Why is my client's site not ranking anymore? Like big time!

[rhoadesjohn]

Ok, I'm reaching out to all of you Moz'rs for some help with this one.

My client's site has dropped off the face of google in a real short period of time.  It went from page 1 (avg rank 3 to page 6 (avg rank 50) and below in the matter of 2 weeks.

Here's some facts:

1.  DA is a 22 and homepage PA is a 31.  It outranks all other sites in its competitive set.

2.  The homepage used to be the page that displays for keyword searches, now its the FAQ page, which has a lower PA of 23.

Why has the home page seemingly vaporized?  And, why is the FAQ showing as the first result?

What should I start checking.  I feel paralyzed, not sure where to start.

More info:

a.  There are no alerts present in Webmaster Tools.

b.  For some reason the homepage (domain.com) was 301'd to domain.com/home.html.  Domain.com is indexed by Google, however, domain.com/home.html is not.  If this is the issue, what is the best way to handle it?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[MarieHaynes]

A lot of sites saw a drop in mid November but there was no announced update.  You can read a good discussion of what some site owners saw in the comments on this post:

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-nov15-17689.html

My gut instinct is that this was a refresh of the Panda algorithm, but Google no longer announces these refreshes so no one can know for sure.

But, there really isn't an easy answer to your question as there isn't an obvious solution.

[rhoadesjohn]

Unfortunately, my analytics doesn't go back to October 3rd.  However, the sharp drop in rankings occurred between November 19th and November 26th, then again in the beginning of December.

Checkout the attached image.

I'm at a complete loss on what happened during those time periods.

Nothing in WMT for manual spam actions.  And, I have been cautiously building links to the site.

FdoQmB9

[MarieHaynes]

Does your analytics data go back as October 3?  If the drop happened October 4, then I would indeed be worried about Penguin.

Have you been building links to this page?  More specifically, have you built keyword rich anchors to this page?

Do you see any manual spam actions in webmaster tools? (WMT --> Search Traffic --> Manual Actions)

[rhoadesjohn]

Many thanks for the timely responses.  I didn't want to overload the detail in the first post.

*To be more specific with my issue, there's 1 particular keyword (a very important one), that the homepage has dropped out of the rankings for.  There are many sites with much lower DA and PA above this site.  It went from 1st page to almost non-existent in the matter of 2 weeks.

Other keyword queries are still showing the homepage on 1st page results.  So I guess this probably answers a few questions.  I should have specified that in my original post.  Can you tell I'm freaking out?

1.  The site is not new.  It's been up for a few years now.  I've only just begun to take over SEO/Web Marketing duties.

2.  It is not blocked by robots.txt, nor does it have a canonical tag

3.  The title tag hasn't been touched since I got involved with the site.

4.  I'm still unsure why domain.com was 301'd to domain.com/home.html.  I didn't do it and the clients were clueless when I asked the question.

5.  I'm using Google Analytics, but the data only goes back to the beginning of October, because I setup Analytics when I got started.  I came onboard after they saw a swift drop in rankings for that important keyword.

6.  The site does have some questionable linkage from an "SEO" service they paid for that lasted about 2 years.  But I'm hesitant to start disavowing links.

[danatanseo]

I totally agree with Marie. First and foremost, be calm. Don't freak out and start changing a whole bunch of things. Make sure your client knows what's going on. Far better for them to hear it from you than discover it on their own. Make a plan. First, document everything that has recently changed. Hopefully you've done that already. Start with that 301 redirect. You already know it's a problem, whether it's caused this or not.

Has anything else changed? Meta tags, specifically title tags? I have seen a site drop from a #1 branded search position and disappear for up to a day because the title tags were updated. Then it reappeared back in it's original spot. It's possible that your clients site is in a Google dance, but my gut says that's not it. Start with the 301...and while you're at it, check and make sure that the non.www version of the homepage is properly redirecting via 301 as well as any other potential URL versions that also produce the homepage and that may have inbound links.

Good luck and please let us know what happens. Hang in there!

[MarieHaynes]

I definitely agree that Penguin is a huge possibility.  But, I think it could be dangerous advice to send a site owner on a link removal/disavow mission when we don't know for sure.  There are many other possibilities.  It could be a Panda issue.  It could be that it was a new site and the previous high rankings were a honeymoon effect.  It could be that the /home.html page is blocked by robots.txt or has a canonical tag that is confusing Google.  It could be that they changed the title tag on the page so that it is no longer appropriate.  It could be that the site was hit with malware and users are clicking away because of virus warnings.

(btw...the thumb down was not from me.  I respect that you are trying to help but just wanted to comment to make sure that the site owner (or someone else reading this post) doesn't go off disavowing links without getting to the cause of the problem first.)

[MarieHaynes]

While it could be Penguin, I don't think we can make that call on the data given to us in the question.

[MarieHaynes]

Take a look at your organic traffic only.  If you use Google analytics, go to Aquisition --> All Traffic, then choose google/organic.  Can you tell what date the drop happened on or started on?

Now go to Behavior --> Site Content --> Landing pages and click on each of the top pages.  Is there an obvious drop for each page or just the home page?

How old is the site?

Can I ask why you did the 301 from domain.com to domain.com/home.html?  Is there any chance that the /home.html page has either a noindex tag or is blocked by robots.txt?  Is there a canonical tag on the /home.html page?  If so, what does it say?