Home page rankings disappeared - Google Penalty?

[websearchseo]

Hi,

I have a clients website that I have been working on for a few months now.

On-page SEO for home page is A for all target keywords.

All Domain / subdomain / external link data etc. much stronger than all competition.

But approx 3 months ago (before Panda update) all home page rankings (except 1 keyword) dropped out sight in Google rankings. 3 months later, still can't work out why. Sometimes rankings come back onto page 9 or so then drop out again.

Deeper pages are not effected, just the Home page.

Looks like a Google penalty to me but can't work out why.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

Website is - www.marrikashairextensions.com

Many thanks

[websearchseo]

Hi Daniel,

Many thanks for your response.

there are a couple of things I don't quite understand and would appreciate your guidance.

You suggest that I target a different page for the keyword 'brazilian hair extensions' but what I don't understand is why the Home Page is failing to rank for this keyword when according to seoMoz's on page keyword optimization tool it scores a Grade A and I have built hundreds of anchor text links to the page (not spam)?

My real issue here is to understand why, why, why. When all the seoMoz metrics and on-page analysis suggest that my clients website should be competing at least in the top 10 for this keyword why is it at position 198 at best. It just doesn't make sense.

www.marrikashairextensions.com vs www.princessnaturalhair.com/

Overall Score 35% 31%

Page mozRank 4.15% 4.11%

Page mozTrust 5.04% 4.90%

External mozRank 3.84% 4.20%

Subdomain mozRank 3.55% 3.62%

Domains Linking 6328% 910%

External Links 6514% 267%

The search engine that this page is targeting is google.co.uk not .com, where the competition is much weaker, so if you check there, the top 10 have Domain and Page authority of below 20, so makes all this even more difficult to comprehend.

I will certainly take you advice about targeting a different page, but still would really like to understand better why the home page has failed to compete so drastically.

Thanks for you help.

Mark

[DanHill]

I had a quick look at the site and a few subpages and what I'd suggest is changing the onpage optimization on the home page since this page -> http://www.marrikashairextensions.com/brazilian-hair-extensions you can focus for the keyword 'brazilian hair extensions' . I'd also add some good content about the product on that page since at the moment it's pretty blank.

The results that come up when I search on google.com for that keyword are pages that are stronger in terms of domain strength, backlinks and on page optimization so I'd say it's not a penalty but rather a ranking adjustment.  If it were a penalty I don't think it would only affect your home page and leave other sub pages rankings intact.

If you've not done anything black hat(such as buying links) then it's certainly just the algorith changes and you need to work on the site.

Hope that's of some help

[websearchseo]

Hi Daniel,

Keywords =

'brazilian hair extensions' & 'brazilian hair'

Still ranking ok for 'natural brazilian hair' though.

[DanHill]

HI Mark

Which keywords were you ranking on the first page that you're now not being found?