Have I suffered a keyword specific penalty?
-
Hi all,
We've been working on improving our ranking for a specific keyword for the past couple of months. Progress has been steady if not spectacular (it's a very competitive keyword). Last week we obtained (not bought!) a site wide link from a partner (nothing fishy, they are business partners in the same industry) as well as a link each from a relevant resource site and a directory with good PA/DA. The anchor text used on the new links is keyword rich.
This week our rankings have fallen dramatically from page 2 to page 39 for our targeted page although other pages on our site still rank well for this keyword. The targeted page is still indexed by Google.
Could Google just be reassessing our ranking for this page and it will return to its previous rank or is it likely it has received a keyword specific penalty?
Thanks in advance.
-
Thanks for letting us know, and that's great to hear!
-
Hi Keri,
We took all of the above on board and decided to redesign the page completely adding more content to the page and decreasing the number of links. Our rank improved almost immediately so a great result!
Thanks to all who helped out.
-
Now that it has been a few weeks, how have things settled out? Can you give us an update, and is there anything we can do to help?
-
I'm 100% confident that nothing breaks Google's guidelines. The only thing I can think of is that our anchor text is overly optimised. That's my worry.
Thanks again,
Brendan.
-
Sorry, I responded before reading the end. I would suggest that if you really believe that page has been penalized individually, you submit to Google for reconsideration. You do this through WMT and simply login to the account and on the left side mid way down will be the link to reconsideration requests. Click and follow directions. Caveat:
Don't do this until you have read and understood the guidelines and are sure your site complies. It is likely this is all due to the on page changes and not due to Google. You do not want to have them look closely at your site and then decide something is wrong, potentially costing you a real penalty.
Best
-
Thanks Robert,
You've managed to calm my nerves somewhat!
Now I'm off to take a look for those Chinese Gambling Sex Enhancer sites you speak of!
Thanks again,
Brendan.
-
I still don't believe there is an issue. First, there are 1) a sitewide link from a business partner, 2) a relevant resource link and 3) a directory link.
If you had 100 links to the page in the last two weeks from Chinese Gambling Sex Enhancers, etc. well, maybe it would be an issue. But based on what you described I do not see it.
-
Hi Robert,
Thanks for your reply. The reason I asked about the penalty is because the new links used keyword rich anchor text. Couldn't this be the proverbial straw that triggered the Google penalty? Obviously I take this in to consideration when link building and mix it up as much as possible but the vast majority of links to this page are internal and as such use 100% keyword matching anchor text.
For your info, the site is very well established in the market however we have made a lot of changes to the target page recently (URL, page title, alt text etc). I know there can be no categoric answer to this but you seem confident that I shouldn't panic and just sit tight. Could you tell me why you think I haven't been penalised? Are there any methods of testing for keyword specific penalisation?
Thanks again,
-
Brendan,
I would say a week will not tell the story. With changes like you describe here, not to mention even simple changes in the content and on page SEO, we often see wild swings in rankings initially. Think about the times you have seen a site that is brand new all of a sudden show up on page one ahead of quality well established sites and then fade into obscurity over days or weeks.
We likely see this more often as we deal with a lot of emerging issue type sites where in the early stages (3-6months) there is not as much on the web as there is with maturity of the issue. Once the later adopters begin to arrive en masse, we see a lot of the "bumpy" rankings.
With changes we make to pages, we usually do not panic at negative rankings movement until at least 3 to 4 weeks have passed. (We do however suffer from nausea quite a bit during that time frame It is funny that with positive changes we tend to be a little more accepting..... Must be human nature...
Best
-
This has happened with us too a few times, usually we bounce right back if not higher in the listings a week or so later.
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 -
How can I find page 1 google keyword rankings for a certain page?
Not sure if someone has a tool for this yet or not... Say I have a page like this: http://www.merchantcircle.com/business/Spokane.Painting.Pros.509-210-2799 and I would like to find out what keywords this page ranks for on google. Is there any tool that I can paste in that link and it would give me keywords that it ranks well for? Other than the SEO moz rank checker. It's not like I want to run a campaign just for links like that but I might want to build some links to citations like that so I can move those citations up in the rankings.
Link Building | | Superflys0 -
Maintaining or improving keyword ranking
I started a second website recently and it is doing very well. I am on the first page for a competitive keyword - spot 5 according to Moz. It is actually a category page that is ranking so well which is a surprise to me as I have read many times that I should deindex category pages due to duplicate content! My questions: 1. How do I get backlinks to a CATEGORY page?! I have been able to get backlinks to certain posts because my website is a deal blog and other deal blogs give me credit for popular deals by linking to my post. 2. How can I maintain this high ranking? Of course I want in spot 3 but this website isn't even 2 months old so I know I should be patient. At this point, I just want to stay on the first page. What is the best way to do that? I am about to fill out the SEO stuff for the category page which I haven't done yet.Thanks!
Link Building | | dealblogger0 -
Site received penalty, Traffic restricted to 3-4 visits/hour
Dear all We received a penalty notice at webmaster tools 2 months ago, in that stated "your pages violate our quality guidelines" and "contain some inorganic links to your site". Ours is a Coupon website and tried to follow all quality guidelines given in webmaster central. Also we tried to identify and remove spam kind of links and still we are working on that. Suddenly from yesterday website traffic restricted to 3-4 visits/hour, but website main keyword SERPs are not changed much and still ranking at good positions. my question if any website is under manual penalty, it's traffic will be restricted by Google???. Every link we build manually and not gone for any paid links or reciprocal links. But the sites given some links as sitewide, example we tried to get a back link & submitted url at once only, but it was showing in webmaster Total links 468 and linked pages 1. Can any one please explain, how it can happen?. We are trying to remove these spam kind of links, but from directory owners response is a bit disappointing, kindly any one suggest that, will Google Disavow tool help in this regard and how much time it will take to nullify the links?. Kindly help us..Thanking you all in advance
Link Building | | Shashidhar.SEO0 -
I have a Question about open site explorer.Specifically the top pages tab
When i hover the little question mark icon it says "target the best pages to maximize link building.See top pages on the subdomain according to Page authority." Could someone explain this to me.And how do i target the best pages.I'm beginning my second trial week of SEO moz so please excuse me if I sound like a beginner! Thanks in advance PCtechGuy2012
Link Building | | PCTechGuy20120 -
Back Link: Is LinkedIn keywords in profile good Link building strategy?
I distribute industrial products B2B with e commerce. I have a personal profile on LinkedIn. I listed the products I sell and I could have all my partners and associates list my web site on their profiles. Do search engines review LinkedIn personal profiles or company profiles and is it a good marketing strategy to have my web site, keywords, and my two largest selling products on LinkedIn?
Link Building | | Wales0 -
Keyword Strategy for Very Large Website Launch
My friend and I are launching a website used to track alcoholic beverages. It has over 115k pages, three tier site structure. I am curious about the keyword strategy for the homepage. I know I will get a lot of long tail search traffic for drink names and how to mix drinks. Do I need a Keyword Strategy for my homepage with so many internal pages? Its a new brand we created, not a keyword domain. We would like to rank for how to mix drinks, etc... However with the number of pages we already have a lot of internal link juice. Where should link building be focused?
Link Building | | getbigyadig0 -
E-commerce SEO targeting Manufacturer Keywords
What are some good tips, articles, posts, etc. specifically on e-commerce sites that want to target the manufacturers they sell as keywords. For example: Footlocker.com wants to target "Nike" The products we sell are obviously much less competitive than Nike.
Link Building | | JMacSupply0