Our keyword rank fell drastically since our last moz crawl. What gives?
-
Our site was just crawled last night an we had a number of keywords fall 25% or so, from say # 30 to 38. What would cause such a drastic fall? We haven't taken down pages or changed changed page titles, url or content.
One thing we are having trouble with is our meta description and meta keywords for each page. Drupal 7 seems to be giving us trouble and the meta information isn't showing up anymore.
Would that cause the fall? Any other suggestions?
-
Wow, thanks for the great response. Where could I learn more about properly configuring it so my dev can make sure its done properly.
Since you mention that, moz does give me a lot of warnings (about 500) about duplicate page content and titles. Maybe that's part of the issue.
-
Sorry Dru
CDN is a Content Delivery Network.
It helps make your site faster by serving your images, CSS and javascript from a network across the world.
If you misconfigure it or configure it lazily (as I did) then it is possible for the search engines to access your content from the CDN and that can create duplicate content, accidentally, for which you may be penalized.
- and that might be a reason for a ranking drop.
-
Thanks!
-
Meta Keywords is not used by search engines
Meta description is used by search engines part of the time.
-
Sorry, I'm in idiot and have no idea what CDN means. Do you mind explaining Alan? Sorry for my novice-ness.
-
Do you have a CDN?
They started crawling some of my pages through the CDN, which I have never seen before, and they are dropping my real pages and replacing them with CDN pages.
-
I have seen some pretty massive fluctuations in two SERPS I keep track of over the past 24 hours. The changes in rankings haven't just affected my domains, but competitors domains as well (both good and bad for them). I am wondering if it has something to do with the changes Google launched in February.
Like others have said I am going to wait and see if the changes remain for a few days until I panic.
-
So meta description is meaningless for SEO correct? But it is helpful in the search engines to the person who searched so they can get a desc of the link provided right? That would be the main benefit?
-
from say # 30 to 38
This could be normal flux. Hang in there.
One thing we are having trouble with is our meta description and meta keywords for each page.
Meta keywords is meaningless.
If you have concerns about your site maybe a consult with a Drupal Expert would put your mind at ease and correct any real problems.
-
Thanks for the help Jeffrey. I've seen some fall for the last three weeks, but much more gradually than last nights crawl. Maybe 2 or 3 places the last two crawls and then 8 places last night.
-
Has it just been one day? I'd give it at least a day or two more before panicking. Things tend to move around in Google like that.
Meta keywords and description have zero direct impact on SEO rankings.
Don't bother filling in meta keywords at all. It's a waste of time.
Meta descriptions can be important for getting clicks, but they won't help for where you rank in Google if you're trying to optimize the descriptions with keywords.
-
We also had a similar situation the previous week. This week we seem to have stabilized. I'm trying to figure it out myself as we have been steady with our pages, and actually significantly increasing in content and # of pages.
PS. If this response helps, please hit the "thumbs up"!
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
-
Keywords and keyword traffic
Hi I am struggling to know what keywords i should be targeting and how the website should be best optimised for said keywords. The website offers bespoke service in the lake district UK a popular tourist destination, The business operates within say a 30 km riadus of the area. So target vistors to the website would specifically be looking for services in the lake district. The trouble is for many targeted keywords for the area are quite low or no data shown. For example: tipi camping lake district, tipi hire lake district, Glamping lake district However nationally keywords for the service have a lot higher traffic i.e. tipi hire or tipi camping, glamping what keywords should be my target? and should I targeting my website for? I don't want to target customers looking for these services outside of the lake district and also by targeting keywords without the term lake district means my competition is greater as i'm competing with the whole of the Uk for serivces It can't provide. please advise thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bengo-990 -
Not Ranking - Any Tips?
Hi guys, I have a client site that I've recently come onboard with that was published late last year, not really optimized for anything, and in a moderately, but not very, competitive, search space. Early April we optimized the home page and a couple of other pages and have since built about 5-6 (high quality, partial match) links to it, and a press release was done mid last month. The only other thing we did was change the site from non-www to www and set this as the preferred domain in Search Console. Over 6 weeks since that all began, and we're still not on the radar at all for any of our main keywords - nowhere. The only thing we are really ranking for is our brand name, but this is the wrong (press release, not home!) page, and it's bouncing a lot. All of the pages seem to be indexed, and we are ranking for one other (inconsequential) keyword, but 99 is the highest it has reached. An SEO friend told me to build some citations, but this is not a local business, nor are we trying to rank locally. Can anyone please suggest why it might be taking so long, and what else I could try? I imagine more links will help, but results from our outreach are hard to predict, so if there were another safe link type that could help me figure out whether this domain is in trouble or not ASAP, that would be ideal. Thanks very much in advance for any help you can provide. Ulla
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ullamalm0 -
Why does this site rank above us?
We own www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk and over the last 8 months have built some decent guest post, charity and customer links but still we seem to be beaten on good words such as banners, banner, vinyl banner, pvc banner etc by this website www-signfirm.com we just cannot figure out how this is happening and would be very grateful if someone with great wisdom could give us an in-site into why this is happening and we would be very grateful..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
If Penguin 2.0 targets specific pages and keywords, should I spend less SEO effort on them since will they be harder to optimize? Penalty repair is only starting at end of year.
I’m working with a company that got hit by Penguin 2.0. They’re going to switch to white-hat only for a few months and review analytics before considering repairing the penalty. In the meantime, would it make sense to focus less SEO effort (on-site optimization, link building, etc.) on any pages or keywords that were penalized or hit hardest? Or are those the pages we should work on the most? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
My PR 4 website won't rank for keywords that have very weak competition
I bought a real 1Yr old PR4 domain and used it to make a blog that would rank easily for new trending keywords (Ex: product launch keywords). I used Yoast SEO and made sure I did all the on-page recommendations it gave me and had linklicious ping the post and a couple high PR backlinks that I gave the page, but it won't even rank page 10 let alone index. My domain is indexed and the home page links to my post. I know a average amount of SEO but I hate doing it because stuff like this frustrates me. Can someone help me? Do I need to get certain backlinks? Is there a way to get my site and post to index faster? BTW the keywords i'm trying to rank for have websites that are brand spanking new some of them are blogspot websites. Most of them don't have a single backlink to them.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jamal41930 -
Ranking History Reports
I like that every week I can go into my campaign and see how I did. If I want to keep tabs (reports) every week and continuous record keeping how would I do that? For example, I want to see how we did last month on a particular keyword, should I set up to run a report every week for that keyword and have it emailed to me. Is that the only way to do that or does Moz keep previous history somewhere else? Thanks. PS Another website I help out on recently had a huge jump in pageviews this month. I don't track them in SEOMOZ currently is there anyway to figure out where that traffic is coming from? I am guessing perhaps they moved up in Google. Is there a way to see previous history? i.e. they are 33 last month for a certain keyword?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenhornet770 -
What would cause a sudden rise and drop in keyword ranking?
I made one change to my site - creating a good, relevant, title. A few days later, ranking for a keyword jumped pretty well - which is what I was expecting. We were ranked 9th. Then the next ranking report showed a 20 place decline. What would cause this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ocularis0 -
Keyword Self-Cannibalization
Hi, Happy Friday! I was advised to look at the SEO strategy of a UK SEO company and copy a technique they used, however, I have doubts that this technique is any good. So mydomain.com targets My Domain For my main keyword phrase, I was told to place a link to a newly created inner page in my footer, targeting the main keyword and on this page, create unique content which points back to my homepage. Now I also have mydomain.com/my-domain.php which has a link to mydomain.com with anchor text My Domain. Based on the SEOMoz reports, this now seems to be Keyword Self Cannibalisation and I think that it is diluting link juice and the value of my SEO on my homepage for this term rather than helping. Can you advise if this technique is wrong?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tdsnet0