My site fell off the serps for two keywords I tried to optimize the home page for
-
I was doing some keyword research about 45 days ago and stumbled across two keywords that I was ranking in the mid hundreds and decided I wanted to see if I could rank them.
I went in and changed my title to my blog, and the description. Then about a week later I changed my mind and wanted to go for two other keywords so I changed it again.
Then within a day or two, my site completely fell off the serps for those two key words that I changed the title to optimize for.
None of my other rankings were effected for any of the other keywords, in fact most of my keywords have risen because of recent backlinking.
I thought it was just a temporary google bounce because I was playing with my title of my blog or something, but after almost two months I am still nowhere to be found for words that I should easily at least be in the top 1000, especially because I was at about 150 by accident.
Anyone have any ideas on what might have happened?
Thanks.
-
Hey Ryan, thanks for the tips. However as I mentioned I know I haven't done any on page optimization for those terms.
I was already in the serps, then updated my title tags a few times while I was doing different keyword searches and then changing my mind. Then I disappeared from the serps.
So I guess I should have been more clear. I am wondering if there is some sort of google penalty for changing your main title tags around too much. I don't think there is, but if I am not going to get back for those terms no matter what I do, I didn't want to spend time trying to optimize for those if it was pointless.
It is just weird that I was at least in the results and as soon as I was going to optimize and changed the title and description, then bam I was totally gone. Thought maybe someone would have a guess, but if not, I can move forward and optimize for those and give it a month and see if I show back up.
-
I don't understand why you feel your site would rank at all for the two terms you selected. They are not used once in your content.
Simply adding a title to a page does not help your SERP if you do not have supporting content. In fact, I would expect the exact result you are experiencing.
You have many opportunities to improve your page ranking for those terms. Here are some quick changes you can make:
-
Use those exact phrases in your content a few times.
-
Use anchor text elsewhere in your site to link back to your home page.
-
Change your anchor text on your home page to something helpful. "Read more" is not going to help get the results you desire.
-
Work on improving your ALT tags to helpful key word phrases
Without these changes, your site will simply not appear in the top 1000 in my opinion. A final thought. Focus on a long tail key phrase which can land your site on the first page. Improving your ranking from 150 to 40 isn't really helpful. You are still buried in the pile and are unlikely to be found.
-
-
see above for the site. How do I look back at the cache? It has been over a month and still hasn't shown back up in the top 1000
-
It would be so very helpful if you could share your site and the keywords.
On a few occasions I offered generic answers to this type of question, then when the original poster shared their site information, the root issue was something quite different.
-
It's always tough to say without seeing the site. As you know, so many variables are involved. That is strange & it would be helpful to look back at the cache to see which one it picked up before you dropped off those specific SERPs. My guess is you'll be back where you started within a few days.
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
-
Google keywords
I'm having trouble understanding how google determines out of my text what are the keywords and what aren't. Is there somewhere I can go that will tell me what google sees as my dominant keywords and I'd like to see my total keyword list too. We are running eCommerce and I don't think it is picking up on everything we expected it to see as keywords. I'm pretty new to this SEO stuff but I'm trying to learn. Any help would be appreciated. I understand I'm suppose to include important words in my page titles, headers and meta description and use effective markup as well so I'm just a bit lost on how I can actually see what google counts as my keywords and their level of power/importance. If this isn't possible if anyone has any suggestions on how to gauge this, I'm open to ideas! Thanks in advance guys!
Keyword Research | | ithvac0 -
Keyword Research Help
Hi all, My website is www.bruadair.com which is a luxury 7 bedroom villa in Barbados primary suited for large groups and weddings , using googles adword keyword tool i have been trying to establish some long tail keywords that i could include in my website. However i am finding it extremely difficult to find any long tail keywords (such as: Luxury 7 bedroom Villa Barbados ) that are receiving any local or global searches, it seems that there are only extremely competitive keywords receiving traffic. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how i can find effective keywords? With this type of website is it really as likely to be able to rank high due to the pure amount of keyword competition? I would really appreciate any help given as i am really struggling with my keyword research 😞 Thank you very much!!
Keyword Research | | Tmgale0 -
How are similar keyword phrases related?
I'm new to SEO and have been reading a lot to try to get up to speed. There is one concept that I'm not clear about and am not sure what to search on to find an answer. Let's say I'm trying to target 2 keyword phrases "Wordpress SEO" and "Wordpress SEO plugin". In the content of my web page should I always write "Wordpress SEO plugin" because it'll count towards both phrases I'm trying to target? Or would Google be smart enough to only give me credit for "Wordpress SEO plugin" in that case and I should also put just "Wordpress SEO" in other places in my content? Hopefully that makes sense. Thanks in advance!
Keyword Research | | Yuba302 -
Scoring with one keyword in two languages
I would like to read your advice on using 1 keyword in two languages for one landing page. Perhaps it's better to use the keyword in two different language sites, or what do you advise?
Keyword Research | | U-Digital0 -
Where do you Peoples Get Keyword Ideas?
Hey everybody, I thought I would get your opinions on the sites where you like to mine keyword phrases. Before determining competition, I like to get ideas from the Adwords Tool, Keyword Optimizer Pro (a Google suggest scraper), Insights, Trends, and by looking at the phrases competitors are optimized for. How about you guys? Jared
Keyword Research | | JaredBroker5 -
Do you use broad match or exact match on Adwords Keyword Tool when doing keyword research?
I wasn't sure whether to classify this as a discussion or a question. I'd love "the right answer" but I'm not sure if we're going to get one... Let's try. When you use the Adwords Keyword Tool for doing keyword research, do you use the numbers from "broad match" or "exact match" when comparing relative search volume of keywords? (And yes, I know the numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt, but when it comes down to it, you're using the numbers to compare and come to conclusions regarding the best keyword to use - so which match type gives you the data you're looking for?) To be a little more specific - when you select "exact match" for, let's say the keyword "baking supplies", is that telling you how many people searched for that phrase within quotes <"baking supplies">, or how many people searched for only <baking supplies="">, as opposed to that word within a phrase <baking supplies="" stores="">or with the words reversed <supplies baking="">?</supplies></baking></baking> Based on some keyword research we had done a year ago where any phrase reversals like <water bottles="">and <bottles water="">were coming out with the exact same numbers, even when it wasn't so intuitive that there would be the same search volume, we came to the conclusion - with the tentative suggestion of the SEOMoz staff on the old Q & A - that broad match would include all instances of the keywords in reverse order, so if you wanted to know how many people were searching for <water bottles="">only, you needed to use exact match. </water></bottles></water> That's what we did for about a year (I also think I saw Rand mention that somewhere in a presentation slide recently, although I could be mistaken and I don't recall exactly where it was to check it up) and then based on a recent forum discussion I had where someone was questioning that premise, I did another check with two KW reversals and while <water bottles="">and <bottles water="">still give the same number, <baking supplies="">and <supplies baking="">do not. </supplies></baking></bottles></water> So I'm left with a big question here as to what the best policy is. Google Adwords Help is very vague on what the match type means in the tool (it seems to be talking about only your settings for your campaigns). So - any input after this long saga? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | debi_zyx0 -
Choosing keywords for similar products on an ecommerce site
In the case of an e-commerce website, can you optimize multiple pages using the same keyword ‘root’ but including different long-tail variances of that ‘root’? For example, say I’m optimizing for a site that sells wallpaper. I found search traffic for the keyword “buy wallpaper online,” but no traffic for “Blue Tinted Wallpaper” (or its variants) and no taffic for “Yellow Plaid Wallpaper” (or its variants). Could I effectively optimize both of these pages using the root “Buy wallpaper online”, yet distinguish the pages by using long-tail variants such as “Buy Blue Tinted Wallpaper Online” and “Buy Yellow plaid Wallpaper Online”? Any examples of this you can point to?
Keyword Research | | EricVallee340