Ranking dropped by 7 positions for many keywords
-
Hey,
Since yesterday my ranking dropped by in average 7 positions for most keywords. iIm not 100% sure whats the matter. I rank under the top3 for a quite comptetitive keyword since several months. During the last 4 weeks it wasn't that stady (between 2 - 4) because the competition is using an aggressiv link building method.
I'm adding constantly new content and the link building is also quite natural. Maybe I linked the same sites from some of my blogs too often... and Google may see it as a "link network". I experience the same for two of those sites. Maybe I should remove those links?Any suggestions?
Thanks!
-
It's been a month or so since this was posted. Do you have any updates? Have your rankings changed? Did you figure out what might have happened? Anything for us to learn from or clues to try to help you more would be great.
-
I just read that other people have the same prob. Since Tuesday their rankings dropped as well. Could it still be Panda? I noticed that our content gets copied quite often. Alone one paragraph on the front page can be found over 1300 times on Google.com. Could that be an issue? But Google should acutally recognize which site published the content first...
-
Ok, if any new content has been added to the main website I'd check if the linking structure has changed too. That means, for example, to check out if before you were linking the ranking pages from the index page or side wide and now, with the new content added, those links have gone or shifted to secondary locations.
While for the "link network" you should work also on gaining inbound links from other C-blocks so that you diversify and certainly acquire more trust.
-
This happened to me, almost all of my keywords dropped several pages all at once. It took a lot of digging, but I found out what was causing it, at least in my case.
I had been ignoring some pretty obvious crawl errors for a few weeks. After my keywords got dropped, I decided it might be a good time to go fix the crawl errors. Within a day of fixing them, my keywords reappeared and crawled back up to their original positions within a few days.
Again, not saying this is your problem, but it's pretty obvious to me that Google doesn't like crawl errors.
-
Lets hope the good results return.
-
We have a fully staffed editorial team. We update content constantly. I have seen a resurgence of newer spammy referral sites pop up as well as some other rather bizarre results. Query best strollers in google. You should see Conde Nast's homepage as the 5th result which is completely irrelevant.
Check out this other users comment on this URL http://forums.ebay.com/db2/topic/Ebay-Partner-Network/Googles-Algo-Panda/5100011135
I believe this to be an algo tweak/update,.
-
Actually we dont have any keyword domains. The guys who are ranking now on 2,3 etc. are doing so with one page of relevant content but 100s of keyword backlinks.
Maybe I will remove a few of the links on blogs from which I link to those other two sites as well.
Justin, are you continuing linkbuilding + adding new content from time to time or do you change anything else on your sites?
-
I've seen similar drops for my site as well. Many different categories where we used to rank 1,2 we are now in the 6,7,8 range. I do see lots of keyword domain referral sites popping back up. I'm assuming its another tweak.
-
Hey,
Yes, the main site is on Wordpress, but I added an aditional blog to the site on which we post new articles every week. We also have a forum with around 2k posts. I only added an image to the front page and linked from the blog to one of the pages from the main site.
The strange thing is that it also happened to two other domains for which I placed links...Do you think google recognized it as a "link network" and therefor the ranking drop?
-
Hi Netminds,
I'd check if any changes have been made to the internal link structure of your website. Is it blog (Wordpress) based?
-
Hey Netminds,
did you update any code for the page(s) on that keyword? sometimes google will knock you down, and then after a spider cache or two it will return to normal (assuming no massive difference).
hope it returns! :>)
-
Thanks Ryan. However, other sites which are also linked from some of those blogs are still ranking as before... Would you just continue with link building and adding content as before (of course keeping the sites separated) or would you also remove some links? A few weeks ago I even got a backlink from bbc.co.uk...
-
If you dropped 1-2 positions then it can be your competition improving their sites.
If you dropped 30+ positions I would suspect your site is under a penalty.
Dropping 7 positions leads me to first look at your site's links. There is a strong chance some important links to your site have been devalued. This could be due to reasons unrelated to your site, such as the source has been penalized. It could also be for reasons related to your site. I would suggest a careful examination of your links.
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
-
Internal links: How do I find keywords that are not linked to a URL?
Hi Moz members I'd really like to place an internal link of every instance of an important keyword phrase "cycling caps" or "cycling cap" to my eComm category page
Link Building | | andystorey
https://www.prendas.co.uk/collections/headwear/cotton-caps I feel this would not only help my customers browsing my store, but I believe it will help from an SEO perspective. How can I search my site using Moz, Screaming Frog, Google etc to find every time cycling cap(s) is used but is not linked to the above URL? I can then apply the same for cycling jerseys, socks, etc Andy0 -
Many of our best links are to our old domain. Problem?
Hi, around 7 years ago the organization I'm with switched their domain name. When doing link analysis some of our best links are to the old domain including a followed link from an article on the BBC news site. The old domain has been 301 redirecting to the new domain for years. Is it worth the time to contact the sites that are linking to the old domain? Or, will all or the majority of the link juice be given to the newer domain with the 301 redirect? Thanks!
Link Building | | limited70 -
Started linkbuilding, traffic drops
So I have a couple 3 year old projects I left intact for the last 2 years. Lately I tried to revigorate them. I started to build links to pages that used to be in Google top ten, but the more links I build, the more I lose out on traffic. The main keywords stay around the same position, I suppose the loss in appearances and traffic that can be seen in webmaster tools is mainly due to long tails I do not check the rankings for. I want to ask you guys if anybody have experienced similar data? I suppose it might be due to the exact anchor tags that I have used 3 years ago, so I already started removing those to see if it has a positive effect. I wanted to ask you, maybe somebody has experienced the same and already knows the reason and a solution for this phenomenon?
Link Building | | snetface0 -
Is it risky to be on too many .edu link lists?
I recently heard someone say that if your site is on a lot of link lists (example "Useful Links" pages) this can hurt you. How likely is a Google penalty if your site is listed on tons of .edu link lists?
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Smart optimization strategies to increase website rankings and Organic traffics
I have Got A Grade in On page Analyse from SEOMOZ . I want to get Top rank for " Healthy Breakfast " Keywords.. for this page http://ahealthybreakfastfood.com/category/healthy-breakfast/ I am new in SEOmoz and also SEO world. Actually i want to know "Smart optimization strategies to increase website rankings and Organic traffics " thanks
Link Building | | seolearner0070 -
Rank dropped suddenly. Ways to bounce back?
So, like million threads out there I lost my rank for a particular page and is looking to bounce back. However there might be something different in my case, hence the thread. 1. The rank drop was an after effect of design change, where we merged two pages together. Page A - which was ranking for Keyword A and Page B which was ranking for Keyword B. So we merged it together in the sense that both had similar content and design except the meta tags and page title (I wasn't involved in this project so...) and Page B gets kicked out of Google web index. Page A still remains number 1 for Keyword A. 2. There was some shady link building contract that was implemented some 3 months back (again me not involved, I joined later) and there were an unnatural number of links created with a striking artificial anchor text pattern from low quality "built for link building" blogs. I presume this also affected page B. as this effort was done only for Page B and not A. So now, I managed to clear all the pages for duplicate content, implement a better page structure where I deleted out possible similar pages, redirected them (301) to main pages, and created a new page for Page B, like Page B1 with different content. Implemented a better internal linking profile too where terms related to Page B (Keyword B, Keyword B1, B2 etc) links to Page B. Its been two months now, and Page B ranks for Keyword B1 but not the original Keyword B. I suppose the "penalty" still remains in Google. Any clues how I can get around this? What I want to achieve is to get ranked for Keyword B for Page B, if not the first result, at least start all over from a lower rank but at least break out of the penalty.
Link Building | | Druva0 -
Over 47.000 inbound links from one site - can it hurt my rankings?
Im currently having some banner commercials on a relatively large Danish forum. I talked the forum owner into maing the banner "dofollow" so i could get the "juice" from the site, however im in doubt if this is good or bad for my SEO. Webmaster tools is telling me that i now have over 47.000 links from this forum. it seems like a Lot of links considering that i only have external links from about 5 other sites and the fact that my site is quite new. It seems like my site is not ranked very good yet(as mentioned in another question). I hope someone has some input 🙂 Best reguards
Link Building | | Havalina0 -
Is it bad to insert links to other sites and use bold on keywords?
Hi, This is a question I always had doubt about, and would be very grateful in to know your opinions. Is it bad to link to other sites? Can this causes problems to my blog? I frequently insert links in keywords, etc, for other sites. Many times, for sites greater than mine, and I heard from some people that this is bad. Is this correct? In last days, I have used, in some links, the atribute "nofollow". This is good, or not? In a case, for example, when linking to Wikipedia, is it good to use "nofollow"? And about keywords: I'm mostly using bold on them. Is it good, or not? This subject always makes me think. I would be very grateful for any help. 🙂
Link Building | | Andarilho0