Help identifying cause for total rank loss
-
Hello,
Last week I noticed one of my pages decreased in rank for a particular query from #8 to #13. Although I had recently made a few minor edits to the page (added an introductory paragraph and left-column promo to increase word count), I thought the reason for the decrease was due to a few newly ranked pages that I hadn't seen before.
In an attempt to regain my original position, I tried to optimize the meta title for the singular form of the word. After making this change, I fetched and rendered the page as Google (status = partial) and submitted the page for indexing (URL only, not including on-page links). Almost immediately after submitting, the page dropped from #13 out of the top 50.
I've since changed the meta title back to what it was originally and let Google crawl and index the page on its own, but the page is still not in the top 50. Could the addition of the page description and left column promos tipped the scales of keyword stuffing? If I change everything back to the way it was originally, is it reasonable to think I should regain my original position below the new pages? Any insights would be greatly appreciated!
-
I'll certainly bring it up. Maybe we can use the general concept and agree on a page title that accomplishes the same goal without sacrificing brand consistency.
Thanks again for the great suggestions.
-
lol... I understand.
Still, I would toss something like that out at the next meeting and tell them that it could be a Rocket Fuel. :0
-
That's a very interesting approach! I like the idea, but although it may be effective in gaining clicks and thus positively impacting our rank, our organization is very focused on maintaining a high level of professionalism, so informal title tags may not be suitable for us. I appreciate the suggestion, though!
-
We don't even think about singular or plural any more when writing title tags.
Here is a suggestion. When you visit a news site and see the content promotion ads from Taboola, Outbrain and others, read their captions. Those captions are designed to elicit clicks often to the point of being spammy, suggestive, explicit or vulgar. The people who write those title tags are experts. They know how to get the clicks and getting the clicks, I believe, is a huge ranking factor in the organic SERPs.
I have learned a lot from them and although I really dislike a lot of their ads they can give you an education. So, if I was selling foam rollers, I might consider title tags like...
Foam Rollers - Get yo' bones straight
Foam Rollers for when you back is out of whack !
Those are just very quick efforts and you can certainly do better because you know the product and how people use it. If there was a lot of money to be made selling foam rollers I would be spending a LOT of time to get a great title tag that makes people want to click into your webpage.
-
Awesome Joel! Keep me posted if you need anymore help!
-
Thanks for answering. Luckily we have other pages that rank on page 2 for that term. They are not really optimized for that keyword, but I'm reluctant to make any changes at this point!
Focusing on a readable message makes the most logical sense. We second-guessed this strategy based on the decreasing rank and thought we might be losing out by not including the singular form of the word, which is searched about 10 times more often than the plural.
-
^ This is a great practice.
-
is it reasonable to think the page would return to a similar position next time it is indexed?
I can't give you a confident answer. I know of situations where people made a lot of title tag changes in a short amount of time and the pages went deep into the SERPs and did not recover to any reasonable rankings for a long time.
At our office we rarely tweak title tags, when we do, we enter the details into our SEO log and wait a month or more before trying something new. Also, when we write title tags today we focus on a very readable message that is enticing instead of gunning keywords as was common a few years back.
-
Hi there,
Thank you for the quick reply! I am actually getting my ranking from a keyword tracker I have configured in Moz as I realize performing a search would yield inaccurate results from personalized search.
As for the sitemap, it has been properly submitted and is updated on the first of each month. Canonical tags are also set up correctly and have not been recently modified.
I'll take a look at some of the other links to see if I can find any helpful information there.
Thanks!
Joel
-
Hi there,
Thanks for the reply. I thought the same thing about an adjustment to the title tag making a small difference. That is why I was so surprised when the page dropped in rank so significantly. Unfortunately the multiple changes to the page make it impossible to isolate the detrimental factor, but if I revert all of the changes, is it reasonable to think the page would return to a similar position next time it is indexed?
-
You made a number of changes in a very short time. Keep in mind that google has lots of different servers, delivering SERPs pulled out of different data bases, with experimental algos running all of the time, new data going in, old data going out, and normal daily flux overprinting all of that.
To determine what is really happening, make one change and wait at least a couple of weeks before you make any judgement.
Also, for a query like "foam roller" there is going to be some competition, enough that a small tweak to a title tag is unlikely to make a huge difference.
If you change "Foam Rollers | OPTP" to "Foam Roller | Shop Premium Foam Rollers | OPTP".... that is a really small tweak that does nothing but make it a little repetitive. I would, instead go for something that.....
*** adds a value proposition like "free shipping"
*** elicits clicks such as... "over 100 varieties"
*** or broadens your keyword reach such as.... "for therapy and massage"..... "for painting and texture finishing"... depending upon what type of rollers you sell.
-
Hi there
One of the best ways to track your positions is to pay attention to your Average Position in Google Webmaster Tools. Reason being, with Google Personalized Search, the rankings you see while doing a search are going to be completely different than the search I would do. You can learn more about personalized search from this Whiteboard Friday. What Google Webmaster Tools does here is takes keywords and queries across multiple factors (location, device, browsing/search history, etc), and returns an average position for your site.
You can also look into Moz Keyword Tracking and SEMRush.
Before you change things, check the resources you have to see if in fact you are really losing positions, or if it's just a fluctuation.
A couple of suggestions I do have for you:
Product Schema.org
Check your sitemap and make sure it's properly submitted to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools I would also check your URL structures and canonical tags Check your information architecture
Lastly, check this KISSmetrics ecommerce SEO resource and this one for Search Engine Land Hope this all helps! Good luck!
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
-
Keyword rankings sudden drop
Hello, I own an online headshop, and as of last week my keyword rankings dropped significantly on some competitive keywords I was ranking for. I noticed the same thing happened to me last month, and then a few weeks later these keywords were ranking again. In fact, they were ranking even higher than before. I also noticed that 2 of my biggest competitors who receive 500k+ clicks a month had a significant drop in their keyword rankings as well. Does anybody know why this happens and how to correct the issue? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Kobeghods930 -
Still seeing a terrible rank drop after last algo update?!
I'm still stumped as to why the ranking has gone so poor on a whitehat site. (see attached image) As you can see we've steadily been improving the ranking over the last 6+ months and then got hit with a massive change this month... I can't physically see any issues and Moz isn't reporting anything negatively that would have such a major effect.. Like not as if the drops were subtle... they've all gone into the 50+ section! Any insights into what may have changed in the latest algo update would be appreciated?! S0sD7d8.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | snowflake740 -
Substantial drop in organic traffic and keyword rankings
My client's organic traffic has been on the decline ever since January of 2015. We suspected it had to do with some spammy link farm pointing to his site. We disavowed those links in August 2015. Still, we are seeing huge drop offs in rankings and organic traffic. I am at a loss of what to do. Are we being penalized by Google for some reason? Has this happened to anyone else? If so, how did you remedy? Feel free to ask my any more questions if you more information. KDc8dMp fyVtrYo
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kheberger0 -
What penalty would cause this traffic drop (Google Analytic Screenshot)
This ecommerce site was hit (mostly) slowly by updates but there is nothing in GWT. Below is the graph. Keep in mind that most of our traffic is return customers, so the drops don't look dramatic, but they are. "New Visitors" doesn't show the drop. This is a "Daily" Google Analytics setting. The drop I've circled is May 23-May 24, 2013. It was a huge hit in non-return customers. This graph is "Unique Visitors" I don't know why the "New Visitors" graph is not showing the dip Although we had some big drops, a lot of the drop was gradual. Any help in identifying what could be causing the problem is appreciated. ga.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Help needed i have lost huge rankings
help needed guys, i run a website http://www.happyhop.co.za they sell jumping castles, and thats it, i have worked on this site for the last 3 years and its been preforming very well, after the 2.0 penguin update I lost huge rankings was 1 in google for jumping castles now on page 10... I went onto webmaster tools reviewed Manual Actions got this (No manual webspam actions found.) then reviewed my links, ran them through http://www.penguinanalysis.com and my score came back at 125% which is high, but then ran a competitor who is ranking number 1 and they are at 145%... i have now disavowed a few bad links, and have removed alt tags on my blog http://www.happyhop.co.za/News-and-Articles .... the articles I write are not bloggy and are informative. I then sent Google a manual reconsideration request, but havent heard back from them? Still nothing has changed and its been over 3 weeks. Can anyone help me.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | nick_pageone0 -
RD and PA high but still not ranking
We picked up a client who before ourselves was just using link building as their SEO strategy. They came to us for on page SEO and overall guidance. We have done some targeted link building and did some work with their link building company to remove some links, however after doing some further diggings Im wondering if we still have some bad links? My reasoning for this is:- all the SEO work we have done on the pages are getting A reports in Moz (which is our back up check) the RD and PA for many of the pages we have focused on are higher RDs and PA's than the pages that rank on the first page Any suggestions?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SocialB1 -
Ranking factors: What am I missing here?
I'm trying to understand what techniques might have been used to help the site malime.com.au rank for the term 'boys tops' on Google (AU). It appears to be a new domain, there are hardly any backlinks and basically no social mentions. Internally, the site uses the term 'boys tops' to link to the same page that Google chooses also—so that much makes sense—but other than that (and some weird keyword-stuffed page titles and meta tags) I cannot find much reason for this site to rank as well as it is. Have I missed something? Or is it just a low-enough competition phrase that it can do this with basically internal linking? Any ideas? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NathanV19770 -
Link quality warning from GWT and drop in keyword ranking.
So last December we saw our hard work pay off as our Panda penalty was lifted and our traffic shot back up to pre-Panda levels. Then in February we received this note: We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines. Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes. Since December we've lost position on 80% of our top 100 keywords. I've gone through our links and can't figure out what the problem may be. Maybe I'm not using OSE properly. We don't buy links so I'm not sure what the problem is. If someone can walk me through using OSE to see what the problem may be I would appreciate it. Our domain is http://bit.ly/rbkYkp
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IanTheScot0