Why is my business website site dropping down the ranking

[ClaireH-184886]

Hi, i have a business site which is dropping down the ratings and I would like your help in understanding why.

I know a business site is different from other sites such as news sites and blogs where the front page changes all the time.

I would like to know what is the best way to get google to visit the site on a regular basis, should i have a page that changes all the time or should i keep changing all the pages on the site.

One of the important pages was always number one in google and now we are number 11 http://www.clairehegarty.co.uk/virtual-gastric-band-with-hypnotherapy

any help and advice on how to combat dropping in the rankings would be a great help

[ClaireH-184886]

cheers for that.

[ClaireH-184886]

do you have any good examples of a blog attached to a website, i would like to have one so we can interact with people and talk about health issues

[EGOL]

I know a business site is different from other sites such as news sites and blogs where the front page changes all the time.

On retail sites I always have a lot of articles about how to use the products, how to select them, how to maintain them.   On a three-column homepage one of the columns is dedicated to "information".   I have programs changing the content of that column a few times per day, rotating informative content into that space.  There is also a space dedicated to new informative content.

Even if you are running a business site you can still have news about your products, about your industry and new informative information that you have created for your customers.

[TomRayner]

Like I say, about the Sunzu links I wouldn't worry about them just now.  Keep a little note of them for future reference.  Chances are that if Google has seen them and devalued them then they're dealt with, as far as any ranking is concerned.

By default, your homepage will nearly always be the most frequently crawled page on the site, so I wouldn't worry about featuring some of the news section on there - especially if you were going to replicate it and the content.  Keep the freshness of the content on the health page.

Attaching a blog could be a way to get Google to crawl more often as well, but I wouldn't write one for that purpose.  I'd write one to attract people to the site - either through long-tail keywords targeted through the blog post or by simply producing some stellar content that will get people to stand up and take notice.

Write for the user, not the search bot.

[ClaireH-184886]

This is great advice and will work on this straight away. The problem with this link http://www.sunzu.com/company-adverts/claire-louise-s-company-222321/gastric-bands-lose-weight-today-with-gastric-band-hypnotherapy-192516/

is, that should not be there. we were members of ecademy and then it got took over so all the links vanished and for some reason we have that link as you have seen.

we are going to join the new site once we understand how it works and then hopefully that link will vanish and will be replaced with the information about the site.

we have a news section here http://www.clairehegarty.co.uk/health-news/   should we try and put part of this on the home page or is it ok where it is.

we are going to re-write the important page of our site so hopefully this will make a huge difference and we were thinking of attaching a blog to the site but not sure if this would make a difference or not

[TomRayner]

Hi Tim

First of all, you're right that having a page with dynamic content, or having a page that is constantly updating, may help your site to rank, as the page could be seen as "fresh" quite regularly.

However, not having a frequently updated page does not mean that your site will be crawled infrequently, nor does it mean that your page cannot rank.

If you have a sitemap submitted to Google/Bing, chances are that the search engine is going to revisit your site very often.  You can see here that the last Google cache for that page is the 23rd of April, which isn't that long ago.  This is a useful guide on how you can increase crawl rate.

With that being said, a far more influential factor towards rankings and why your site may be falling will be the links pointing to your page.  Looking at the open site explorer report for that page, I can see a number of links that may have passed value before but would be in line for a link devaluation.

First of all, I can see a few forum links that contain your URL in them, such as this and this.  Nothing wrong with having those links there, particularly if you were troubleshooting, but I've seen quite frequently that forum links will lose any 'worth' that they once had over time.  That may be one reason for the drop.

There's a couple of links here and here that also look quite unnatural.  I can see why Google would devalue these links - if you look at them from a human perspective, they look very artificial and have some very optimised anchor text.  I'd keep an eye on links like these - I can't imagine Google would be thrilled seeing them in a link profile.

Finally, you also seem to have a number of regional microsites, such as this and this pointing to the page you provided.  Now, the content on these sites is informational, if a bit sales-y, but the wording is only slightly different from site to site.  There's not a lot of value in this content and as such it could be constituted as thin.  Without the content offering much worth to a reader, it could also be a site that has had its link devalued - not penalised, just devalued, I hasten to add.

With all those links devalued, therefore not passing the strength that they once were, this might explain why you've fallen to #11.

There's no major concern here and it doesn't mean that you should remove these links - but if you want to regain your ranking I believe you would need to replace them with higher quality links.  These can include links from articles or features on other articles that tap into the site's expertise.  It could include creating content or a resource centre on the site itself that would encourage people to link to it or share it on social media with friends.  There really are a number of ways to accrue higher value links - but what differentiates a higher value link from lower ones, at least in my eyes, is if the link is contextual to what you are offering on your site, it offers value to the reader and it can be seen and shared by an active audience.

This is based on my expertise and certainly does not constitute as fact, but that's just how I see it.  Hope it helps you out a bit and if you have any more Q's just let me know.