My google rankings went down
-
I've been working with a company to get some incoming links since April 2011. We are targeting only 2 keywords. For one keyword I was ranked number 1 until a couple of weeks ago. In fact, most of my rankings went down including those keywords that the company was not working on. They are writing 5 articles per month and posting them to their proprietary network. Could those backlinks could harmed my rankings?
-
Movement from position 1 to position 4 is not that unusual. I imagine this has caused a subastatntial drop in traffic as the CTR tends to drop sharply after position 3, but I wouldn't consider this a dramatic drop in rankings caused by problems with your backlinks. It is possible that some backlinks might be devalued by Google which has caused a small drop,
More likely this is caused by a Panda update. Panda wasn't a one time update, and this Search Engine Watch article suggests an update around the time of your drop (http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2080631/Google-Quietly-Launches-Panda-Update-Version-2.2). This probably means that Google sees your content as a little weaker than your competitors.
Based on this, I don't think you need to make any major changes. Try to get some more good content up on your site. And I'm not sure how active you are in the social realm, but more social engagement (I suspect Google is a big fan of +1's) could help.
I'm not sure if your on-page efforts are also limited to two keywords, but if so, I'd consider expanding that a bit. Diversification will make your traffic and revenue less susceptible to fluxuations like this. Moving into the social media will also give you another way to produce traffic that isn't reliant on SEO, while usually increasing the efforts of your SEO.
-
Do you know when was the last panda update?. It was feb 24 2011?
-
If it were me, I would shift the spend from linkbuilding to an SEO firm that will not only provide a good SEO audit, but is willing to provide some education as well.
I'd also focus on putting together a few really great pieces of content related to your niche. While researching for this sort of content, make note of other good sites and blogs that your site aligns with, so you can engage with them. Hopefully, through this engagement, they might find the content you've created helpful to their users/readers and link to your site. This is a pretty conservative approach that doesn't yield quick results, but I tend to be in favor of building for the long term.
There are a lot of ways you can start to generate more natural links to your site. I'd recommend doing some research on SEOmoz because my philosophy isn't the only way to go. You've got to figure out what works for your situation.
-
Hi Theo,
I am sorry I did not provided more info. This is my first time here. I answered below each question, in caps.
• Were there any (shady) links build?
HONESTLY, I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT DOES MEAN.• How did the company perform for these keywords in the past?
WHEN THE LINK BUILDER COMPANY STARTED WORKING ON 2 KEYWORDS, THEY GRADUALLY INCREASED THEIR RANKINGS WHILE THE OTHERS REMAINS WITH THE SAME RATING. SUDDENLY, 2 WEEKS AGO ALL KEYWORDS (THE ONE THEY WERE WORKING ON AND THE OTHERS) WENT DOWN, FROM POSITION 1 TO 4.• Were these keywords over-optimized (for example using loads of exact match anchor texts)?.
NO, THE ARTICLES SEEM NATURAL.• Could there have been any impact of a Panda Google update?.
NO. THE SUDDEN DROP STARTED ON JULY 12, APROX.• Did any on-page changes take effect that might have caused these rankings to shift?.
I DID NOTHING ON THE PAGES. THE ONLY THING WE DID IS UPGRADE OUR SHOPPING CART RELEASE. IT WAS AROUND THAT DATE. HOWEVER, I AM ALSO ON THE SHOPPING CART FORUM AND NOBODY EXPERIMENTS ANY DROP BY UPDATING THEIR SHOPPING CART ENGINE.thanks,
-
Hi Joe,
I did not received any notice from Google Webmaster Tool indicating unnatural linking detected. The company is only working on proving me links. They give me every month the list of the articles they wrote and the links, that's it. How can I avoid this sort of unnatural linkbuilding?. The only thing I did today is find out what are the page and domain authority of the links they are providing me. What that company told me is that they only build links and there is nothing wrong they can do to make my rankings decrease. And what they pointed out is that my rankings went down on the keywords they were working on and also in others. Since I am not expert, I trusted them. What else I can do?
-
Yes, the links could be hurting your rankings, but as Theo points out, a number of things could be causing your rankings to drop. Have you received any notices in Google Webmaster Tools about possible unnatural linking detected? Do you handle your own SEO or have a consultant? Are you relying on the company doing linkbuilding for you to provide you with your SEO analysis? Linkbuilding can sometimes be harmful to the health of your website, so it's a good idea to have someone knowledgeable about SEO to keep an eye on the incoming links you're getting to make sure they're good quality. Or you can avoid this sort of unnatural linkbuilding altogether. Depends on the level of risk you're willing to accept.
-
Pretty much anything is possible based on the data you've provided us at this moment..
- Were there any (shady) links build?
- How did the company perform for these keywords in the past?
- Were these keywords over-optimized (for example using loads of exact match anchor texts)?
- Could there have been any impact of a Panda Google update?
- Did any on-page changes take effect that might have caused these rankings to shift?
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
-
Are new pages treated similar to new domains with respect to ranking?
Hello...I'm hoping to get some advice or guidance regarding the following. My website has gone from a 30 page site about loans, to a 500 page site covering a much wider range of products such as mortgages and other more specific loan related pages. All the new pages were made live at the same time, and I've been through GWT tools to add pages with in the Google fetch and most have been indexed fine. My question is, how should I expect Google to treat all of these new pages? The site has changed massively and many of the new pages are at pages 3-4 for their key terms. Will Google treat these new pages in the same way it may a new domain, e.g. it could be potenitally a couple of months before the pages start to rank better? I appreciate that the terms are very competitive. Thanks!
Link Building | | Dave_B1 -
Are niche directories still helpful as good links to have to help ranking in the serps?
Are niche directories still helpful as good links to have to help ranking in the serps or has Google discounted directories? The Niche directories that i would be using are not spammy at all and are quality sources of info. Thanks mozzers!
Link Building | | Ron100 -
Will placing links in articles on my site help my rankings?
I have a few page rank 2 articles on my site. Will placing links to other pages on my site with appropriate anchor text in the body of these articles help the other pages to rank higher for the anchor text i place in these links in the articles? Thanks in advance! Ron
Link Building | | Ron100 -
Got a warning from Google but rankings still ok.. what to expect?
Yesterday I got THE warning from Google: "Dear site owner or webmaster of http://..., We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines. " It seems all my rankings are intact though. Some keywords got higher rankings, other dropped a little bit (-1, -2) but nothing unusual. My question is, since I got this warning, should I expect some sort of penalty soon? I see other webmasters who got their websites de-indexed after getting this warning so I'm quite concerned.
Link Building | | sbrault740 -
Over 47.000 inbound links from one site - can it hurt my rankings?
Im currently having some banner commercials on a relatively large Danish forum. I talked the forum owner into maing the banner "dofollow" so i could get the "juice" from the site, however im in doubt if this is good or bad for my SEO. Webmaster tools is telling me that i now have over 47.000 links from this forum. it seems like a Lot of links considering that i only have external links from about 5 other sites and the fact that my site is quite new. It seems like my site is not ranked very good yet(as mentioned in another question). I hope someone has some input 🙂 Best reguards
Link Building | | Havalina0 -
Do sub-domains help overall domain ranking?
If I have a blog at (for example) blog.mywebsite.co.uk (hosted on Wordpress), does this confer rankings to the top level domain (e.g. www.mywebsite.co.uk which we host ourselves)? Contained within the blog are many links to the main website (which is an eCommerce website) for all our key phrases, but it seemed like a good idea to keep the blog and the store separate. Alternatively, would it be better to use something like www.mywebsite.co.uk/news? Thanks! Alex
Link Building | | reddogmusic0 -
There are penalties by Google for the purchase of links? If yes which are the penalties ?
There are penalties by Google for the purchase of links? If yes which are the penalties ? When we buy links how to see if the site is considered as salesman of link by Google? Thanks you
Link Building | | elitepronostic0 -
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.
Link Building | | netminds
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!0