Keywords/URL

[eqgirl]

Greetings!  I've read previous posts on this topic, but wondering if something has changed recently...On the on-page grading, the following was suggested:Use Keywords in your URL - high importance - easy fix  _(In the past it has read difficult fix). _Could it be as easy as creating a new page with the name in the url, then redirecting to it?  My site is www.enchantingquotes.com and the keyword that brings in virtually all of business is "wall quotes".  I've read in the forum this isn't worth the trouble of trying to do, but the "easy fix" comment has me wondering...?Any help is much appreciated....I'm been trying to recover from a recent unexplained drop in rank.  Ugh! (So feel free to analyze my site LOL!)  :DA huge thanks for any advise!

[eqgirl]

Thank you, Peter. I will analyze sites 3-6 and try to figure out what happened. I appreciated all of the help.

[crackingmedia]

Hi Cindy

Without more details it's difficult to pinpoint what the reason may be and even with details sometimes it's not possible to say categorically that 'this' is because of 'that'.

I recommend you doing a competitor analysis of the top ten ranked sites for the keyword you used to rank 3 for but now 7. In particular, have a detailed look at the sites that have snuck ahead of your site in those positions (so positions 3-6) to see if you can identify any metrics where they may now be out-performing your site. Is there anything that could make the page they are ranking for (and their site on a wider scale), possibly more relevant for the search.

As I say, there may just be pointers which may or may not have made the difference, but there may be something more definitive you can identify.

Peter

[GregB123]

Hi Cindy. My stores used to be on Yahoo Merchant Solutions, so I know that changing things in that system can be tricky. Besides being a Moz member, you may also want to join the Yahoo Store Owners forum at yourstoreforums.com to get tech and marketing advice on Yahoo store issues.

[eqgirl]

Hi Peter,

I do not know how to change the URL of a page, other than to create a new one and do a redirect...

I had not made any changes to the site (other than adding new products here and there) prior to the page rank drop.  Even though it is such a small page rank drop, it means several hundred $'s a day in this niche.  I monitor page rank myself and I have been using the free trial here.  It's been super helpful - hoping once I get this issue handled we'll be back up there

Thanks for your time!

[crackingmedia]

Hi Cindy

Providing you can change the URL of your existing page you don't need to create a new page, just update the URL. If you cannot update the URL however, then yes, the only way will be to create a new page. In either case though you must create a 301 permanent redirect from the old URL to the new URL.

In terms of the traffic drop of the page, then that would have been due to the page dropping from #3 to #7. As Doug said, had you made any changes prior to that which could have caused the drop. In terms of anything Google may have done, it's possible, but difficult to pinpoint for relatively small drop like that.

How do you check where your page is ranking? If just by testing yourself in Google then you cannot be sure of that because of Google's personalisation of search results, so it's worth checking In Moz Pro by signing up for a free trial (if you haven't done that already) and using the Rank Checker tool. That will give you a much better view of where your page ranks for the country you check it from.

Peter

[eqgirl]

Thank you so much for the reply. I built the store using Yahoo Store Editor.  Traffic dropped about a month ago (I heard buzz there was another Google update then).  I went from #3 to #7 for keyword wall quotes. My on page grades are good but I can't get my rank back up.

[Wootpop]

It will be of varying degrees of difficulty depending on which platform your site is built on and your server. ie your server  looks like it is Apache but I am not sure which cms your using?

Any ideas when your traffic dropped off and what changes you have made to your site around that time might help.