Decline in ranking for a particular theme of keywords after Penguin 2.0
-
Hi everyone
Last month we found on of our clients rankings were seeing significant declines in ranking (like from 3 to 28). This occurred around the time of the Penguin 2.0 update.
After further investigation we found that only a collection of keywords were affected. If we were hit by the algorithm update we would expect to find all keywords declining.
We have not been manually penalized and other keyword themes are seeing moderate day to day ranking improvements.
I know that rankings jump from day to day but a sudden decline of around 20 places for a theme of keywords isn't what we would expect.
Thanks all.
-
I had the same experience on a few sites. Ranked #1 for over a year, dropped same day as penguin, but bounced back the next day.
-
I'd be tempted to hang fire a little while before "fixing" the problem, and give it a while longer to shake out.
We had something very similar around the time of Penguin 2 on one of our sites, and like you for only a selection of our keywords. Half of the dropped keywords have returned to roughly where they were. Of the other half most have increased, but are still down compared to pre-Penguin.
One keyword went from 3rd to not in top 50 and back to 4th this week.
Aside from burning a fair bit of time trying to figure out what was going on and if we'd been partially Penguined, I'm not sure I'm any the wiser! Nothing notable going on with key competitors, nothing news worthy or topical in the sector - just temporary obliteration of around a quarter of keywords.
-
Thanks everyone. They keywords have hovered around the drop zone for a while now.
The unusual thing here is that the set of keywords have the same sort of back link profile as the rest of the keywords. We recently inherited the SEO work for this site and the previous agency used PR sites religiously with exact anchor matching text. I'm surprised that the site hasn't been hit as hard with the penguin update.
The industry is highly niche and so I doubt it will be revolving around a news story or current trend. Nevertheless we have lined up a competitor analysis.
Apologies for the lack of detail, the keywords effected mainly revolve around 'Carpet Protection'.
So the question here is whether we should take the risk and try removing these PR links (perhaps with Google disavow) or not.
-
Without knowing the site and the keywords (why is everyone so protective over these, even within this community??), it's almost impossible to say.
3 to 28 is quite a jump, but if the terms revolve around a trending news story or a seasonal term then that's not unusual at all. I would be happy to look further if you want to provide more specifics.
-
Did you build backlinks from certain domain names for those keywords? May be Penguine 2.0 hit those sites who were providing you link juice and support such keywords.
Thanks
-
There's some other things to consider (which you may have already done.)
What other changes can you see in the SERPS for your affected keywords, in particular what's happened to your competitors. Are there new sites now competing in the SERPS?
By analysing the "SERP Landscape" after changes like this can (but not always) give you an insight as to whether it's just your site that's been affected, multiple sites or the entire SERP.
A 3 to 28 drop is pretty nasty. Has there been any movement since the drop or has the SERP remained stable?
-
Drop in a particular theme of keywords is not unusual. It is highly possible that the particular theme has more relevant content on other sites or you have probably done over linking with same anchor text for that theme of keywords.
We also saw the same trend happening for one of our clients, but we removed the links, improved the content, and the rank was back up.
-
What is your exact question?
It could be possible that you dropped ranking around the penguin 2.0 update. It doesn't necessarily have to do anything with penguin though. It could be that the user engagement around this area on your site has been less good because for example the information is out of date.
I could take a look at your site and see if i find anything which could have caused this if you give me the url and the set of keywords you have dropped ranking for.
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
-
I thought META KEYWORDS tag was dead?
http://www.wpkube.com/wordpress-seo-plugin/ this article just came out as a one of the many guides to Yoast's Wordpress SEO. I am surprised it mentioned: Use meta keywords tag: Google reportedly doesn’t use the keywords that your enter for your posts but as Google isn’t the only show in town, you might want to check this box.Recommendation: check I stopped using meta keywords tag because Google doesn't use it any more, plus if you are in a competitive field by using keywords you are giving free keyword research to your competitors? Does any one still use meta keywords here? If so why? Google doesn't use keyword tags, has anyone experienced a dis-benefit to meta-keywords tag from Google ie. dropped rankings etc.?
Algorithm Updates | | vmialik2 -
Keyword stuffing in URL? Ekk. Help Please.
Okay, so I work as content manager in the travel industry and we're re-doing our site, pretty much from scratch, including the SEO, anchor text/route url, etc. I am struggling with one particular thing. If all my url's have similar keywords, ie example.com/atlanta-trip and example.com/boston-trip and so on and so forth for every destination, will using "trip" in the url be seen by Google as keyword stuffing? Should I make my url's more diverse? My gut feeling is no based on all the Moz, Google and other SEO research I've done, because it's all relevant to the content and the user experience, but I'd like to be sure, since we really can't afford to get penalized by Google...again.
Algorithm Updates | | hpeisach0 -
Why do I have 7 URLs from the same domain ranking on the 1st page?
I have a client that has individual pages for authorized dealers of their product (say "Car Dealers"). When you search for "brand name + location", Google returns 7 "dealership" pages from the parent company's domain as the first 7 results, but there is one that gets pushed off to the 5th page of the SERPs. The formatting of content, geo-targeting, and meta data on the page is identical on every single one. None of them have external links and there is not one extremely distinguishable thing to assess why the one page doesn't get placed on that first SERP. Why is the one getting pushed so far down? I know this may be a bit confusing, but any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Do links from unrelated sites dilute your rankings for your key phrases?
do links from unrelated sites dilute your rankings for your key phrases? i've always heard don't get links from unrelated sites but if that mattered, then how would sites with totally diverse pages such as newspaper sites, sears, and other catalogue sites rank for these diverse subjects on their site? How does Facebook rank when it gets 100,000 links a day from sites that have nothing to do with a social media site? I'd love to hear everyone's opinion on this. Also, Do links from unrelated sites give less push than related links? Take care,
Algorithm Updates | | Ron10
Ron0 -
Is it still possible for small businesses to rank well in google
Hi I've been playing around with ecommerce sites for a few years now and although I am no expert I'm not a complete novice. We used to do quite well in google but recent changes have halved our number of hits. I have noticed that over the last year google has given priority to large brand names as opposed to relevancy. For example, if you search for the term 'bridal jewellery' (google UK) you will see that apart from one or two the majority of placements are taken by big compnies who offer very little bridal jewellery. One or two pages at most. My question is, is it still possible to rank well against these brand names or has google made it impossible for small companies. PS we only practice ethical seo as suggested by seomoz. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks www.kerryblu.co.uk
Algorithm Updates | | Dill0 -
6 year old Corporate domain lost all rankings on EMD day.
Hello, our company's website goo.gl/7Q56G lost all our rankings after the EMD algo update. Our domain is NOT a EMD. At the same time, I found that we have about 6000 new, extremely low quality spam backlinks with the same anchor text ("loan"). I saw some of those a few weeks ago, but didn't really pay much attention because I didn't believe Google would think we build those. I didn't get any messages on webmaster central. If this occurred with the EMD update, is it because of the low quality backlinks? Most of the real spammers, brokers (we are the actual funding source) are now dominating the top 10 for our main keyword "merchant cash advance". We were in the top 10 for the past 4 years, why would we get hit so hard now? I really appreciate your advice.
Algorithm Updates | | DaveMri1 -
50% of my keywords just had a significant drop for no reason no changes?
I just looked at a report for one of my sites in moz pro and Improvement: 35 slots 35/75 keywords just dropped on google, I didn't make any changes recently Ranking Changes Improvement: 12 slots 12 Improved Improvement: 35 slots 35 Declined Many dropping 5 - 22 places! Any ideas on whats up, thank fully it didn't effect traffic, its pretty low anyways, but it has stayed the same... But still dropped to page 5 for lots of stuff. Strange. Did google just update or something? Thanks for any ideas.
Algorithm Updates | | syndicate0 -
Ranking #1 for decent traffic keywords, but not receiving any traffic?
A site I work on is ranked number 1 for a few keywords. To see how much a keyword is searched per month I rely on Google Adwords Keyword tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). Using this tool I see that the keyword receives 880 local monthly searches and another keyword they rank #1 for receives 1300 local monthly searches. To me these keywords are not the biggest as far as traffic but they are not small by any means. Now here is the issue. Like mentioned above, the site nmber 1 for multiple keywords. They have been ranked number 1 for these keywords for months. Looking in analytics the other day I notice that on a month to month basis both of these keywords are getting 1, or 2 visits. This past month (October) one of the keywords did not receive ANY visits, and that is being ranked #1 for a 1300 monthly searched keyword. It just doesn’t make sense. I would imagine getting at least 100 or so visits a month from these search terms. Could someone please help me understand this a little bit better?
Algorithm Updates | | WhiteHat120