Site used to rank first for main keyword - now dropped drastically
-
The home page for this site (http://bit.ly/4m1eXy) was ranking between #1 and #3 for the term "Minneapolis criminal defense" as of a few months ago. Now the home page has dropped to #23 for this keyword, and the only changes we've made should be enhancing its ability to rank - through on-page optimization, cleaning up site errors, and ensuring good, quality content. The thing is, the sites who rank ahead of our site have lower domain authority and page authority, and their content, quite frankly, just isn't that great. Some of them are definitely doing SEO but they aren't necessarily targeting "Minneapolis criminal defense" like we are for the search term.
Before our company started doing SEO for this website, they hired a company that generated a large number of backlinks that Google would probably now see as spammy. The previous company also used to direct traffic towards the home page for the keyword "Minneapolis DWI laywer" too - and we have since stopped doing that. So I'm wondering with all of Google's algorithmic updates if this is the reason we're seeing a drop for this term, and if Google's confused. We're pretty confused, too, though, since the sites ranking ahead of us don't seem to be doing squeaky clean SEO by any means.
Advice for us? We're stumped. Would anyone consider Google's disavow tool for the bad links?
-
Sounds like it. You said: Before our company started doing SEO for this website, they hired a company that generated a large number of backlinks that Google would probably now see as spammy.
Penguin targeted low quality links (and seemed like you have them). Prune those links out and see what happens. Also, focus on reducing/eliminating any over-optimization (specifically anchor texts/kw stuffing and etc). I'm sure other mozzers will weigh in, but at face-value, that is what I'm guessing.
-
Thank you Kevin. It's always fun to clean up other people's messes.
Are you thinking that's the reason for the tanking?
-
Check your Google Webmaster Tools for any messages. Yes-use the Disavow tool to eliminate any spammy links and manually shoot an email to the webmaster of the incoming links to remove them. Document the correspondence as evidence that you are making an effort to clean up your backlinks and save in a Google Doc for the future.
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
-
Site DA and rank is not increasing
Hy, My site https://cocpureapk.com/ DA is Still 1. I am Publishing the content regularly, Site age is 6 months But Still DA and PA are 1 and rank is still not increasing.. Why its not increasing. Is there any way to increase DA and rank Of my site?
Link Building | | ikzayahot0 -
Page not Ranking I feel helpless!
Hi there 🙂 I have been working at SEO for quite some time and I am such a noob. I have even done an online course. I am at my wits end. My website is https://www.urbani.com.au. I changed to https about 1 month ago. I want to rank for "outdoor furniture perth". Recently my homepage has stopped ranking for this keyword, and a useless blog page started ranking instead (www.urbani.com.au/tag/outdoor-furniture-perth/), on page 5 of google. I got rid of that page and redirected it to my homepage. Do you know what the problem is? Why won't google rank my homepage for "outdoor furniture perth"? It is ranking for "outdoor wicker furniture perth", but for "outdoor furniture perth" it has disappeared from the face of this earth. Thank you so much, if I can get help for this it would save my business! Whitney
Link Building | | vhitnah0 -
What is a healthy ratio of keywords being used as anchor text in external links to our site?
Hi, One keyword is being used as anchor text in way more external links to our site than any others and I'm getting a lot of mixed advice whether or not to do anything about it. The agency we previously used had managed to remove about 1500 links (out of 6000) however our rank for that search term is still very poor. **We have 4500 external links with the anchor text "ABC" and the next highest amount of external link anchor text is the term "XYZ" which has about 400 links. That is over 10 to 1. What is a healthy ratio of anchor text between different search terms to aim for? ** Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Link Building | | Syed_Raza0 -
Links from other sites in our network
I work for a large publisher with many websites, and it's common for our biggest sites to link to smaller sites within the network. These links are follow, site-wide, anchor text-optimised footer links. I think it's obvious that these links are harmful to the smaller sites that are being linked to, but it's hard to convince others of that, particularly because the toolbar PR benefit is very obvious. Do you think it would be better to: a) Remove the links completely b) Keep the links, but make them nofollow c) Keep the links (as it's not harmful) Thanks
Link Building | | OMGPyrmont0 -
Getting Started With My First Project
Ok so I need some help, I need to put together my first Keyword Strategy, Link Building Strategy and Content Strategy and would love some advice on how to best approach this. First off is that the order I should be approaching it in? Do Keyword and Link in order to focus on building content around them. Basically if you were asked to create a plan like this, how woud you go about it? Thank you in advance for your help 🙂
Link Building | | cbeuoy0 -
One Website or Mini Sites?
Hello and thank you in advance for your responses. My wife and I have been running a small service business for over 5 years and we recently came upon an untapped niche in our industry we will like to explore. We have found some niche keyword specific domains and have been contemplating building a few specific minisites linking to our main site(blog) in order to reach a more targeted audience. It seems the more I research this concept the more confused I guess. My questions are the following: 1. Should we create a main blog, for example: "BestHotelConferences.com" and have some (about 10) independent optimized sites "HiltonConferences.com," "MarriottConferences.com," linking to our main blog or should we optimize these pages within our main blog? 2. If we choose to create this minisite buildout concept and these domains yield the following monthly search results which one should we pick? HiltonConference.com - 3900 HiltonConference**s.**com - 1700 HiltonHotelConference - 730 HiltonHotelConferences - 580 I have heard that the plurals already include the singular version however they will not be an exact match. Also if we add the word hotelwe will be targeting a broader audience since "hilton conference" will still be included in the domain name, but once again it will not be an exact match. Please help! Which domain name should we pick?
Link Building | | Laz1010 -
Ranking discrepancies
The head office of our organisation has just set up a new website and I see that it is ranking third below two of our retail stores. I performed a link analysis s and see we out rank our stores in terms of Links etc. Can someone explain to me why we are below these stores. Also our website was only launched a week a go. Could this have an effect?
Link Building | | dawsonski0 -
Where are all the sites that are linking to me?
I need to compile a list of all the siters linking to my site, but my open site explorer analysis shows very few links. I know for certain that there are many many more sites linking to it (it's an academic site and there are links to it from a lot of academic directories). What am I doing wrong?
Link Building | | michalseo0