My site went from #3 to #2 to #1 to #10 in Google.nl
-
I have a site which has been #3 in Google.nl for a certain long tail phrase for pretty long. After I optimized my site some more for this specific phrase I went to #2 and eventually some weeks later to #1.
But when I finally became #1, the celebration was short, as two weeks thereafter I dropped to #10 where I have been stuck for several weeks now...
Can this be some sort of over optimization penalty? I personally don't think so as I hardly created links with the anchor, or a variation of it. On page also seems pretty much in order to me.
Also, the site is on a exact match domain and used to rank for it, but doesn't even rank in the top #100 anymore.
Any advice?
PS: I rather don't publish the URL, but if anyone can help out I have no problem sending it in a private message, including the phrase in question.
-
Are you absolutely sure? There was a wave of Panda that hit non-US sites on the week of April 11th (or thereabouts). Does that coincide with your drop?
-
Panda is out of the question as this site concerns a Dutch site and the SE is Google.nl.
-
I've seen the opposite happen a lot where I am say #5 and then I drop down to #25 and then all of a sudden I am #1. I have a theory that when Google is about to make a change it does some sort of testing to see what happens when it is dropped out of the picture. So, it's like they are saying, "Let's see what other sites get clicked on when this one is out of the picture." If there's no clear favorite then yours goes back up higher. It's possible that you were on the other side of this and your competitor's site is the one that was promoted.
However, it's also possible that your site was a Panda casualty. When did the rankings start to suffer?
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
-
Google indexing .com and .co.uk site
Hi, I am working on a site that is experiencing indexation problems: To give you an idea, the website should be www.example.com however, Google seems to index www.example.co.uk as well. It doesn’t seem to honour the 301 redirect that is on the co.uk site. This is causing quite a few reporting and tracking issues. This happened the first time in November 2016 and there was an issue identified in the DDOS protection which meant we would have to point www.example.co.uk to the same DNS as www.example.com. This was implemented and made no difference. I cleaned up the htaccess file and this made no difference either. In June 2017, Google finally indexed the correct URL, but I can’t be sure what changed it. I have now migrated the site onto https and www.example.co.uk has been reindexed in Google alongside www.example.com I have been advised that the http needs to be removed from DDOS which is in motion I have also redirected http://www.example.co.uk straight to https://www.example.com to prevent chain redirects I can’t block the site via robot.txt unless I take the redirects off which could mean that I lose my rankings. I should also mention that I haven't actually lost any rankings, it's just replaced some URLs with co.uk and others have remained the same. Could you please advise what further steps I should take to ensure the correct URL’s are indexed in Google?
Technical SEO | | Niki_10 -
What's going on with google index - javascript and google bot
Hi all, Weird issue with one of my websites. The website URL: http://www.athletictrainers.myindustrytracker.com/ Let's take 2 diffrenet article pages from this website: 1st: http://www.athletictrainers.myindustrytracker.com/en/article/71232/ As you can see the page is indexed correctly on google: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dfbzhHkl5K4J:www.athletictrainers.myindustrytracker.com/en/article/71232/10-minute-core-and-cardio&hl=en&strip=1 (that the "text only" version, indexed on May 19th) 2nd: http://www.athletictrainers.myindustrytracker.com/en/article/69811 As you can see the page isn't indexed correctly on google: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KeU6-oViFkgJ:www.athletictrainers.myindustrytracker.com/en/article/69811&hl=en&strip=1 (that the "text only" version, indexed on May 21th) They both have the same code, and about the dates, there are pages that indexed before the 19th and they also problematic. Google can't read the content, he can read it when he wants to. Can you think what is the problem with that? I know that google can read JS and crawl our pages correctly, but it happens only with few pages and not all of them (as you can see above).
Technical SEO | | cobano0 -
HTML Site for Speed
I have a few small sites and landing pages on Wordpress that I want to load a lot quicker than they do. It occurred to me that if there is not a lot of content management necessary, I should simply make the static web pages straight html instead of trying all the modifications necessary to get some Wordpress sites and themes to load quicker. I have noticed the html sites I have load lighting fast on slow hosting service. Is this a good idea, can anyone think of drawbacks to it? Security? Responsiveness? SEO? And what about taking some company's sites with blog straight html so the home page loads quick, and then using Wordpress for the blog?
Technical SEO | | phogan0 -
Authority site drastic ranking drop after google https switch. Please Help!
Hi Mozers. Since Google switched to the https version, our company website (http://we.register.it) indexing switched to the https version (https://www.register.it). After that the ranking on Google dropped for almost every keyword. The site is very old and got a great authority and PR 7. It ranked for same keywords for very long time On each page from years there is the correct meta rel canonical. No spam, and WMT is ok. Could you please help? The internal links are all in http, and in https. If you are https are in https (they are all relatives) No changes have been made and the subdomain is in that way from 8 years: the main url has always been http://we.register.it Google started this indexing switch around the 15 October
Technical SEO | | luca_cash0 -
Google Places, Google Plus, Oh my!
Ok - So I am in the position to try and clean up the current Google places nightmare for a company. Right now there is about 3 or 4 different google places listings for them that they have no control over. So here is what I did: 1. I took control of them all by verifying via phone and confirmed all of them. 2. I suspended all the listings but 1 3. I edited the one listing to be accurate and complete.
Technical SEO | | DylanPKI
Then I waited, and waited... A month later, the old listings are still up and none of the changes to the one listing have been made. Today it gets a bit more complicated. Today I created a Google+ page for the business which seems like it may end up adding yet ANOTHER Google Places listing, is that correct? They are sending a post card to verify, but I have the page all set up ready to go and plan on tying it to the website. I am not exactly sure what my specific question is, but I am looking for any advice anyone has on the best way to go about this situation. Thank you in advance!0 -
Google seems to be penalizing my site for some reason
I recently took control of a website which did have some pretty big SEO problems, duplicate content being one of the main ones!! Looking back at ranking data the website ranked very well for it's main keyword, #5 for Google, Yahoo and Bing. The ranking then dropped in February 2012 for Google to #64 but stayed the same for Yahoo and Bing. I scrapped the dodgy content and completely rewrote it using a Wordpress framework about 6 weeks ago, still targeting the same keywords and 301 redirecting the old pages to the new pages where applicable. My rankings for Yahoo and Bing are still maintaining their page 1 rankings but Google is still ranking the website on page 5/6. My question is. Is the website getting punished for something that was part of the old website? If so how can I find out what it is and fix it? This website ranked on page 1 for Google for most of it's popular keywords but now it doesn't. I appreciate any feedback Many Thanks : )
Technical SEO | | alexhowe0 -
My site is showing blanks for the competitive analysis and only 1 for domain. Why?
I have filled in all the details and set the campaign up as a root domain. The site has been up for 4 days, and has been crawled. Please help!
Technical SEO | | EdgePM0 -
How much of an issue is it if a site is somehow connected to a site that was penalized by Google?
I am working with someone that is about to launch a new site, and one of the sites was affected by the Panda update. Does it matter if the two sites are connected? Share the same hosting provider and same Google Webmaster's account?
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0