Ranking dropped by 7 positions for many keywords
-
Hey,
Since yesterday my ranking dropped by in average 7 positions for most keywords. iIm not 100% sure whats the matter. I rank under the top3 for a quite comptetitive keyword since several months. During the last 4 weeks it wasn't that stady (between 2 - 4) because the competition is using an aggressiv link building method.
I'm adding constantly new content and the link building is also quite natural. Maybe I linked the same sites from some of my blogs too often... and Google may see it as a "link network". I experience the same for two of those sites. Maybe I should remove those links?Any suggestions?
Thanks!
-
It's been a month or so since this was posted. Do you have any updates? Have your rankings changed? Did you figure out what might have happened? Anything for us to learn from or clues to try to help you more would be great.
-
I just read that other people have the same prob. Since Tuesday their rankings dropped as well. Could it still be Panda? I noticed that our content gets copied quite often. Alone one paragraph on the front page can be found over 1300 times on Google.com. Could that be an issue? But Google should acutally recognize which site published the content first...
-
Ok, if any new content has been added to the main website I'd check if the linking structure has changed too. That means, for example, to check out if before you were linking the ranking pages from the index page or side wide and now, with the new content added, those links have gone or shifted to secondary locations.
While for the "link network" you should work also on gaining inbound links from other C-blocks so that you diversify and certainly acquire more trust.
-
This happened to me, almost all of my keywords dropped several pages all at once. It took a lot of digging, but I found out what was causing it, at least in my case.
I had been ignoring some pretty obvious crawl errors for a few weeks. After my keywords got dropped, I decided it might be a good time to go fix the crawl errors. Within a day of fixing them, my keywords reappeared and crawled back up to their original positions within a few days.
Again, not saying this is your problem, but it's pretty obvious to me that Google doesn't like crawl errors.
-
Lets hope the good results return.
-
We have a fully staffed editorial team. We update content constantly. I have seen a resurgence of newer spammy referral sites pop up as well as some other rather bizarre results. Query best strollers in google. You should see Conde Nast's homepage as the 5th result which is completely irrelevant.
Check out this other users comment on this URL http://forums.ebay.com/db2/topic/Ebay-Partner-Network/Googles-Algo-Panda/5100011135
I believe this to be an algo tweak/update,.
-
Actually we dont have any keyword domains. The guys who are ranking now on 2,3 etc. are doing so with one page of relevant content but 100s of keyword backlinks.
Maybe I will remove a few of the links on blogs from which I link to those other two sites as well.
Justin, are you continuing linkbuilding + adding new content from time to time or do you change anything else on your sites?
-
I've seen similar drops for my site as well. Many different categories where we used to rank 1,2 we are now in the 6,7,8 range. I do see lots of keyword domain referral sites popping back up. I'm assuming its another tweak.
-
Hey,
Yes, the main site is on Wordpress, but I added an aditional blog to the site on which we post new articles every week. We also have a forum with around 2k posts. I only added an image to the front page and linked from the blog to one of the pages from the main site.
The strange thing is that it also happened to two other domains for which I placed links...Do you think google recognized it as a "link network" and therefor the ranking drop?
-
Hi Netminds,
I'd check if any changes have been made to the internal link structure of your website. Is it blog (Wordpress) based?
-
Hey Netminds,
did you update any code for the page(s) on that keyword? sometimes google will knock you down, and then after a spider cache or two it will return to normal (assuming no massive difference).
hope it returns! :>)
-
Thanks Ryan. However, other sites which are also linked from some of those blogs are still ranking as before... Would you just continue with link building and adding content as before (of course keeping the sites separated) or would you also remove some links? A few weeks ago I even got a backlink from bbc.co.uk...
-
If you dropped 1-2 positions then it can be your competition improving their sites.
If you dropped 30+ positions I would suspect your site is under a penalty.
Dropping 7 positions leads me to first look at your site's links. There is a strong chance some important links to your site have been devalued. This could be due to reasons unrelated to your site, such as the source has been penalized. It could also be for reasons related to your site. I would suggest a careful examination of your links.
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
-
How Many Keywords & How Will They Take to Rank?
Hi Guys Just taken on a new site with around 80 keywords with no links because the site is new. Each page is optimised correctly, very user friendly with completely unique content for each and every page. I'm interested to know what would be your online marketing "plan" for such site to begin ranking. Thanks Gary
Link Building | | GaryVictory0 -
My homepage is ranking great but my blog posts have dissappeared
It all happened a few weeks after Penguin 2.0 was released so I'm not sure if it is in any way related. My home page robt.info currently ranks really well for relevant key words like kids author. This has lead me to believe that 2.0 didn't negatively effect my site. I'm not in the business of anything remotely black hat related and purely focus on content. But, if you search for individual blog posts (which are extremely unique), they are nowhere to be seen. For example, one post I did was a story titled 'Fairy Floss For Brains'. Up until the second week of June I ranked extremely well for these really weird and unique blog posts. But now, they don't rank very well at all. Not even in top 100. They are indexed and in my sitemap. Can anyone please help me resolve this issue? Is there something I have done wrong that anyone can see? EDIT: I was able to utilise feedback from my question to resolve my issue. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR HELP GUYS!
Link Building | | Insppaint0 -
Huge Drop in Rankings
I just (this week) experienced a huge drop in rankings for one of the keywords that I was sitting in second spot on Google US. 'What Should I Read Next' I dropped to 82, but none of my other keywords suffered a similar drop. Any ideas? Webmasters offers no clues as of yet either. I was doing link building through blogs and some article sites, but it was all white hat as far as I know.
Link Building | | Bookkus0 -
Why should I pay attention to sites that rank well in Bing?
If Google has the most market share, why would I use Bing to find backlinks. This question relates to Raven Tools using backlinks found on Bing for their Domain Research tool? Wouldn't that make their tool inferior to one that uses Google? Thanks, Sam
Link Building | | PGD20110 -
Too many links from one site?
In webmaster tools in 'links to your site' I have a totla of 819 links but 580 have appeared from one site. Is this bad for SEO?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Can being on to many directories cause a penalty from Google?
If a URL is on hundreds of different directories would that be enough for Google to penalize a website?
Link Building | | PageOnePowerGang0 -
Mutliple language website with same keyword for different language
Hi you all, how are you? I'm having a problem with a new client. His website is multilanguage, and he wanted to position his website in Google US, Google Brazil and Google Argentina. The problem is the following: the client is an hotel chain, and for every hotel they own they have an internal website. Because each internal website is well optimized for the keyword that include the city the hotel is in, now the page is decently positioned with the internal pages, not the home. This is fine by me, but here is the problem. Each language (es, en and pt) ranks better in each country. How would you exchange links? Because I have, for each keyword, three websites, each one in a different languages. Coul you give me an idea with this? Someone has experienced the same thing? Thanks!
Link Building | | arielbortz0 -
Longer Tail Keyword for URL and Anchor text
Hello If I am trying to rank for the term blue widgets as a primary, and also the term shiny blue widgets , and big shiny blue widgets as secondary - would the url /blue-widgets or /shiny-blue-widgets or /big-shiny-blue-widgets be better (all else equal) Would the word shiny / big dilute or affect of KW in the domain for the rankings for blue widgets (all esle equal) Regarding anchor text of inbound links, if the anchor text is shiny blue widgets, is that going to help me rank for both queries "blue widgets" and "shiny blue widgets" equally? (all else equal), or would including shiny, affect my ranking for "bliue widgets" Or is it better to keep the anchor text as just blue widgets (of course we could vary it) but Im trying to get a feel for how that would work as we are builfing some links I can control the anchor text. I hope this was clear enough Thanks Sam
Link Building | | Impact-2015550