Overnight Drop In Rankings
-
Over the last size eight weeks we have been doing all of our own SEO with the help of reading this forum and asking questions, prior to this we had an SEO company from India who were only doing articles and promoting them.
We have been using various keywords by writing them into our own blogs, to check how we have been doing I have monitored two main keywords, when we started, our choice keyword was on page three, on Monday it had moved up to number one on page two, today it is now back on page three, have we been hit by the Penquin update, if so would I have received a warning in WMT, a lot of my other keywords across the site have moved down although some have moved up, we are retailers not SEO experts so it is a big blow to move down when everyone has worked hard, looking at some pages I do have some pages that look as though they have been keyword stuffed, I have altered some of them to see if anything changes, I have also look at some of the links but how do I know if I am doing the right thing?
-
"An SEO Company from India doing articles"
That is a BIG warning sign. My guess is that you've got a bunch of low quality spammy links pointing to your site.
Another thing to check on is your anchor text distribution as well. Make sure it's not over 10-20% for your main keyword.
-
It's called Penguin 2.0
-
This might not be anything you are doing; Google is having a little stormy weather right now. You can take a look at Google's volatility here: http://mozcast.com/
-
Hi John,
If they were doing articles and promoting them then this is why your website has been hit. Article websites took a major hit in the update prior to Christmas and the Penguin 2.0 update last night has more than likely reaffirmed any penalty you were going to receive unfortunately. Do a backlink analysis in OSE and find all the article websites with links on and get them taken down (if you can, obviously if you have login details then this will be easier). If you can't then use the disavow tool.
Don't forget that any onsite changes that you make, you will have to wait for Google to come back and cache the website before you see any effect. Concentrate on creating great content and look to create relationships with those in your industry and concentrate on your outreach. 5 links on relevant, topical blogs are worth a million times more than 10000 links on article websites.
-
Please explore the links your hired help created for you. If it's too spammy, too many direct name anchor text or any other issue that isn't with Google's guidelines, then you have a problem. There are reputable experts on the forums here and thus the general rule is to hire someone who knows what's he doing and not promising results in a two months time. Bear in mind, some of my websites saw improvements you are talking about after two-three years of hard work, but that also meant their rankings are still there after each and every algorithm change.
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
-
Ranking at 2 and 3 for a Desired Keyword - But Missing #1
I have a keyword I usually rank #1 for "Maui Beach Wedding" that I am now ranking 2 and 3 for with two separate pages below: My home page: https://simplemauiwedding.net and the below internal page I am linking from my home page that I really want that term to rank for. https://simplemauiwedding.net/beach-wedding-packages What is the best way to pass the authority from one to another for this particular keyword. I want this URL https://simplemauiwedding.net/beach-wedding-packages to rank for the term, not my home page which has a link pointing to this page from my home page which I was hoping would point the authority to it for the term. What are some other ways to signal which page I prefer Google to pick up for the keyword I want to rank for? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | photoseo10 -
Ranking drop from 6 op 23 in one day - freaking out
Dear, Moz We have been hard at work going some off site and on site SEO. However yesterday we got around 1600 404 errors from google, and ranking dropped from 7 in front page to 25. What we did: I found an error in Htacces, where my partner had this (rewritebase with double // and rule with // - I quess this started creating urls for google, because twww.website.com//category-category-cateory OK. But google says that they will not effect your rankings because 404s? Second think i found was that we had some urls, which had canonical tag to a page called search. Now that search (duplicate of homepage) we 301 to our main homepage. Can that effect ranking? You have 404s that have canonical to a page that itselft redirects (301) to homepage. We also removed the / splash. Nothing more.. Below is the htaccess, that had the double // error. Please comment. Options +FollowSymLinks
On-Page Optimization | | advertisingcloud
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase //
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.+)/$
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.website.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://website.com/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteCond $1 ^(index.php)?$ [OR]
RewriteCond $1 .(gif|jpg|css|js|png|ico)$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^(.)$ - [S=1]
RewriteRule .//index.php [L]
DirectoryIndex index.php0 -
Domain authority decreased but rankings increased
Hello! I'm a bit confused. It seems the industry as a whole that my company operates in has taken a bash from the update a few days ago as all of the competitiors have taken a hit to their domain authority. What is confusing is that my websites rankings have increased as well. There has been a change to the robots.txt file in an effort to stop being crawled by SEMRush which is messing with my site stats but that is the only change. Thanks in advance, Ben
On-Page Optimization | | Ben-Cleaver1 -
How on earth does this rank?
Hi Everyone, Im speaking to someone about doing decent SEO, follwing the basics and not doing dodgy stuff for the short term. He is a driving instructor trying to rank for driving lessons peterborough (this is in the uk) and one of the websites coming out towards the top of serps is ian-rayner.com/index.htm. Its got no links, no social signs, has a page labelled SEO Stuff with a whole list of keywords and internal links back to his home page. It has a Domain authority of 11 and page authority of 1 !!! Is it because no one is following the basics and uncompetitive that its ranking or is he doing something other than a few keywords in the content, meta title and description, and a internal links that im missing?
On-Page Optimization | | Ant710 -
Pages crawled dropped like a stone
set up a new campaign seomoz crawled the site and did about 1500 pages the last crawl it now only lists 1 page I can see anyway to see why, the site has not changed so why has the number of pages dropped?
On-Page Optimization | | spiralsites0 -
Can Rankings in Google differ so much from computer to computer.
I was telling my friend via facebook to go on my website, I told him to search 'nightlife forum' in google. To which, I believed it was 11th, top of second page. On his computer, its currently ranking at 1st place is it possible to have a difference of 10 places? even though he lives in the same city as me. Would be good to see what it ranks on your computers too google "nightlife forum" look for www.talknightlife.co.uk (don't get confused with the .COM one out there) Cheers Guys
On-Page Optimization | | Lukescotty0 -
I'm ranking Position 7,8,11,12,13,14 &15 but would rather one page top three - are they competing?
For the search phrase "office design birmingham" in the uk. I have mutiple pages ranking in position 7,8,11,12,13,14 & 15! This is all very well but are they somehow competing? Am i better off doing something different to get one or two into the top 3 rather than 7 in the top 15?! Many thanks for your opinion and advice. James
On-Page Optimization | | bizint0 -
How long would it take for On-Page Optimization to have an effect on Google Rankings?
Hi there, I have a page on our website with an Interview with the author Tess Gerritsen. There has been a reasonable amount of Social Media buzz related to the page and lots of links. According to SEOMoz we are an A grade for the keyword Tess Gerritsen, we currently rank 29th on Google.co.uk for a 'tess gerritsen' search. My question is - how long would it take for any new changes to have an effect? I presume the answer would be whenever the page is crawled again. But is it wise to change one thing, then get crawled and see what the effect is, then the next day change something else and see what the effect is. Or is it wise to change one thing and then leave it a week or so to see the full effect of the change? Apologies for the vague question, if you need any more clarification just let me know. Thanks. Benj
On-Page Optimization | | Benj250