Dropped 50 places for Page Title Change
-
Hey Guys,
I've got a keyword set that is really annoying me. You see on the 19th July I changed my page title for the home page to what I thought would be something more competitive and instead of climbing from rank 9/10 I dropped out of the top 50. So I waited 2 weeks to see if it changed and it just stayed out of the top 50.
After two weeks I changed it back again and I've been out of the top 50 ever since. I havnt made any real significant changes to the site as I've held off waiting for the keyword ranking to return but I dont think it will.
I was trying to improve the keyword phrase "bahamas all inclusive" for the website www.smallhope.com. I'd managed to get on to page 1 rank 9/10 depending.
I changed the title;
from "Bahamas All Inclusive - Andros Bahamas Hotel - Bahamas Vacation - Small Hope Bay Lodge All-Inclusive"
to "Bahamas All Inclusive Vacation - Small Hope Bay Lodge All-Inclusive"
This is really bad for us and I'm not sure what to do.
I had a whole plan in place starting with the Title and moving on to the H1 tags, but now I'm not so sure. I've put everything on hold. If this was you what would you do to get back to page 1?
Thanks,
Adam
-
Just wondering how you are making out with this. I checked Google US and didn't see you rank in the top 50. Curious to hear an update. Hope its going well.
-
What do think about the large amount of words in the image alt tags? I am just curious. I cant help but think it may look a bit spammy. Am I wrong?
-
I think that's it then! Ha that is a weight of my mind, now I have a reason I can create a solution. I just checked my Webmaster Tools data and we went from a stable level of 3000 impressions on the 24th July going straight down to 1000 impressions by the 28th July then picking up slightly and staying around the 1600 level ever since.
I checked the Panda update and they said ~1% have been affected but I've got a lot of duplicate page data on there. I'm going to push forward with a complete change to the text on the front page. Ahh that is a weight off knowing what the problem probably is. Whew....
Thanks for all the help guys its really really appreciated.
Adam
-
There have been several Panda updates since then. There was one on July 24th, 2012 so it's possible that this update picked up your potential Panda issues.
-
Bear in mind theres been alot of recent Google algo changes, your rankings may have changed because of something other than page titles.
BTW - I say that especially applies to the travel industry - ive seen alot of flux for aggregators of late.
-
Ahh I hadnt thought of that, the drop though was about shortly after I changed the title and requested a google reindex of the site. I wonder if the changes caused Google to push through a re-evaluation and penalised it based on the Panda update.
The Panda update was in Fed and my changes we the 19th July, so pretty far apart, but could still be linked.... hmm...
-
I'm guessing this is not really connected to your title change. On what date did you drop from the SERPS? Is it concidental with a known Panda Update?
The reason I am asking is that a quick look for duplicate content on your site, shows this: Google search for a phrase from the site in quotes : 2530 results!
If Google thinks your page is a duplicate of others out there then it has no reason to offer it up to searchers.
I didn't have a thorough look though, but I'm thinking that the drop is not directly related to your title change.
-
Yeah I might at that, just the fact that I'm not in the top 50 though is a very bad sign for the rest of my plan ....
-
Try to continue with your plan I think Google doesn't have an "undo" button... When I'm optimizing the title I'm also changing the meta description to suit the new title, that way if Google doesn't find an appropriate part of text for the description, it will use the optimized one.
-
With this though its over a couple of months with multiple sources of confirmation. My total organic traffic in GA dropped 20% about a week after the change and my Webmaster tools impressions have halved as well.
Right now checking in multiple sources I'm not even in the top 50 since making a title change and then reversing which is very worrying...
-
I know changing the Alt tags and other on-page optimisation was part of my original plan. Change title, stabilise, change h1 tags, stabilise, change alt tags etc..
Unfortunately the title change bombed my placement, so before I make some more changes I'm trying to start from my initial position and move forward.
Just dont seem to be able to get back to before I set my plan in motion.
-
You need to remember that SEOmoz is constantly changing their ranking algorithm, just like Google is, I think that they have a place to track changes.
-
I lost rank on a product page for too many of the same type keywords. I scaled them back and ranking improved a few weeks later. A program I use indicated this :Your Image Alt attributes seem very long . The average wordcount per Alt tag is 8.8 . Possibly too high.
-
Thanks Leat, I know its odd. I think I've been penalized for spam like behaviour when I changed the title. I'm a little concerned as America is the main source of traffic.
-
Europe, Romania
-
Can i ask you where you are based?
-
I did a manual check and your website is ranking on the 10th position for the search "bahamas all inclusive" on google.com.
Your title in the search is "Bahamas All Inclusive - Andros Bahamas Hotel - Bahamas Vacation..."
Update: I've searched through an US proxy and the website is not even in top 50...strange!
-
Ahh no I'm not after that. I know the rank has dropped and I have had this confirmed in multiple places including webmaster tools and google analytics.
So the rank has dropped.
I need to increase the position for those keywords.
Adam
-
I would try rankchecker it spiders out to find your actual rank. Or Google the keywords and find your sites current rank. I believe SeoMoz does an update kind of like Semrush but not positive.
-
SEOMoz with Google US as the preferred search engine. Not too bothered about the others for now, as I'm hoping they'll fall in to place.... hopefully....
-
Can I ask what you are you using for your rank check?
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
-
Does Google View "SRC", "HREF", TITLE and Alt tags as Duplicate Content on Home Page Slider?
Greetings MOZ Community. A keyword matrix was developed by my SEO firm. I am in the process of integrating primary, secondary and terciary phrases into the text and am also sprinkling three or four other terms. Using a keyword density tool (http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php) the results were somewhat unexpected after I optimized. So I then looked at the source code and noticed text from HREF, ALT and SRC tags that may be effecting how Google would interpret text on the page. Our home page (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) contains a slider with commercial real estate listings. Would Google index the SRC, HREF, TITLE and ALT tags in these slider items? Would this be detrimental to SEO? The code for one listing (and there are 7-8 in the slider) looks like this: | href="http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/305-fifth-avenue-office-suite-1340sf" title="Lease a Prestigious Fifth Avenue Office - Manhattan, New York">Class A Fifth Avenue Offices class="blockLeft"><a< p=""></a<> href="http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/305-fifth-avenue-office-suite-1340sf" title="Lease a Prestigious Fifth Avenue Office - Manhattan, New York"> src="http://dr0nu3l9a17ym.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/fsrep/houses/125x100/305.jpg" alt="Lease a Prestigious Fifth Avenue Office - Manhattan, New York" width="125" height="94" /> 1,340 Sq. Ft. $5,918 / month Fifth Avenue Midtown / Grand Central <a< p=""></a<> | Could the repetition of the title text ("lease a Prestigious Fifth...") trigger a duplicate content penalty? Should the slider content be blocked or set to no-index by some kind of a Java script? We have worked very hard to optimize the home page so it would be a real shame if through some technical oversight we got hit by a Google Panda penalty. Thanks, Alan Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Keywords going to Subdomain instead of targeted page(general landing page)
Why are some of my keywords going to subdomains instead of the more general/targeted landing page. For example, on my ecommerce website, the keyword 'tempurpedic' is directing to the subdomain URL of a specific tempurpedic product page instead of the general landing page. The product has a page authority of 15 and the Tempurpedic landing pages with all the products has an authority of 31. I have also noticed that my 'furniture stores in houston' keyword directs to my "occasional tables" URL! instead of a the much more targeted homepage. Is there something I am missing here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nat88han0 -
Google Places Landing Page: Homepage or City-Specific?
What should you put in the “Website” field of your Google Places page: the URL of your homepage, or of one of your location pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexanderWhite0 -
An affiliate website uses datafeeds and around 65.000 products are deleted in the new feeds. What are the best practises to do with the product pages? 404 ALL pages, 301 Redirect to the upper catagory?
Note: All product pages are on INDEX FOLLOW. Right now this is happening with the deleted productpages: 1. When a product is removed from the new datafeed the pages stay online and are showing simliar products for 3 months. The productpages are removed from the categorie pages but not from the sitemap! 2. Pages receiving more than 3 hits after the first 3 months keep on existing and also in the sitemaps. These pages are not shown in the categories. 3. Pages from deleted datafeeds that receive 2 hits or less, are getting a 301 redirect to the upper categorie for again 3 months 4. Afther the last 3 months all 301 redirects are getting a customized 404 page with similar products. Any suggestions of Comments about this structure? 🙂 Issues to think about:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zanox
- The amount of 404 pages Google is warning about in GWT
- Right now all productpages are indexed
- Use as much value as possible in the right way from all pages
- Usability for the visitor Extra info about the near future: Beceause of the duplicate content issue with datafeeds we are going to put all product pages on NOINDEX, FOLLOW and focus only on category and subcategory pages.0 -
410 pages
Do you need to optimize a 410 page like you do for 404 pages? What does a visitor see when a page is 410 compared to a 404?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Google Places: Multiple company listings. How to rank the HQ page over a branch location.
Hi Moz experts! I have a client with Google Place listings for multiple branch locations and for some reason the fully SEO optimized Head Office listing is being beaten by an un-optimized branch listing. The HQ listing gets a tonne of traffic where as the ranking and unoptimized branch location doesn't and is the main listing when searching through Google. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jon_bangonline1 -
Changing content in a well established page.
I have a question i rank well for O'fallon lawn care and I dont rank well for O'Fallon, MO lawn care. Is it ok to go in that page and add some content optimizing it around O'Fallon, MO Lawn care or is that a bad idea. Appreciate any feed back thanks everyone.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gslc0 -
How do you transition a keyword rank from a home page to a sub-page on the site?
We're currently ranking #1 for a valuable keyword, but the result on the SERP is our home page. We're creating a new product page focused on this keyword to provide a better user experience and create more relevant content. What is the best way to make a smooth transition to make the product page rank #1 for the keyword instead of the home page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | buildasign0