Ranking drops POST Penguin?!
-
Hey guys,
I've noticed that one of our sites have seen some considerable ranking drops for competitive keywords at least a week or so after Penguin was introduced.
I've attached an image to give you a better idea of what I'm talking about. We were ranked around 2nd page for each of the phrases but plummeted to 80+ (although, there has been some movement back towards 50).
I mention Penguin but that really shouldn't have been a factor with this site as it's a relatively new one and all the links have been built naturally.
Any help appreciated!
-
Mathew,
Even if all of your links were "built naturally" you can still be impacted by Google penalties assessed to sites that are linking to you. If, for example, a site that is linking to you and providing your site with some amount of link juice gets penalized, it my no longer be sending you that juice. The impact may be huge if it was a powerful link or if many of your links were coming from sites that were penalized, or the impact may be relatively minor if the penalized site was helping with your rankings in a small way.
Those kinds of changes happen with or without penalties being assessed, as back links from other sites may fall away or lose value over time (link rot). It looks like you may just need to keep up the hard work of marketing you site on line to rebuild your rankings.
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
-
Do keyword target landing pages increase rankings?
Let's say we create landing pages for targeted keywords in our niche. So like we have landing pages optimised for 80% of the top keywords with decent search volume. If these pages started ranking at first page or around; will this scenario improves the ranking of website? Right now, only few of our top pages are ranking good. Planning to create more of such.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Would having links on wikipedia help search engine rankings?
I am wondering that having a listing on Wikipedia would help search engine rankings in general? I know all of the Wikipedia links are no-follow links but I think it'd still help to rank higher on search engines. What are your thoughts?
Algorithm Updates | | ahmetkul1 -
How long you've seen it take to rank in small niche
Hello, How long do you see small niche sites taking to rank where they should be for their strength? Our last site took at least 6 months. Our current site's home page for our main term is stuck at around the 40th page and not moving. It's an exact match domain so it should be on at least page 2. We have one site in the industry already that carries similar products but it is much bigger with a much wider scope of products. It took a while to rank too. Our only backlinks I'm working on are Google & Youtube (and DMOZ), we have a facebook fan page. Our site is nicer than the site in position #1. Working on making as many pages as possible 10X content. Thank You, Bob
Algorithm Updates | | BobGW0 -
Can you rank without spending lots of money?
Hello Everyone, This is a general question, and its one I have been thinking about recently because I am working on promoting couple of websites. I want to know if it is still possible to make websites rank consistently without spending lots of money. I am self employed, and 5 or so years ago, I remember I did all my own link building/content for about 6 or so websites that I owned, and I managed to make most of them rank consistently. I am not in the SEO business, and I have not touched any SEO type of work for about 5 years now. And I always did it for my own websites/business. I know this is a fast moving industry, and my general knowledge may be a bit out of date. I kind of get the feeling that the days of when small business owners could make a website rank on a shoe string budget and make a bit of money with an online business may have died or is dying. I am a realist and I know that only a very tiny percentage of websites make really good quality/fresh content that everyone wants to reads. I know a common advise is that you should create a site with such amazing content that everyone talks about you and mentions/links to you without you even to need to do any link building. But in my opinion (I could be wrong), but I feel that this probably happens to less than 0.01 percent of websites. And I also know even third rate websites with blogs or content sites charge to post an article with a link. So this makes me think that nowadays you need a good budget and plenty of time to make a website rank. Am I wrong? In today's internet, do you need to spend money to rank? I genuinely want to know peoples experience and or opinion on this subject. Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | Ryan.Shahed0 -
Long term rankings drop after swapping primary domain
Hey...this is my first post on Moz so please go easy on me! I've recently been baffled by the ranking behavior of a domain I do SEO for. In short, the primary domain was "musashispicymayo.com". After several months of SEO efforts and a really solid PR run the site managed to run up to #1 for several target keywords. For the purposes of this question I'd like to focus on the term "spicy mayo". "Musashispicymayo.com" was steadily climbing for as far back as page 5 until it ultimately reached #1 rank on Google for "spicy mayo". We also had another domain "musashifoods.com" which was originally 301 redirecting to "Musashispicymayo.com". About 3 months ago (shortly after acquiring the top ranking) the client wanted to reverse the domains so we started using "musashifoods.com" as the primary and redirecting "musashispicymayo.com" to that. In summary:
Algorithm Updates | | Andy-Twizen
ORIGINALLY: musashifoods.com 301 redirect -> musashispicymayo.com
NOW: musashispicymayo.com 301 redirect -> musashifoods.com At the time of the swap I did the following: Redirected the domain using a 301 via htaccess (made sure "www" requests are forwarded too) Created a new Google analytics account / webmaster account for "musashifoods.com" Went into my old webmaster tools account and used the change of address tool In the new webmaster tools account i submitted a sitemap and requested a crawl of the new domain Ensured the new primary domain was properly configured and all pages had the correct urls in the source code Verified that Google has updated their index and "musashifoods.com" now shows in the results. Now of course musashispicymayo has the keyword in the domain but I find it hard to believe that that is what caused such a dramatic and swift drop in rankings. In fact a good portion of the backlinks actually point to "musashifoods.com"...Did I miss something else here? Does Google penalize you for reversing 301 redirects like that instead of just using a new domain altogether? Let me know if I can provide any additional info that would help clarify...any advice is greatly appreciated!0 -
Trafic drop after a huge indexation
Hello everyone, My website used to have about 500k indexed pages in Google. After publishing fresh sitemaps and a little local "buzz", it now has about 6 millions indexed pages and the numbers are skyrocketing (GWT says 7 millions and it will probably keep going). My website has a total number of pages of 10 millions. I used to have about 5k organic visite each day, but since the big indexation has started, I now have half less. I read many things about that kind of trafic drop, and it seems to be a normal step when indexing a huge site. I just wanted to know if you guys had any similar experiences and if yes, if there are specific tasks to do in order to recover/develop the organic trafic or if it's just a matter of time. Thanks for your help and share of experiences 😉
Algorithm Updates | | Pureshore0 -
Do you believe CTR affects rankings
As you know, Google tracks CTR on keywords for your website visible through google Webmaster Tools. How much if at all do you believe this affects your rankings on the tracked keywords?
Algorithm Updates | | TheGrid0 -
Is there a utility that can tell me what keywords my site already ranks high for?
Ok... so I'm looking for a way to understand what my site already ranks high for.. I don't necessarily want to have to manually type in keywords. The purpose of this exercise is to demonstrate to a client what keywords they're already ranking high for. Is there an easy way / tool to go about doing this? Thanks in advance, Gene
Algorithm Updates | | BGroup0