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
-
Back links do I need my keyword in them to rank? If so creative way to accomplish this?
The first question is pretty self explanatory. If I do need my keyword I'm trying to rank for in my link example: Looking for a cool skateboard (cool skateboard) is my keyword. Can anyone on here help me come up with some creative ways for me to get folks to post backlinks to my site with that key word in it? Unfortunately my sites url does not have the keyword in my domain.
Link Building | | mr_w0 -
If create backlinks on perticular Keyword then its benifitial for keywords ranking improvement?
Created many backlinks on a different- different particular keywords so, i want to know that keywords ranking improve this type of activites or not?
Link Building | | surabhi60 -
What is a healthy ratio of keywords being used as anchor text in external links to our site?
Hi, One keyword is being used as anchor text in way more external links to our site than any others and I'm getting a lot of mixed advice whether or not to do anything about it. The agency we previously used had managed to remove about 1500 links (out of 6000) however our rank for that search term is still very poor. **We have 4500 external links with the anchor text "ABC" and the next highest amount of external link anchor text is the term "XYZ" which has about 400 links. That is over 10 to 1. What is a healthy ratio of anchor text between different search terms to aim for? ** Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Link Building | | Syed_Raza0 -
Should I use general keywords or city specific keywords for back link campaign?
I am working on a new client that offer appliance repair in all of california and I was wondering would it be ok if I just target general keywords like "appliance repair" instead of city specific keywords like "los angeles appliance repair" for the back link campaign . I am sure city specific would be better for rankings, but would the general keywords help local seo at all? What is the best way to go about this with out having to make a city specific page for all listings? thanks
Link Building | | jesse13410 -
Simple Question Regarding Keyword Landing Page
Hi guys, I run a small online business in Singapore want to try to DIY SEO. Been doing alot of reading and using the wonderful tools at Seomoz. This might be the first dumb question here. Its very basic but i cant seem to find anything on it (maybe its too simple). Let's say i want to rank 3 keywords - A, B & C. Do i use homepage as landing page for all 3 or do i use 3 separate pages? ( i tend to think the latter is correct). If I use 3 pages and do all necessary optimization and start a link building campaign, do i get backlinks to point back to homepage or the kw targeted page? Eg. an article submission exercise (not the best thing to do i know but i promise ill only submit to good sites). Are these the right things i should do? Keyword: car horns. landing page: carshop.com/car-horns write a 400 word article about car horns and use as content on carshop.com/car-horns write another 400 word article about car horns and post to say carhornarticles.com at the end of article mention a line about my business dealing with car horns and hyperlink 'car horns' pointing back to ??? (carshop.com or carshop.com/carhorns) repeat, writing unique articles each time but changing anchor text to something different each time, maybe 'purchase car horn' etc. Or should links be divided between both carshop.com& carshop.com/carhorns? I swear i used the search function before asking this question. Hope it's not so silly i dont get any help. Thanks guys!
Link Building | | babooni0 -
Individual keyword pages or single page with backlinks and anchor text?
Hi, I was wondering which is the better strategy? People say the keyword dig is the basis for any SEO strategy, which i totally agree with, however, traditionally the strategy for these keywords has been to write fresh content based on sometimes very similar keywords / terms to attract specific keywords traffic... With google getting smarter and smarter, would you say it is safer (if you know you have a very tight and stable backlinking strategy) to backlink a page that has a number of your similar keywords present, with the relevant anchor text on the inbound sites? So in essence the site ranks for multiple keywords..? I hope this makes sense, it's a very difficult one to get out onto paper! 🙂 Many thanks in advance!
Link Building | | turnips
Turnips0 -
Potential Keyword Cannibalization Issue
I'm going to give an example of the potential website I'm going to build. Lets say it's about the individual graduating classes of a certain high school. I want my targeted niche keyword phrase to bey "graduating classes of example high school". Graduating Class would be the broader keyword. I would have a home page, which is a blog of recent news covering all of the students who've attended example high school. From my home page, you're able to access individual pages: 2012 Graduating Class 2011 Graduating Class 2010 Graduating Class etc.... If I'm internally linking to all of these pages, won't I encounter keyword cannibalization? or is the link "2012 Graduating Class" unique enough?
Link Building | | AndySolo0 -
Which parameter does google value more: number of incoming links or on-page optimizations (meta data and keywords)?
I am just starting with the SEO and I have a client in the travel industry whose website is not ranked well on the search engines. After doing the seo audit we see that the website's on-page optimization (meta titles, meta description, meta keywords and h1, h2, etc tags) is bad. At the same time there are very few incoming links into the website. These are the key 2 issues we found. In order to proceed most effectively, what do you think would be more effective to focus on first? Doing the on-site optimization or focusing more on the link building? Do the search engines, in particular, google - weight more either of these parameters? thanks so much for all your advice! all the best egle
Link Building | | queenz0