Possible google sandbox issue? Organically ranking page 1 for our number 1 keyword, but page 5 sometimes 6 on google?

[Deacyde]

What are some things I can look into to figure out why google is ranking us on page 5 sometimes page 6, with some slight rank boosts to rank 36 from 48 but then falls right back.

While Yahoo and Bing rank us page 1 consistently, without these big drops back.

I use google search ( webmaster tools ) daily, fix 404s and make sure to fetch new content I create.

Our site is within the Sandbox issue time frame, google 1st indexed the site about a year and a half ago, the site has been through various SEO service checks, and has had those issues fixed ( some bigcommerce won't allow, such as full sitewide ssl and a few other small factors ) but all the big stuff was handled or will be 100% handled after this redesign is complete. But just still seems we're stuck in the google hole again.

We do use adwords, but no clear signs as to why we'd suffer such hardships with google ranking, only thing we don't have optimized in terms of on page optimization from moz is keyword in url, of which will be changing within the next month or two, as we're rolling our a new redesign with SEO 100% at the forefront, nice url paths, with keywords in their url, much more responsive site that uses less resources.

But before we release this redesign, I'd like to find out what toe we stubbed of google's to give us such a ranking blackeye...

We don't have that many backlinks, and I know these are a huge factor, however, building quality backlinks it's harder than walking on water at time and on the same level as spinning hay into gold.

Any ideas community...

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

Well, Google, Bing and Yahoo are using completely different ranking algorithms, so, it's not surprise that your rankings differ. I don't think you really can optimize for all search engines. You just optimize for Google and hope that you rank on others as well. So, to answer your question - I don't think the problem is with Google. It's most likely with your website. Make sure that your website is well optimized (tech and non-tech side), you have good backlink profile, your content is outstanding and your social media presence is huge. Also check for possible algortihm's spam hits like penguin etc.

Hope this helps.