Detective needed to investigate a mystery lack of ranking
-
My URL is: www.graduate-jobs.com/graduate-schemesAfter ranking on page 1 for the search term 'graduate schemes' for over 4 months, the page then disappeared completely from the SERPS for over 6. I've been assured it isn't a Penguin/ Panda problem, as this is the only page on our site that has seen this sort of drop. When checking backlink profiles of the ranking pages, our page is as strong if not stronger and it receives a good amount of traffic with decent user metrics.If anyone could take a look at the page and have a guess at why it isn't moving anywhere, it would be really appreciated.Thanks.
-
Hey Joseph,
You are absolutely right.
Our main aim is always to get registrations to the site and build our database and we try and do this by advertising good jobs that make people want to sign-up!
Thanks for all your help on the matter, if you think of anything else, don't hesitate to let me know.
Cheers.
-
..and just building a better site. you always need to try to maximize the value of a click. What do you want them to do when they land on that page? Where do you want them to go? What are they asking for when they come to that page?
Each page - has a purpose. You want them to sign up to the site? building leads to new jobs? Why not have a form where you send them new types of jobs when you have them posted.. Take a look at http://www.shoemoney.com - he thinks like this: sending out a email is like going to the bank.
build your email list.
GOOD LUCK!
-
Hi Joseph,
Thanks for the tip I will definitely check out that tool.
I see what you are saying about modifying my meta info, I think we stuff graduate a bit too much site-wide, which is something I've started working on.
I suppose I (like most people) was hoping it was a technical error with a quick fix but (like most people) I'm now realising it all comes down to good ole' fashioned link building.
Thanks.
-
but when did it happen? what day? it could also not even be you but the sites you got backlinks from.
Take a look here: http://www.linkdex.com and it will be the best way to get this fixed. When you disvow these links, add comments and group things together. i.e. #possible link network - emailed webmaster joes@email.com - for removal.
#link directory - emailed webmaster@somesite.com
You dont have a lot of back links - and if you do disavow the links and need help qualifying them than reach out to me with the list you come up with.. or post them here. I'm sure we can help you qualify them.
-
There is nothing you can do to prevent it and really, you're not loosing a lot either. It may have been just that one back link. Webmasters change their sites. Domains expire. You just need to build links.
This is an awesome tool: http://www.link-assistant.com/buzzbundle/ - and you can learn how to use it here: http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/reviews/buzzbundle-review-how-i-drive-traffic-to-my-blog/
I would look in webmaster tools to see when it changed.. I dont know what exactly else could have caused it without really looking into it. What I would do if I were you is change the title and description a little bit. You really don't need to use graduate that much.
-
Hi Justin,
Thanks for your response and I really appreciate the detail and the honesty!
I get what you are saying about the questionable backlinks. None of them were actively obtained by us but that doesn't change that there are some suspicious sites linking to that page in particular. Would you recommend trying to get some of those links removed?
I suppose what confused me was that the Moz PA ranking is much healthier than some of the sites ranking on page 1 of the SERPS. So perhaps a Penguin/ Panda demotion is the most obvious answer (Ouch that hurts to say out loud!)
Thanks.
-
I don't think the backlink profile to that page looks particularly natural and i think thats where your problem lies
OSE shows 19 backlines ahrefs shows 30, but looking through them, you have two infographitcs (with no social shares) a couple of links from .ac.uk (which are good links), directories and a number of very questionable looking links such as www.librerio.com/search/jobs/40
You also have some exact match anchor text
All of the above suggests to me that you have been hit by Panda/Penguin and the loss of links mentioned previously most likely suggests that you had questionable links that have been removed or the sites they were coming from have been shutdown (again a good indicator of poor backlinks)
To me, it looks like you are going to have to do some work on building some good links and adding a bit of content to your site to get your rankings back
Also you are on an exact match domain "graduate-jobs.com" which may be contributing
I'm sure its not what you want to hear, but I think thats where the problem most likely lies.
I hope that helps
-
Hi Joseph,
Thanks for getting back to me. It is a bit worrying to see that amount of backlinks being lost, I wasn't aware of that!
Could you give me any more clues as to why that would be happening/ how to prevent it?
Thanks.
-
Well - you're loosing more back links a day than gaining: https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/backlinks-new/prefix/www.graduate-jobs.com%252Fgraduate-schemes
link velocity is important but you prob. lost those one or two back links that pushed it to where it needed to be.
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
-
Competitor Drops 10,000 links since last index. Lets play detective.
One of the intriguing things about SEO is being able to reverse engineer your competitors rankings because all the technical information is available for those who know where to look. I recently looked at my Dashboard and saw that one of my competitors had dropped 10,000 links. The questions is why? Google algorthm change? Blackhat Penalty? Something else.? Here are the numbers, I am going to lieave my own clients site out because his numbers are pathetic. www.Leafly(dot)com 50.4k Links Down 10k www.thcfinder(dot)com 1,530 links Down 71 www.weedmaps(dot)com 64,000k links Up 1.5K Is it just me or is that a lot of links to loose over one indexing period?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DavidMeshah0 -
From keyword rankings to ......... what KPI?
Hi Folks, I have a customer whos keyword rankings for Google have fluctuated rather widly over the past two months which has caused some consternation on their part dispite our reassurance. This is caused in large part due to their lack of understanding of SEO, little effort on their part in implementing changes for SEO and what I belive to be unrealistic expectations (having done no SEO work on their site wanting to see first page ranking for competitive keywords like 'heart attack' within 4-8 weeks). At the moment we are using just keyword rankings as a KPI and I wish to reframe them by using additional or alternative KPIs so that as rankings fluctuate with future Google seach algorithm tweaks and changes that the customer isn't solely focused on them. I am still in the process of formulating this list but so far I have decided to include the KPIs listed below. Month-on-Month / Quarter-On-Quarter Organic search traffic volume (should be rising) Top landing pages excluding branding keywords and homepage (should corelate to content created to target specific keywords) Number of landing pages on the client site that rank List of landing pages and bounce rates (are the 'gateway pages' holding visitors due to meeting their search requirements?) Average number of keywords per landing page (possibly integrated with the landig page reports above as a dimension to demonstrate correlation of # of keywords to landing pages) Some visibility on top keyword search terms (provided from Adwords where possible and GWT also) Top organic keywords (from adwords and GWT) Conversions from organic search (will vary from client to client for their own needs but will primarily be implemented using Google Tag Manager event tracking for things like enquiry forms etc) Referral traffic Delta/Ranking trends over large set of datapoints (will depend on how often you poll/track rankings but for example if you track rankings weekly then assess the trend of the rankings over 3-6months to smooth out the fluctuations) Your thoughts and feedback on this would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Dave
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | icanseeu1 -
Google places VS position one ranking above the places.
Hi Guys, Will creating a new Google places listing for a business have any effect their current position one spot for their major geo location keyword? I.e restaurants perth - say they are ranking no 1 above all the places listings if they set up a places listing would they lose that position and merge with all the other places accounts? Or would they have that listing as well as the places listing? I have been advised it could be detrimental to set up the places account if this is the case does anyone know any ways around this issue as the business really needs a places page for google maps etc. Appreciate some guidance Thanks. BC
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Bodie0 -
Article pages not ranking as well as they should
Hello, Our articles here are not ranking as strongly as they should. Could you take a look and tell me why? When I search for the exact article title we do not come up. We used to. Note our sitewide footer links to some articles in case that's the problem, but even articles not in the footer links aren't performing.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
I need Black Hat Examples
So I need a little help. I'm guest lecturing this week for a local college class on web design. We are going to be talking about Black Hat design for a little bit and things to avoid. I'd like to share some examples in the wild of old school tactics, keyword stuffing, cloaking, hidden text. Anyone have any good examples? If you don't want to share them publicly feel free to sent me a private message. I would like to give the students some interesting examples so they can visualize it. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BCutrer0 -
My ranking dropped 3 pages on 18 november 2012
Hi There my site ranking dropped suddenly today for my main keywords such as security companies in london and security services in london from first page to 4th-5th page. these keywords were ranked on homepage http://www.armstrongsecurity.co.uk/ other keywords from some internal pages, such as this one http://www.armstrongsecurity.co.uk/security-services/event-security-london.html theygot hit slightly and went couple of listings down the road for event security london, event security companies london as well. same slight hitting happened on this page for main keywords http://www.armstrongsecurity.co.uk/bodyguard-for-hire-london.html can anyone help me, how to get the rankings back? my site authority is around 60 which is far better than most sites ranking higher than me now. these are some problems that i understand so far. keyword rich anchor text link profile for my main keywords over optimised pages let me know if anything you might find suspicious on my site that i can fix either on site or in my link profile. looking forward to your help. thanks gill
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | spciuk0 -
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 -
Site ranking position 1, after 1 day existing
Hi, I'm working in the Online gaming and since a few months there was a website called 'Htmlwijzer.nl', it ranked page 1 for 'online casino' in Google.nl which is of course a high competive keyword and remained there for about 2 months. This website didn't come up slowly in Google.nl from page 10 to 1, it just was there one day at page 1. This one only had HTML-related information content and did rank for 'online casino' with a layer ad on it's site which would only be showed to users in the Netherlands. Now that website received a penalty after 2 months, and since today a new site is in Google at position 1, called www.casinowijzer.nl. It has completely no backlinks (online a 301 from the former domain). It just popped up there.. Does anyone know how this website could have gotten here? It's obviously blackhat, but for a keyword like 'online casino' it's quite amazing. Thanks,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | iwebdevnl0