Keyword Rankings: One keyword dropped, dragging other rankings down. Possible or not?
-
Hey moz fans,
So these week I noticed significant drop in rankings...
But what caught my attention is that one specific keyword dropped 18 positions, and all the other just 1-3.
Print screen: http://prntscr.com/7fb4g4
Do you think it's possible that the drop of that page, that went 18 positions down, brought the whole domain down?
Or is it another cause?
-
Hi Nikola
It certainly won't be the case that, if you have a big rankings drop, that might have a ripple effect on other rankings. There's no way the two will be directly related and Google won't adjust your other rankings because of one falling.
However, the reason behind the ranking drop might well have contributed to other keywords falling, particularly if they are related keywords. So, if a competitor has had a successful link building campaign and risen above you, you yourself have lost links, made onsite changes etc etc. Those ranking factors can all increase or decrease your keyword positioning - and if all of your keywords are related and possibly ranking for the same page, that might explain why other keywords have fallen as well.
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
-
Keyword rank drop, any advice?
Screen Shot 2021-08-26 at 19.02.18.png My search visibility dropped from around 13% a few weeks ago to 8.29%. I know that Google launched a bunch of updates in this past few weeks to ignore spam links, and I'm pretty sure that was the reason for the drop - some of the links to my site date back over 10 years and those links were garbage. Confusingly, at the same time, my Domain Authority went up by 1 to 32, then back down a week later. How can I restore my previous rank in the short term? We're designing a new site at the moment with vastly improved page speed, but I'm not sure what effect that will have yet (thespacecollective.com).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
How to rank for a keyword
Hi guys, I'm looking to rank a new blog for a search term which we currently already rank #1 for. I want to create a blog which provides a better solution to a searchers query and knock our current #1 page for this new one. Is there a way to do this simply without losing the real-estate the currently ranked #1 page has already accumulated? Or is just a matter of working on this new blog to find it's own way to the top? Thanks in advance, James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jameseacott0 -
Site experiencing drop in Google rankings and organic traffic after redesign.
Hello, The company that I work for recently implemented a complete redesign for our company website. The former site was old, cumbersome and in desperate need of an update. We streamlined the site structure and made sure to redirect as many pages as we could find to new thematically related pages with 301 redirects. After the launch of our new site we saw a large upswing in "soft" 404 errors despite the fact that most of these pages do redirect upon inspection. So in relation to the soft 404s, for example, is it merely a matter of labeling them as fixed if they redirect properly, or could their be an underling issue with the site itself? Also, a majority or the urls labeled "not found" in webmaster tools are properly redirected. Do these merely need to be marked as fixed, or is there something else that needs to be fixed like the sitemap structure? I appreciate any and all input. Beyond Indigo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeyondIndigo1 -
How to improve my rankings?
Hi guys, I'm targeting a specific country NZ to start off with as my site is only new 3months old - whilst I'm trying to rank for various keywords such as - psychic readings, online psychic readings, love psychics, clairvoyant, astrology, tarot card readings etc I can see I'm slowly ranking around 18, 20,30,40 through my blog page, but nothing from the site. I know the site is content thin and were currently working on improving this, is there anything else you can suggest that perhaps I might need to be aware of? Or any tools I could use to go about getting information that could help put me ahead lol Thanks all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
Dramatic Ranking Changes
Hi, My website is ranked on the 2nd page of Google for the /ncr. Last week suddenly it climbed up to the first page and I let my boss know about it with a quite enthusiasm and happiness 🙂 Then my boss didn't look at it on that day and next day our site was on the second page again and still is. Now I kind of lost reputation in the office, and people start questioning my comments. It wasn't a delusion but I would like to know what it was. No one does any SEO for this 10 years old site, and I've just started an SEO campaign about 1,5 months ago. And I really thought this is it, we are on the first page. But now we are back in to the 2nd page. Is waiting for couple days or weeks to Google to settle right approach for such cases? Or it was just a random bounce or coincidence? Never seen such thing, so I'm quite curious about your opinions or experience if you have.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nunobaronio0 -
Keywords in WMT
Hello, In Googles Web master tools under "content keywords" 2 of my major keywords are missing. My site used to rank well for the keyphrase "short hairstyles" but gets very little traffic from google at all now, about 1% of what it did before april 2012. Someone did a negative seo number on us by pointing 10k+ spammy links to us from message boards, this and the timing of the traffic loss leads me to suspectthe penguin update. I am removing them as best I can but no increase in traffic has resulted so I'm looking for any and all issues and the missing keywords seems to be an oddity. The missing keywords include "short" which is pretty fundemental. The word is in the domain and plenty of times in the content. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jwdl0 -
Ranking with other pages not index
The site ranks on page 4-5 with other page like privacy, about us, term pages. I encounter this problem allot in the last weeks; this usually occurs after the page sits 1-2 months on page 1 for the terms. I'm thinking of to much use the same anchor as a primary issue. The sites in questions are 1-5 pages microniche sites. Any suggestions is appreciated. Thank You
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | m3fan0 -
Local SEO (Rankings) + UK-wide SEO (national rankings) - achieving both
Hi All, For clients wishing to sell online / generate leads nationally, yet still want to have a local online presence to attract town / county-wide customers, I've often placed Town / County locations within both the Title Tag (or just County if space is limited) and Meta Description, plus within the Hx headings, Alt-text and within the footer of every page. My question is, does adding the location of the client within these fields really infringe their attempts to rank nationally, as some nationally ranked pages have no mention of location while others have their location (Town, County or Both) shown within them? Any help, insight or feedback greatly appreciated 🙂 Happy New Year Tony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tony-Dimmock0