Sudden drop in rankings
-
Hi there,
I've been working on this site for three or four months (it was a brand new site), and we were seeing some really great improvements in rankings. I've concentrated on writing lots of good quality content and building a network of links through blogging and social networks.
Then, last weekend (6th October), we got completely wiped off of the results. We went from rankings 2,3 and 4 for our target terms to not being in the top 100.
I assumed we'd been given a penalty from Google as we'd been SEOing too hard and removed a reciprocal links page we had and asked Google to reconsider. I just got a message back saying there hasn't been any manual penalty, so it's just down to the algorithm.
I'm running am SEOMoz analysis, but so far it's just coming up with things like page titles too long and too many links on pages, which I can fix, but don't seem like something that would completely destroy us so abruptly.
I think we really have the most and best content on the subject of becoming a model, which has taken a great deal of effort to put tgether, so this is crushing. If anybody can shed any light, I'll be extremely grateful, and I'd be interested to knwo if anyone else has experienced anything similar.
Thanks in advance!
URL: www.modellingadvice. info
Kat
-
I will add my two cents to whatever Irving will answer, while I'm here.
It is possible to get out from under a penalty, but it is difficult and usually takes quite awhile. This is especially true when the penalty is related to backlinks, as it is difficult to remove backlinks to your site. There is certainly merit to Irving's suggestion to simply start over with a new domain.
It is typical for drops from a penalty to be immediate and abrupt.
I will also mention that I disagree with Irving's suggestion to "never point to the homepage". I understand why he is suggesting that, but a website with no links to the homepage doesn't look very natural to Google. Also, there are many instances where you'll have to link to the homepage, such as if you are submitting to a high quality directory. I would just say to be very careful, and don't build links you might need to delete later.
To be honest, I think you will find it nearly impossible to build really good quality links as long as the site has that thing that looks like a squeeze page across the top. Very few high quality websites will want to link to a site where the real content is buried underneath an aggressive "sell" like that.
-
Hi Irving,
Many thanks for your comments. Are you saying that even if I fix the over optimisation of the site (which I'm doing now) this domain will always be penalised?
The thing I'm most confused about is how abrupt the drop was, pretty much overnight.
Kat
-
You killed the site with bad linking and over optimization. Fix the over optimization on the site, then deindex www.modellingadvice. info and buy a new domain and start over. Get a .com and not .info since .info domains have been primarily used as spam sites.
Don't engage in link building on the new site, allow it to gain some trust. Read up on link building before you do it, and never point to the homepage unless you are prepared to go to all the webmasters and get your links removed if penalized.
-
Many thanks Sergio, I'll read these articles as well.
-
Hi Kat,
Unfortunately, I agree with Adam. The website has been clearly penalized, due to wrong SEO performance. I'm not going to give you a list of things to do, but you can consult these two excellent posts by Jason Acidre, where you can find a lot of good recommendations.
Anti-Penguin Link Building Plan
20 SEO Strategies for Sites Affected By Google Panda
I hope to be helpful.
Sergio
-
Thank you Maurizio, I appreciate your input.
-
Thank you Adam,
This is really useful - I'll get on it, and hopefully Google will start to like us again!
Kat
-
Hi Kat,
I would continue to educate the client on why having the site setup like that is a huge barrier to success.
Here are some resources on building links that won't get bitten by Penguin:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/anchor-text-optimization-case-study-whats-natural/43404/
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/post-penguin-seo-link-building-the-naked-url-truth/46936/
Hope that helps!
~Adam
-
Hi
without evaluating your back link I went to see your home page.
i think that you must change something and for this can help you Semoz Tools , On page in your campaign.
First your Title seems a Keyword tag
Second, the description is too long , max 150-160 characters
Third, in the tag keywords , the words are separately by comma and newlines, if you want inset keywords just put commas but Remember that Google does not consider the tag Keywords.
Ciao
Maurizio
-
Hi Adam,
Many thanks for your reply. I'll make the changes you suggest - reducing the occurances of the keywords in title, links and in general.
I can't remove the call to action from that position because the client is insisting on it.
I'm not sure what to do about the backlinks - do you have any suggestions?
Do you think if I make those changes, we might recover our previous rankings? I really was trying to have good quality content at the core of my campaign, and am gutted to feel penalised like this without really knowing what I've done wrong.
However, I want to do things right, and make sure the SEO is solid and future proof!
Thanks again.
Kat
-
Hi Kat,
You may have been hit in the Penguin update on Oct 5th.
-
Your site is definitely way "over-optimized" or keyword stuffed. The keyword "Modelling" appears 77 times on your homepage, plus 4 times in the page title. Your internal links structure is also keyword stuffed.
-
Having the page content under the huge big call to action and form on top of the site is not good for users or search engine rankings.
-
A quick check of your backlinks shows they are mostly keyword anchor text links from directories and other lower quality sources.
To be honest, it looks to me like you're headed in the wrong direction SEO-wise and have likely been hit by one or more algorithmic penalties.
Sorry to be so negative.
Hope this helps!
~Adam
-
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
-
Why Google de-rank a website.
Hi, I was inspecting a website which is covering the topic of best wheelbarrow of 2021, it is a new website and and starts ranking on google. But, after few days it got de-rank automatically and Moz is also not showing any result to that. I was wandering why this just happened and what should I do if I made my website and will not face this kind of situation?
Technical SEO | | Moeen22330 -
Page Rank grows, but Trust falls
Why it's happening? How to fix it? This problem is on this website http://www.skydas.lv http://www.m-lux.lv Supporta metāla durvis dzīvoklim ngm_445922407.jpg
Technical SEO | | Felter0 -
Sudden Drop in Indexed Pages and Images under Sitemap
Hello! Just a couple days back, realised that under the Google Webmaster Tool > Sitemap, my website www.bibliotek.co has a sudden drop in indexed pages and images. Previously, it was almost fully indexed. However, I checked and the Google Index > Index Status, it is still fully indexed Any reason why and how do I resolve? Any help is very much appreciated! Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Bibliotek1230 -
Web Page Dropped Out of Google?
One of our web pages seems to have completely dropped out of Google after featuring on page 1 for a number of years. It can't be a site wide issue as all other web pages are performing as normal. The page is http://www.contractormoney.com/income-protection/ and the key phrase it was performing well for was 'contractor income protection'. Any ideas??
Technical SEO | | Pete40 -
Webmaster Tools Search Queries Data Drop
Hi I'm seeing a significant drop in search queries being reported for a client in GWT starting on the 7th Feb. I have seen a few articles on SERound Table etc saying that many are reporting probs like delays etc with GWT updating its data, such as these ones: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-webmaster-tools-data-stalled-19854.html https://www.seroundtable.com/google-webmaster-tools-analytics-data-19870.html However these seem to suggest the problem is simply a delay with displayed data being updated, in the case im looking at the data is up to date but showing an increasing decline. When i look at Analytics data though the data is completely different. For exmaple GWT says on the 21st Feb there were 23 impressions with zero clicks but Analytics says there were 6 clicks/sessions from organic search. I take it this means that there is a likely problem with GWT data and I shouldn't worry ? All Best Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
I am having an issue with my rankings
I am having an issue with my rankings. I am not sure if there are issues with onpage dup content or with the way wordpress is behaving but there is no reason based upon the sites back link profile that the site shouldn't be ranking well. The site is mesocare.org. If anyone can help it would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | weitzluxenberg0 -
Sites Copying my Content Ranking Higher
A number of sites are copying - either 100% word for word, paragraphs, or sentences of my content and are ranking higher. Some sites are doing this with permission/properly and are linking back to my article Others are not linking back or giving credit. Some of these sites, in some cases are ranking higher than me in Google results. What can I do?
Technical SEO | | ben10000 -
How does a mega drop-down affects SEO?
We are looking at implementing a "mega drop-down" as our main menu on our website. Will that be good or bad for SEO? My company is a big tour operator so our website contains a lot of pages describing all our destinations, hotels etc. We have noticed that our visitors have some trouble to navigate to all this pages since it requires a lot of clicks to reach a specific page. In order to make this easier we have looked at this popular mega drop-down thing that we all love. But what about Google? Will Google love or hate us for doing this? An example showing what I mean by mega drop-down: http://www.phonehouse.se/
Technical SEO | | Googleankan0