Sudden and Aggressive Fall in Rankings
-
I have seen a sudden and aggressive drop in rankings for my site. The site was ranking #4 for rental insurance and now sits at #9. It was ranking #16 for renters insurance and now dropped to #171. We vary anchor text in our link building campaign and focus on getting links from PR3+ sites as well as produce content for quality sites in exchange for being a featured author + link. The site has not been over optimized (i.e. keyword stuffing, etc.).
I would appreciate any insight into what could be causing this significant drop in rankings and what my course of action is to reinstate my rankings - Penguin?
-
Thanks for the information you provided...
I believe the shift in rankings will be primarily due to a weak link profile for your domain but also a stronger backlink profile from some of your competitors which has seen them rise above you in the organic rankings. These changes coming since the additional Penguin algorithm updates rolled out by Google. (Incidentally, have you seen a decline in Yahoo/Bing if you monitor positions at these search engines too)?
When seeking link opportunities, it's not advisable to chase PR - if 95% of your backlinks all come from pages with a PR3+, then this in itself looks unnatural and will have been a signal flagged.
It is also possible, that those domains you have previously sourced backlinks from via building content relationships could also have suffered as a result of the latest algorithm updates - if they look to sell/provide backlinks using their page PR as selling point, and subsequently link out to various websites from sidebar placements (which they do looking at some of the pages containing your backlinks), this could also have made your domain suffer as less weight/authority is being passed through your links.
I would recommend acquiring some new backlinks, don't worry about the PR of a page and don't focus on using keywords in your anchor text. Perhaps consider some guest content at a few blogs, writing a few pieces of content at each related to your products/services using an author byline with branded backlinkS - for example:-
<name>is the marketing manager at RentalInsurance.org for a leading provider of renters insurance in New York.</name>
Perhaps also consider contributing via comments to some blogs, doesn't matter whether backlinks are nofollow or otherwise, just ensure your brand and where possible,link back to your site (using your name for commenting instead of keywords) via making some relevant and genuine comments to other blogs.
Build a few handfuls of backlinks such as these which will counterweight the links in your existing backlink profile and ensure there are some more genuine and natural links being built.
I would expect this to prove a step in the right direction however there is also the possibility Google could also be looking at onsite elements and the practically exact match domain name too which have also seen changes from recent algorithm updates.
Hope that helps for now.
-
Hey Geoff-
Not sure if you received my response but I would appreciate your thoughts on this.
-
1. The decline started about a week ago.
2. There had not been any changes in our digital marketing strategy. We have been building links in the same way since February 2012. The strategy had been to acquire PR3+ one way links with varying anchor text from a variety of link types (i.e. permanent one way links, contextual links & directory links). Anchor text varies from renters insurance, rental insurance, renters insurance quotes, renters insurance quote, renter insurance, buy renters insurance online, affordable rental insurance, etc. 'Renters insurance' links didn't exceed 40% of the backlink profile while rental insurance was the next closest in terms of volume at 20%.
3. The only paid links we have acquired were from directories but those paid links make up a very small amount of our links. Almost all of the links you see in Open Site Explorer were acquired from content relationships although OSE shows a very limited number of our links.
4. We determine a quality site as relevant in topic, PR3+ and does not link to questionable neighborhoods.
I would appreciate any insight you can provide as we thought we were staying within G's quality guidelines and now we have been (at least is appears) penalized.
-
Some questions that should help point us in the right direction:-
- At what point did you see a decline in organic search rankings?
- What were the last changes made to your digital marketing strategy prior to noticing the decline?
- Do you or have you previously paid for links? (I'm referring to your link profile here).
- What do you feel determines a "quality site" (in your words)?
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
-
Page not ranking because of React.js ?
Hey guys, I'm struggling with this part of my website which uses react.js . My developers used this saying it's much better and much quicker (which I think so too) but we have really low traffic coming from google compared to the other parts of the website (not using react.js). Moz gives me a score of 85% for the page but we get less than 100 visits / day and we were targeting 10.000 visits/day giving the traffic of this section in our competitors website (our whole website has 60.000 visits / day). (Section is online since 3 months now) Can you help me see what is wrong there ? I'm in Belgium so we have the website in 3 languages (FR/NL/EN) but the most important ones are FR & NL. FR : https://gocar.be/fr/prix-voitures-neuves/Audi/A3/A3-Sportback/1-0-TFSI_39CER NL : https://gocar.be/nl/prijzen-nieuwe-wagens/Audi/A3/A3-Sportback/1-0-TFSI_39CER EN : https://gocar.be/en/price-new-cars/Audi/A3/A3-Sportback/1-0-TFSI_39CER Main competitors having a better ranking than us (exemple in FR) : https://www.moniteurautomobile.be/modele--audi--a3/prix.html https://www.vroom.be/fr/prix/audi-a3/citadine-2012/197 Cheers ! Jean-Philippe
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gocar_be0 -
Yahoo and Bing Rankings
Hello. I have noticed that Yahoo and Bing rankings for all of my clients have significantly tanked as of the beginning of March. Has there been a recent algorithm update for these two search engines and what are some major things I can look for to fix? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | higherimages0 -
Dislodged own ranking with poorer quality page?
Hi, So last week we where ranking within the top two pages for google for a results page at something like rank 21 - https://www.whichledlight.com/t/g9-led-bulbs We have been tracking this page and earned a few decent domain authority links here. Today when the new rankings came in it looks like a blog page we wrote a while back has jumped several pages to number 13 in the rankings - ok so not the end of the world BUT our results page seems to have disappeared from the rankings. You can see from the screen shot in the attached link at some point Moz / Google has noted that both the pages are relevent in some capaicty. Has Google decided that because both pages are from the site and both are showing ranking signals for the same traffic that one should go? It also seems weird that this blog one would come from nowhere to rank so highly in the course of a week. Perhaps they have changed their algorithm? This is a bit of a concern for us as it is unclear whats happened - especially after we where so close to getting to page one for a valued search term. SBZRaIq
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrueluxGroup0 -
Inner pages not ranking well
Hi Guys I'm currently working on a website and scratching my head. It seems certain pages of the website rank absolutely fine. The homepage, certain pages on footer and the primary navigation pages are ranking fine. Pages, however, that sit on the inner navigation (e.g 3rd level navigational pages) - do not rank well at all. Looking in webmaster, it is apparent these are fluctuating in and out of the Google index - sometimes they are there - sometimes not. I fully understand issues with Google penalties but I don't believe this is case as other pages are ranking fine. Link building has been done to these pages but to no effect. We have also increased internal links e.g by putting the pages on the footer - but still nothing. One thing that may impact the ranking is possibly the URL structure The website URLs are all www.Example.com/widgets - even if they sit on the 3rd level of the user navigation. Could this be a reason why? Would it help if 3rd level pages had the URL structure www.Example.com/services/widgets ? If anyone can provide help that would be great!!! thanks, Duncan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
How to rank product pages?
Hi guys, Please advice me on something improving my product pages ranking. We are doing well for head terms, categories but not ranking for product pages. We have issues with product pages which I am think is hard to tackle. For instance we have duplicate products (different colors), duplicate content internally (colors) and from manufacturer websites. Product pages linked from sub-category i.e. Home > Category > Sub-Category (20 per page) using pagination for next 20 and so on. Product pages linked internally via widgets that says other Similar products, featured products etc. Another issue with our product pages is that we are using third party reviews platform and whenever users add reviews to product pages this platform creates an hyperlink to different anchors which is not relevant to product. Example - http://goo.gl/NUG652 Can somebody please give some advice on how to improve rankings for product pages. writing unique content for thousands of pages is not possible. Even our competitor not writing unique content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webmaster_SEO0 -
Can re-directs decrease your rankings??
Hi Guys, I need some advice here please - I have the chance to put some links on a few websites to my website in hope it will help with my rankings.. BUT - I have noticed that the webstites are being re-directed to another websites.. so my questions is ; Can re-driects decrease your rankings?? Thanks Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GAZ090 -
How long for new pages to rank
Hi Guys, Our website has some really good serps for our established keyword phrases some of which are quite competitive. We recently acquired and have begun selling some new brands through our online shop and launched new pages for these brands around 2 months ago. They are quite competitive ("merrell shoes" and "timberland boots" for example in google.co.uk) terms. Do you think we should get some keyword rich links built into these new pages from external sites such as blogs - or is there chances of ranking well driven more off our overall site authority/link profile? In other peoples experience, what is a typical realistic timeframe to start getting meaningful serps on new pages/keyword phrases (I know that is hard to answer - but ball parks figures appreciated). Thank you everyone in advance. Kind Regards (and happy thanksgiving to our US friends)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ConradC
Conrad Cranfield0 -
Google Places - How do we rank
So, google places showing up on search results is great feature . . . But how can we get our results to the top? I mean I can see some terrible websites appearing at the top of the google places with their places page having no activity whatsoever. Is there a trick to this at all? What can we do to increase our ranking on Google Places because our old GOOD rankings are now appearing BELOW the map results Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kayweb0