Huge Ranking drop without touching the page
-
I was ranked #5 for the keyword "Become a Sportscaster" - had been in the top 10 for months, then all of a sudden dropped to #46. I haven't touched this page in a few months, so I don't think I messed anything up.
Any thoughts on why such a dramatic drop would happen?
Brian Clapp
Founder, SportsTVJobs.com
-
will do thanks!
-
Hi Brian,
I believe the recently introduced SEOmoz Ranking process is currently in Beta (I am in the Beta group) and Casey did specifically ask for feedback on any apparent anomalies during the Beta testing phase.
Just caught up with Casey and the answer will be slightly different depending on whether you are a member of the Beta or not, so just a correction to my original comment:
- If you are not in the Beta then you should email support [at] seomoz.org
- If you are a member of the Rankings Beta and forgot - email the Beta team!
This being the case, it would probably be a good idea to email him direct to bring the issue to his attention.
Sha
-
appreciate the response dvtruong - I worked with Angie for many years, back when I was the news director at Fox Sports Northwest - great lady. Anyway back to SEO - we've started getting more links for cnn.com, a bunch of edu's and some other big sports sites - so I hope to see our overall numbers increase. Quality content is our main priority so glad to see we are on the right track, we only lauched in NOvember last year so I know its a slow ramp..
thanks again for the insight.
Brian
p.s. we're in seattle too.
-
Someone else reported a similar issue with their SEOmoz ranking report. I would suggest contacting the Help Desk so they can investigate the issue. It seems like a bug.
-
interesting ryan thanks - I actually was referring to the ranking from my SEOMOZ crawl this past week... so no operator error. According to my ranking report I dropped from 5 to 46 last week and then from 46 to 48 this week.
guess its an seomoz reporting issue if you still see it ranked 5th.
-
I was ranked #5 for the keyword "Become a Sportscaster" - had been in the top 10 for months, then all of a sudden dropped to #46
I called a friend who works at Google and he restored your ranking to the #5 spot.
Ok, I am teasing but only a bit. I took a look and in Google.com I see you ranked #5 for the term "Become a Sportscaster". Perhaps when you checked the term was slightly altered. An extra space, a missing space, adding a plural, etc. can all change the search results.
-
It could be a lot of things. Google makes changes to their ranking algorithm about 400 times a year, so they may have turned a knob that happened to affect your site a lot.
I checked out your site and it looks like it has a lot of quality content so I don't think the Panda Update would have been a factor. I liked the Angie Mentink interview - I know her well since I'm in Seattle.
I would not worry too much about one single phrase because it is probably driving a very small percentage of your overall traffic. How is your organic search traffic overall? That is much more important than a single phrase since 70% of search traffic are from long tail searches. I would recommend continuing to pump out remarkable content that people want to share and you should be in good shape in the long run. It looks like your site has 58 linking domains according to Open Site Explorer. Increasing this number over time should help with more competitive phrases.
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 important is Lighthouse page speed measurement?
Hi, Many experts cite the Lighthouse speed as an important factor for search ranking. It's confusing because several top sites have Lighthouse speed of 30-40, yet they rank well. Also, some sites that load quickly have a low Lighthouse speed score (when I test on mobile/desktop they load much quicker than stated by Lighthouse). When we look at other image rich sites (such as Airbnb, John Deere etc) the Lighthouse score can be 30-40. Our site https://www.equipmentradar.com/ loads quickly on Desktop and Mobile, but the Lighthouse score is similar to Airbnb and so forth. We have many photos similar to photo below, probably 30-40, many of which load async. Should we spend more time optimizing Lighthouse or is it ok? Are large images fine to load async? Thank you, Dave bg_05.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | erdev0 -
Fire a tag when element is loaded on page (Google Tag Manager)
I'm using an Element Visibility trigger to track a value that appears on a page. However, I want to track this value even when the user doesn't scroll to the area of the page where the element is (i.e. when the page is loaded, and the value is displayed below the fold, but the user doesn't scroll down there). Is there a way of doing this
Reporting & Analytics | | RWesley0 -
Keyword Rank Dip - Estimated Wait Time to Return to Higher Spot?
The organic traffic to our site (fairly new) took a ~50% hit about a month ago due to the drop in our most important keyword. The numbers have come back up and are now exceeding the number before the dip. While this is all fine and dandy, we're still not ranking in the top 50 for our most valuable keyword. We've put out a number of guest post on reputable outside sites and are building a regular cadence of those posts, but my question is, what is the realistic wait time for those organic rankings to increase again?
Reporting & Analytics | | smf434340 -
Rank Tracker - above 50
Hi, I have a blog and would like to know where it ranks for certain keywords. Unfortunately however, it's well above the top 50, is there any way of getting its exact position or will Moz only show position 50 and above. Thank you in advance. JG.
Reporting & Analytics | | elite_marketing0 -
Behavior Flow vs. All Pages report in Google Analytics
In the interest of determining why our ecommerce site isn't converting, I've been spending some quality time with GA. I've suspected that our front page is part of the problem, especially where our organic traffic is concerned (we get a good deal of referral traffic from a link on an OEM's site). According to the Behavior Flow report under the Behavior section of GA, organic traffic to our home page is hemorrhaging (roughly 60% bounce rate). But when I went to the All Pages report (Behavior > Site Content > All Pages) and looked at organic traffic to our home page, then looked at the Medium as a secondary dimension, I'm getting a bounce rate of 35%. Why the massive discrepancy? Can somebody assist?
Reporting & Analytics | | ufmedia0 -
Webmaster Tools Indexed pages vs. Sitemap?
Looking at Google Webmaster Tools and I'm noticing a few things, most sites I look at the number of indexed pages in the sitemaps report is usually less than 100% (i.e. something like 122 indexed out of 134 submitted or something) and the number of indexed pages in the indexed status report is usually higher. So for example, one site says over 1000 pages indexed in the indexed status report but the sitemap says something like 122 indexed. My question: Is the sitemap report always a subset of the URLs submitted in the sitemap? Will the number of pages indexed there always be lower than or equal to the URLs referenced in the sitemap? Also, if there is a big disparity between the sitemap submitted URLs and the indexed URLs (like 10x) is that concerning to anyone else?
Reporting & Analytics | | IrvCo_Interactive1 -
How is it possible that this site has a higher page authority than my site?
Judging by open site explorer, I'm crushing my competitor in every imaginable way. And yet, somehow they have a higher page authority than me and, consequently, are ranking higher than me. How is this possible? My site is on the left: 40atcpP.png
Reporting & Analytics | | ScottMcPherson0 -
Tracking page visits
Hi guys After a lot of effort and late nights our website has gone online. http://www.health2000.co.nz/ In google Analytics am I able to see what pages individuals clicked on before they went to the cart? Ive had a look at GA 'Flow Visualsiton' but it seems a little confusing. Thanks for your help Pete
Reporting & Analytics | | dawsonski0