My google rankings went down
-
I've been working with a company to get some incoming links since April 2011. We are targeting only 2 keywords. For one keyword I was ranked number 1 until a couple of weeks ago. In fact, most of my rankings went down including those keywords that the company was not working on. They are writing 5 articles per month and posting them to their proprietary network. Could those backlinks could harmed my rankings?
-
Movement from position 1 to position 4 is not that unusual. I imagine this has caused a subastatntial drop in traffic as the CTR tends to drop sharply after position 3, but I wouldn't consider this a dramatic drop in rankings caused by problems with your backlinks. It is possible that some backlinks might be devalued by Google which has caused a small drop,
More likely this is caused by a Panda update. Panda wasn't a one time update, and this Search Engine Watch article suggests an update around the time of your drop (http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2080631/Google-Quietly-Launches-Panda-Update-Version-2.2). This probably means that Google sees your content as a little weaker than your competitors.
Based on this, I don't think you need to make any major changes. Try to get some more good content up on your site. And I'm not sure how active you are in the social realm, but more social engagement (I suspect Google is a big fan of +1's) could help.
I'm not sure if your on-page efforts are also limited to two keywords, but if so, I'd consider expanding that a bit. Diversification will make your traffic and revenue less susceptible to fluxuations like this. Moving into the social media will also give you another way to produce traffic that isn't reliant on SEO, while usually increasing the efforts of your SEO.
-
Do you know when was the last panda update?. It was feb 24 2011?
-
If it were me, I would shift the spend from linkbuilding to an SEO firm that will not only provide a good SEO audit, but is willing to provide some education as well.
I'd also focus on putting together a few really great pieces of content related to your niche. While researching for this sort of content, make note of other good sites and blogs that your site aligns with, so you can engage with them. Hopefully, through this engagement, they might find the content you've created helpful to their users/readers and link to your site. This is a pretty conservative approach that doesn't yield quick results, but I tend to be in favor of building for the long term.
There are a lot of ways you can start to generate more natural links to your site. I'd recommend doing some research on SEOmoz because my philosophy isn't the only way to go. You've got to figure out what works for your situation.
-
Hi Theo,
I am sorry I did not provided more info. This is my first time here. I answered below each question, in caps.
• Were there any (shady) links build?
HONESTLY, I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT DOES MEAN.• How did the company perform for these keywords in the past?
WHEN THE LINK BUILDER COMPANY STARTED WORKING ON 2 KEYWORDS, THEY GRADUALLY INCREASED THEIR RANKINGS WHILE THE OTHERS REMAINS WITH THE SAME RATING. SUDDENLY, 2 WEEKS AGO ALL KEYWORDS (THE ONE THEY WERE WORKING ON AND THE OTHERS) WENT DOWN, FROM POSITION 1 TO 4.• Were these keywords over-optimized (for example using loads of exact match anchor texts)?.
NO, THE ARTICLES SEEM NATURAL.• Could there have been any impact of a Panda Google update?.
NO. THE SUDDEN DROP STARTED ON JULY 12, APROX.• Did any on-page changes take effect that might have caused these rankings to shift?.
I DID NOTHING ON THE PAGES. THE ONLY THING WE DID IS UPGRADE OUR SHOPPING CART RELEASE. IT WAS AROUND THAT DATE. HOWEVER, I AM ALSO ON THE SHOPPING CART FORUM AND NOBODY EXPERIMENTS ANY DROP BY UPDATING THEIR SHOPPING CART ENGINE.thanks,
-
Hi Joe,
I did not received any notice from Google Webmaster Tool indicating unnatural linking detected. The company is only working on proving me links. They give me every month the list of the articles they wrote and the links, that's it. How can I avoid this sort of unnatural linkbuilding?. The only thing I did today is find out what are the page and domain authority of the links they are providing me. What that company told me is that they only build links and there is nothing wrong they can do to make my rankings decrease. And what they pointed out is that my rankings went down on the keywords they were working on and also in others. Since I am not expert, I trusted them. What else I can do?
-
Yes, the links could be hurting your rankings, but as Theo points out, a number of things could be causing your rankings to drop. Have you received any notices in Google Webmaster Tools about possible unnatural linking detected? Do you handle your own SEO or have a consultant? Are you relying on the company doing linkbuilding for you to provide you with your SEO analysis? Linkbuilding can sometimes be harmful to the health of your website, so it's a good idea to have someone knowledgeable about SEO to keep an eye on the incoming links you're getting to make sure they're good quality. Or you can avoid this sort of unnatural linkbuilding altogether. Depends on the level of risk you're willing to accept.
-
Pretty much anything is possible based on the data you've provided us at this moment..
- Were there any (shady) links build?
- How did the company perform for these keywords in the past?
- Were these keywords over-optimized (for example using loads of exact match anchor texts)?
- Could there have been any impact of a Panda Google update?
- Did any on-page changes take effect that might have caused these rankings to shift?
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
-
I just want to ask Moz DA help anymore in Rank keywords
Hello Folks, i want to ask i have website related to kullu manali tour package and digital marketing institute, where tour package website DA is 2 and digital marketing institute DA is 26, my institute website rank on almost 1st page on most of keywords where travel website still doing struggle after much good links. please suggest me i need to boost my website DA.
Link Building | | ashux526g0 -
Is ranking power mainly a matter of links?
Hey all. SEO noob here, trying to check my understanding. In competitive analysis, is ranking power at the domain level really all about DA? And is DA basically a count of unique inbound follow links, modulated by the authority of the referring source and spam scores? In other words, is ranking power basically a function of DA and PA? I realize on-page and technical factors can also play a role, but authority seems to be key. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Link Building | | AndyKubrin0 -
How Many Keywords & How Will They Take to Rank?
Hi Guys Just taken on a new site with around 80 keywords with no links because the site is new. Each page is optimised correctly, very user friendly with completely unique content for each and every page. I'm interested to know what would be your online marketing "plan" for such site to begin ranking. Thanks Gary
Link Building | | GaryVictory0 -
Google Penalty due to external links
On Sep 3, we got a Manual Action by Google: unnatural links to your site Immediately we arranged to have all those links the rel="nofollow" atttributes, these were links set by our customers since we are hosting providers. We sent a reconsideration request to Google on Sep 8 and this is their answer:
Link Building | | netbuilder
We’ve reviewed the reconsideration requestfor xxxx and modified its status, but we still believe that content on your site or links to your site are outside our quality guidelines. No more info provided. - We double checked everything but could not find anything else that could harm us so we asked Google (in a new reconsideration request sent on Sep 11 to provide us some samples. On Sep 24 Google answers with a sample of 3 sites which contains links to us. After verification, all the external links to us have the rel="nofollow" attribute !! Today the manual action is not anymore a side-wide one but a partial one and applies to unnatural links--impact links. So it seems that we need to physically have those links removed? As well I checked https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604772?ctx=MAC and he does not refer at all about setting the rel="nofollow" attribute, Looks like Google wants the full monopoly on text links.0 -
Low quality links for Amazon product page=high rank?
I am wondering if there would be any benefit in using low cost link building gigs off of fiverr and seoclerks for specific Amazon product pages. The theory I have heard behind this is Amazon's authority is so high, that even the bad links pointing to the specific product page add to the SEO of the page. When google see's a product page on Amazon, they already assign it a high authority, so links help google see which page is the most popular in that niche, and ranks it. Amazon product pages already rank high in google search results, so the idea is this would give specific pages a little boost. Do you think this is a valid method for getting a specific amazon product page to rank high on google search? I understand this is not the normal type of question here, and it really only applies to Amazon product pages specifically, and not normal sites.
Link Building | | jmc5090 -
Ex-Googler: “To Please Google With Your SEO, Forget About SEO”
Lets discuss, Ex-Googler (Search Quality/Webspam team) talking about SEO. http://searchengineland.com/ex-googler-to-please-google-with-your-seo-forget-about-seo-136800 The bit that got me thinking was 'title tag over optimisation' so what we looking at, shorter title tags with a max of 2 keywords? And the PR quote, does relevance come above PR/DA/PA? Thoughts?
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Drop in "Links to your site" in Google Webmaster Tools
Last week I noticed a substantial drop in "Links to Your Site" in Google Webmaster Tools on several of my websites. Upon further investigation the reduced links were from our sister sites. It appears that Google has reduced the number of links they are counting from links in our headers and footers from these sites to our main websites. It is not affecting our rankings or traffic. Is Google doing some clean up with what they are showing in webmaster tools for links from related, owned sites? Any cause for concern?
Link Building | | tdawson090 -
Ranking dropping for certain keyword
Hi There, Just wondering what has happened to my rankings as I cant seem to understand it. In the past week we've dropped from page 1 to page 10 for a certain keyword. The URL is also different that google displays - instead of displaying the individual page it now just links to the main domain. All the other keywords have remained consistent and some have improved. The page is still in the Google Index if I manually search for it. There hasn't been any dramatic change to the page except I've created a few links to it. Have we been penalized by Google and is there anything I can do?
Link Building | | danielmckay70