Finished On Page optimization and slipping in rankings
-
Just finished on page optimization for a client that was on page 2 for the keyword. Went from an on page score of D to an A. But we are still slipping down the rankings. We were towards to top of page 2 now we are towards the bottom. Is there a time that it takes to change or does the on page not really make a big impact?
-
In Google Webmaster Tools you can fetch the page as googlebot and then submit the page to the google index. No guarantee that this will improve your rankings but it helps insure that Google is looking at the most updated and optimized version of that page.
In Google Webmaster Tools, go to: DIAGNOSTICS > FETCH AS GOOGLEBOT, then enter the url for the page you want crawled and click FETCH. After the url is successfully fetched it will appear in the list below the search box and a blue link next to the "Success" check mark appears with the text "Submit to index", click that and you're set.
-
Hi Devon,
How recently did you finish these changes? It's possible that Google hasn't even seen the changes yet and moved you down for reasons totally unrelated to this. For example, if you changed the page title or meta description, is that new title or description showing up in the search results yet? If not, chances are Google has not crawled the page recently and the changes are unrelated to your ranking change.
If yes, what elements did you change on page? Did you change the URL of your page? If you changed the URL, even if you did a proper 301 redirect right away, you may still see a temporary drop in rankings for about 1-2 weeks before it recovers and rises back up. Even with a 301 redirect and everything done perfectly, it can take some time for Google to recognize the authority of the new URL and rank it appropriately.
Please let me know if you have any questions!
Best,
-
Is there a time that it takes to change or does the on page not really make a big impact?
Google crawls sites in small pieces. Depending on the site's DA and the PA of any given page, it can take a month for your site to be fully crawled. It is normal for a web page to bounce around in SERPs, but it should settle down after a month.
There are many factors of page optimization beyond the grade in the campaign manager. It is a helpful tool which can identify various issues, but it is not complete and there are various site wide and off page factors which influence ranking.
-
On page makes a HUGE impact, at least from my (limited) experience...We have gotten a few backlinks over the past month, but most of what we have done is on page optimization. We've went from page 7 to 2 for our main (very competitive) keyword and we're number 1, 2, 3, 4 (or all of them) for a lot of the long tail keywords we went for.
If you haven't yet, make a sitemap (I've been using gsite crawler), then submit that to google in webmaster tools. Granted, it's taken some time....I haven't actually done very much in the last couple of weeks but we're still slowly coming up the rankings.
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
-
Unsolved Should I combine pages?
Hi, Im not sure of the correct route to take here... We are a training provider and I manage the website. The main course offered is the transport manager CPC. Currently, I have a "catch all" landing page which links to each different course option: Landing page > Classroom Online Self study Distance learning The main keyword revolves around "transport manager cpc" I want searchers to land on the online page is they search "online transport manager CPC" for example but I think its confusing Google. I'm wondering if I should de-index the store pages (although some perform very well) and increase the content on the main landing page to rank for every related keyword on that page. Initially, I wanted to devalue the landing page in favor of the store pages but I'm unsure if that's the right way to go. I've stripped out the bulk of the keywords and content and shifted it to each individual page. but as above, Im now unsure if that's the right route to take. Any help would be greatly appreciated 👍 Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | dunbavand
Rich0 -
Static content pages ranking dropping all the time
Hello all. I have been working three months in my current job in the hotel industry. I have been publishing a lot of content to our website (mainly articles), which in general have been ranking well and really boosted our website traffic. The problem that I am facing, though, is the fact that our static pages' rankings are basically constantly dropping. Especially one of our main pages, which is this hotel page. I haven't been doing any real changes to the content, but the ranking (with keywords "hotelli helsinki" [Hotel in Helsinki in Finnish]) has plummeted from 13th position all the way down to 19th... What has been happening during these last three months is that we did change to a new domain and we have done all the redirections and also informed Google about this change through search console. I have also done some minor changes to the on-page content, such as changing the meta titles and descriptions as well as the page title and some of the text content to more natural ones instead of clumsy SEO texts and optimizing the images. This hasn't helped at all though and the rankings seem to steadily drop all the time. What would YOU do with this page? Maybe add more text content to the page to be more informative? All tips would be highly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | haapalatuomas0 -
How on earth does this rank?
Hi Everyone, Im speaking to someone about doing decent SEO, follwing the basics and not doing dodgy stuff for the short term. He is a driving instructor trying to rank for driving lessons peterborough (this is in the uk) and one of the websites coming out towards the top of serps is ian-rayner.com/index.htm. Its got no links, no social signs, has a page labelled SEO Stuff with a whole list of keywords and internal links back to his home page. It has a Domain authority of 11 and page authority of 1 !!! Is it because no one is following the basics and uncompetitive that its ranking or is he doing something other than a few keywords in the content, meta title and description, and a internal links that im missing?
On-Page Optimization | | Ant710 -
Optimizing for Bing
My keyword ranking many times vary significantly from google to bing. i feel comfortable with my google rankings but many competitors that i am ranking higher than in google are much higher than my site in bing. Any tips? www.hodgesbadge.com
On-Page Optimization | | GaryQ0 -
Can a page lose ranking because it has too many bold tags?
I run a product search website for the Engineering Sector. Each of the companies listed on the website has a profile page. This page used to rank very well in google. Over the last couple of weeks these pages disappeared for google i.e they fell about 20 to 30 spots in the search results for relevant keywords like the Manufacturer Name. I was trying to analyze the page and found that Each of the Categories that the manufacturer supports was listed in "bold" and linked to the page for that category. A manufacturer can support up to 20 or 30 categories so this results in about 20 or 30 Bold keywords. Is this a bad practice? Could this be a reason for a drop in ranking or do bold keywords on a page not matter? What are your views?
On-Page Optimization | | raghavkapur0 -
How could I avoid the "Duplicate Page Content" issue on the search result pages of a webshop site?
My webshop site was just crawled by Roger, and it found 683 "Duplicate Page Content" issues. Most of them are result pages of different product searches, that are not really identical, but very similar to each other. Do I have to worry about this? If yes, how could I make the search result pages different? IS there any solution for this? Thanks: Zoltan
On-Page Optimization | | csajbokz0 -
How long would it take for On-Page Optimization to have an effect on Google Rankings?
Hi there, I have a page on our website with an Interview with the author Tess Gerritsen. There has been a reasonable amount of Social Media buzz related to the page and lots of links. According to SEOMoz we are an A grade for the keyword Tess Gerritsen, we currently rank 29th on Google.co.uk for a 'tess gerritsen' search. My question is - how long would it take for any new changes to have an effect? I presume the answer would be whenever the page is crawled again. But is it wise to change one thing, then get crawled and see what the effect is, then the next day change something else and see what the effect is. Or is it wise to change one thing and then leave it a week or so to see the full effect of the change? Apologies for the vague question, if you need any more clarification just let me know. Thanks. Benj
On-Page Optimization | | Benj250 -
Woah, my A-grade optimized pages that were on the first page have all vanished outside the top 50 in Google... is this Panda?
Yep as mentioned, I had some pages hit the top ten pretty quickly after ensuring they were A-grade for pretty uncompetitive keywords however, today, all bar 2 have just vanished from the top 50! All were ranking in Google.co.uk and I know we were predicting the Panda update to hit soon but WOW! My client is understandably a little upset, what on earch do I tell him and what should I do about it? Cheers! jT
On-Page Optimization | | Switch_Digital0