!
Thanks again.
Kat
-
Hi Kat,
You may have been hit in the Penguin update on Oct 5th.
-
Your site is definitely way "over-optimized" or keyword stuffed. The keyword "Modelling" appears 77 times on your homepage, plus 4 times in the page title. Your internal links structure is also keyword stuffed.
-
Having the page content under the huge big call to action and form on top of the site is not good for users or search engine rankings.
-
A quick check of your backlinks shows they are mostly keyword anchor text links from directories and other lower quality sources.
To be honest, it looks to me like you're headed in the wrong direction SEO-wise and have likely been hit by one or more algorithmic penalties.
Sorry to be so negative.
Hope this helps!
~Adam
-
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
-
Traffic drops when showing post dates?
Hello. My blog is 9 years old and i just got serious with regards to earnings. I have observed that whenever i showed published date traffic drops immediately. For years i stopped showing dates. But now, i feel dates are an important factor in Rich snippets because most of competitors who are shown in rich snippets are also showing dates. So i started showing "UPDATED ON" in the Genesis theme framework. Traffic drop is the same as before. Why is traffic dropping whenever i show dates? Even when i show updated dates, wherein all articles show dates of just 1-2 years and none of them are showing how old the site is. And yes, quality is high, content is high. URL is www.marketing91.com
Technical SEO | | marketing910 -
Site dropped after article submissions
I have a site about back pain. The name is lower back pain relief. It has a lot of content on how to treat back pain with natural remedies. I paid for botw.org and yahoo directories as well as submissions from submit edge. My site was doing well within a few months. I was floating around at the bottom of page two for "lower back pain relief" and lower back pain. I found out about Unique article wizard. I started using that to write and submit articles. Now, my website is not ranking anywhere. I submitted a request for reconsideration to Google. They said no manual action had been taken. The question: How long does this penalty last? Is that website toast now? I think it was penalized for using the anchor text too much or adding too many links at once. It has been penalized for about 6 weeks now.
Technical SEO | | Naturalhealth150 -
Rankings Up and Down Every Single Week
This is so insanely frustrating. One week my client's rankings will be great, working up the second page and on our way to the first. The next week those rankings will drop (according to SEOMoz Rankings) to well below 50. The very next week those rankings will be back up on the second page. It's like a pinball machine with a different rank every week. I'm doing absolutely nothing from week to week, and am not understanding why it's bouncing back and forth so much. I've never seen anything like it, actually. I've never had a client bounce up and down so frequently and in such huge numbers. Any ideas? (http://erasedisease.com) Thanks
Technical SEO | | Linwright0 -
Drop Down Menu - Link Juice Depletion
Hi, We have a site with 7 top level sections all of which contain a large number of subsections which may then contain further sub sections. To try and ensure the best user experience we have a top navigation with the 7 top level sections and when hovered a selection of the key sub sections. Although I like this format for the user as it makes it easier for them to find the most important sections / sub sections it does lead to a lot of links within every page on the site. In general each top section has a drop down with approx 10 - 15 subsections. This has therefore lead to SeoMoz's tools issuing its too many internal links warning. Then alongside this I am left wondering if I shouldn’t have to many links to my subsections and whether I would be better off being more selective of when I link to them. For instance I could choose the top 5 sub sections and place a link to them from our homepage and by doing so I would be passing a greater amount of link juice down the line. So I guess my dilemma is between ensuring the user has as easy a time traversing the site as possible whilst I try to keep a close watch on where, and how, our link juice is distributed. One solution I am considering is whether no-follow links could be utilised within the drop down menus? This way I could then have the desired user navigation and I would be in greater control of what pages link to which sub sections. Would that even work? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, Regards, Guy
Technical SEO | | guycampbell1 -
Several Keywords Dropped Completely
On December 14th one of my sites dropped completely for multiple keywords. I cannot figure out why this happened. I have been adding content more in the past few months than ever before... www.howtomac.com is the website I am attaching a few webmasters screenshots so you can see the drop. Any help is much appreciated. htm-webmasters-0.jpg
Technical SEO | | 38wesley1 -
We have Lost Ranking After Panda update
Hi, on the last Updates of google Panda in Europe, we hAve Lost Ranking. What to do now? where to Start! Which Things First and which Second..? Need help, Tell me how to fix issuess...
Technical SEO | | leadsprofi0 -
Duplicate content domains ranking successfully
I have a project with 8 domains and each domain is showing the same content (including site structure) and still all sites do rank. When I search for a specific word-string in google it lists me all 8 domains. Do you have an explanation, why Google doesn't filter those URLs to just one URL instead of 8 with the same content?
Technical SEO | | kenbrother0