Google rankings dropped like a stone
-
I've heard of this happening many times, but never to me. My client was Page 1 or 2 for 20 phrases, and they ALL dropped like a rock overnight. The site hasn't been banned by Google, as it's still indexed and the company name is returning results.There were no major changes done to tags or the code, and nothing black hat has been done. The only phrases that didn't drop contain the company name, and the results in Bing and Yahoo either stayed the same or moved up slightly since last week for all the terms. There's also no threat of spam, and it's very search engine friendly. The URL is http://www.universalaccounting.com. Help!
-
Hey James, don't forget the Wild, Wild, West is not a static lab environment.
How old is your site?
What has changed with your competitors - look specifically at any new entries into the top ten and try and determine why they might have moved up to replace you.
Any server/page load speed issues?
It is supposed to be an algorithm, but I doubt there is a single person (probably by design) that has any clue what it really is doing and barely what is supposed to be doing
It could be a million different things - is your dev sub-directory blocked from crawling, did some high quality comment links get archived, did some of your quality links go away, did someone you are linking to get whacked or go away, etc, etc
Are the pages that dropped still ranking for other terms - i.e. was it a "surgical drop" that I have experienced on another site of mine that I'm still trying to figure out.
Just do an audit of everything and keep doing quality things... and theoretically, as we tell ourselves, your rankings should come back.
Finally, were your ranking drops in the 10-50, 200+, or 950 range? The smaller ones are supposedly algorithmic and "easier" to correct while the higher ones are manually and "time out" once the offense has been corrected - all kind of witch craft
Good luck.
-
Good catch. This is our original content, which has been scraped by several other sites. I'll suggest this to the client ASAP. Thanks.
-
What are some of the terms that dropped? I see your site ranking #8 for Bookkeeping courses in Google.
-
My guess is it it due to the content. I did a quick search for the first sentence on the home page content: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=%22Starting+a+business+is+usually+thought+of+as+something+that+takes+lots+of+money+and+carries+lots+of+risks.%22
It looks like there are MANY sites using the same content. It appears that Google really dislikes content that is duplicated nowadays. The same thing happened to one of my sites. There were some spammers that grabbed our content and our rankings fell. Create some new original content and your rankings should come back.
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
-
How long Google will take to Disavow a link?
Just want to know how long will Google take to Disavow a link? I uploaded my file on 18 Dec 2020 and today is 5th January 2021 and still, that link is appearing in my Search Console in Top linking domains. Anyone who recently done this practice and how long it took? I mentioned the domain name below and hopefully, it will disavow all the links [subdomain+www+without www] coming from that domain. domain:abcd.com Help me out, please...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seotoolsland.com0 -
Sudden shift in rankings?
What would make a website move from position 14-17 (for the last year or so) to position 1 for a very competitive keyword when there are no obvious site changes?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | OUTsurance1 -
JavaScript encoded links on an AngularJS framework...bad idea for Google?
Hi Guys, I have a site where we're currently deploying code in AngularJS. As part of this, on the page we sometimes have links to 3rd party websites. We do not want to have followed links on the site to the 3rd party sites as we may be perceived as a link farm since we have more than 1 million pages and a lot of these have external 3rd party links. My question is, if we've got javascript to fire off the link to the 3rd party, is that enough to prevent Google from seeing that link? We do not have a NOFOLLOW on that currently. The link anchor text simply says "Visit website" and the link is fired using JavaScript. Here's a snapshot of the code we're using: Visit website Does anyone have any experience with anything like this on their own site or customer site that we can learn from just to ensure that we avoid any chances of being flagged for being a link farm? Thank you 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AU-SEO0 -
Competitor Bad Practice SEO Still Ranking Well But Why ?
Moz Friends, A very close competitor have always been challenging for similar competitive keywords. We seem to have the advantage for alot of long tail keywords but on one of the higher traffic relevant keywords they seem to do well. I really struggle to understand why, particularly with the back links they use Just my thoughts and notes on the two: Our Page Better written text content (Maybe slightly written to for experienced target audience but we are working on simplifying things) Good Clear site URL structure and navigation for usability Fresh content updates Mobile optimized Reasonable page speeds Good on-page optimization Good back links from industry influences Competitor Page Negatives Site structure and URL's are inconsistent and messy Lower quality content site wide They use tried and tested on page optimization methods like Keyword spamming, Bold Keywords,Underlining Keywords (Sarcasm) Terrible back links, all directories and free article submission sites (Seriously take a look) Less focused on page optimization Not mobile optimized Most of the rest of the sites carry on the same sort of differences, Engine: www.google.co.uk Keyword: Sound level meters **Our Page: **www.cirrusresearch.co.uk/products/sound-level-meters/ **Competitor Page: **www.pulsarinstruments.com/product-information/Sound-Level-Meter.html Any feedback would be greatly appreciated please, i am really struggling to get my head around this Thanks James
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Antony_Towle1 -
Help required as difficulty removing Google algorithmic penalty
I am not an SEO expert but I am trying to recover my company's ranking on Google. We are a UK based baby shower company. Been established since 2003. We have used SEO companies a few years ago. On September 28th 2012 our rankings in Google dropped significantly on certain landing pages, others like our baby shower gifts page has remained position 1 for UK Google searches . Bing and Yahoo were unaffected. Searches for baby shower and baby shower decorations has gone from position 1 or 2 (behind wikipedia ) to these 2 landing pages being unranked in Google. I have for the first time ever gone through our back links, tried to locate bad or low quality links, emailed where possible, and set up in webmaster tools a dissavow file ( currently not acted upon by Google). I have also amended the text in the baby shower department so it does not read as keyword stuffed. It has been two and a half months now and sales has dropped significantly and me and the staff are getting very concerned. Our site is www.showermybaby.co.uk . We have not received a manual penalty. Any suggestions or help in removing this Google penalty would be greatly appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | postagestamp0 -
Would the same template landing page (placed on 50+ targeted domains) help or hurt my ranking?
Scenario: Company ABC has 50 related domains that are being forwarding to the main company URL. Q1: Would there be SEO value by creating a template landing page for each domain that includes product info, photos and keyword links to the main URL? Q2: If all 50+ landing pages were the same, would that penalize the main site due to duplicate content?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | brianmeert0 -
Is this proposal white hat or likely to harm me in the long run?
Hi, I'm considering outsourcing some SEO to a company I got a first month trial sweetener deal with. I've not done this before and am a little unsure about what they propose doing, not sure if I'm being a bit paranoid or too controlly. Details of what they propose: Send them 10 keywords we're interested in ranking for. Work they will perform:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shabbychicoriginals
-Submit site to all major search engines
-Submit 20 social book marks for site
We'll produce 1 article + 19 spun variations of the article submitted to:
-30 directory sites
-10 press release sites and distribution networks Business Submitted to 5 business directories
5 social networks created Work and ranking report highlighting what has been done at the end of the month. Most of the stuff I've done already or can do myself. The elements that make me a bit suspicious are the: - 1 article plus 19 spun variations? 5 social networks created? What does that even mean? I did get this for about £20 for the 1st month with no commitment afterwards so I am tempted to let them try. But should I be a bit wary it might do more harm than good in the long run? Any advice\opinions would be much appreciated.0 -
Google Places
My client offers training from many locations within the UK. These locations/venues are not owned by them, however I see no problem in setting up a different listing for each location in Google Places. At the end of the day if a user searched for “Training London” they are looking for somewhere that they can book a course that would be in their local area. As my client has a “venue” there I think there is a good argument to say that your listing would be valid. What are your thoughts.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | cottamg0