Why did our ranking go up, then drop down again?
-
Hello SEOMoz community.
I work for a website that runs a collectibles news service and sells collectibles online.
I recently renamed one of the pages from "Stock for Sale" to "Collectibles for Sale" anticipating this would help our ranking for the term "collectibles for sale". This changes the Title, URL and h1 to Collectible for Sale.
A few days later we were up to 5th on Google UK for that keyword.
But now after the weekend we've dropped off the face of the earth... Or at least somewhere low down in the rankings.
I imagine there could be multiple reasons for this, but what are the most likely causes?
There is not much text on the page, it contains an iFrame with image boxes that link to relevant collectibles categories.
Website: www.paulfrasercollectibles.com
-
We used to use a different style URL which just included the docid and catid. At this point we manually entered friendly URL redirects in the CMS.
At the beginning of this month we converted to an automatic friendly url system. The url is generated from the article title. Old urls now use the rel="canonical" to direct to the correct page which is always of the format:
www.paulfrasercollectibles.com/category/article-title/0000.page
I'm not entirely sure if we have the ability to make 301 redirects.
-
Hey everyone.
Can I just add something else. I changed the text on another page, adding more information about the service the company provides. The page is titled "Investment Newsletter" it was page 3 Google UK for that term and had been for a while.
It went up to page 2. And now its dropped away somewhere. This change was implemented over a week ago.
Why is this happening? Surely it shouldn't be a result of me changing the content on the page?
I've never seen anything on SEOMoz to suggest that improving a pages content will lose my rank in Google.
Any suggestions?
Can I also add, that we changed the Meta description on the home page from being the same as the title:
"Latest news from the world of high-end collectibles and investments"
to
"Free daily news for collectors plus antiques, memorabilia and investment-grade collectibles for sale."
This has seen us drop from 5th place on the 1st page in the UK. to the 3rd page on Google.
But the Meta description only has limited SEO effect and surely this is a change for the better?
-
Adrian,
We always see an initial high ranking that last about a week then goes back down sometimes a few pages..Over a 2 month period we see the ranking usually restore.
-
Hi Adrian
In regards to the other tags, I take it back, it was Chrome's view source code coloring, made tags look broken at quick glance. Sorry!
As far as the canonical, I was just curious why there are two URLs for that page to begin with? Is it that you need the '1850' in the URL to provide the GET call to the database?
It appears as if all your category level pages operate this way? You should be able to get a singular, clean URL and make your category call without the need for duplicate pages at all.
If this is not the case, you may want to 301 Redirect the '1850' page to the other page. There doesn't seem to be a need for both pages to be accessible by users.
Hope that helps!
-Dan
-
Hi Dan, thanks for the response.
I see what you mean about the two versions. It seems to be worse than that as well. The page was originally called "Stock for Sale" which is also indexed twice.
We were under the impression that using rel="canonical" would mean Google only indexed one url for the page. Even if older URL's are still used on the website. Should this other urls drop out of the index on their own?
As for the unclosed title and style tags. I don't see what you mean. To me they seem to be perfectly fine, and he haven't encountered any problems with these before.
Cheers
-
It appears as if you have two versions of the page indexed;
http://www.paulfrasercollectibles.com/Collectibles-for-Sale/1850.page
and
http://www.paulfrasercollectibles.com/Collectibles-for-Sale/
The rel="canonical" cites http://www.paulfrasercollectibles.com/Collectibles-for-Sale/1850.page as the page that should count in the index, however on your site its the other page which is linked to from the menu.
It would require a deeper look at things to tell what is going on for sure, but having duplicate versions of the same page in the index is certainly something of concern.
At quick glance I see a few other things that should be addressed when I view source; including a style tag and title tag not closing correctly.
-Dan
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
-
Does Plus Sign "+" in url affect SEO and Ranking?
there are customized pages on the client's site, they contain brand pages related to Samsung, iPhone, ZTE, LG, Motorola, and HTC Mobile phones.
On-Page Optimization | | dietsuave
For Example:
https://www.unlockninja.com/unlock-apple+phone
https://www.unlockninja.com/unlock-zte+phone
https://www.unlockninja.com/unlock-samsung+phone
Should I recommend them to change the URL structure. ?0 -
Do sites with more pages rank better?
If a site has more pages and also has good internal linking, then logically it would rank better. Is this the case? Should I be building big (but high quality) sites?
On-Page Optimization | | T0BY0 -
Are three Adsense ads on a long page a negative for search ranking?
I've not a site whose home page that is #1 for a popular keyword. The page is 1200 words, plus comments following. It's a clean page with no popups, and has one large rectangle Adsense ad above the fold (lots of text around this ad, and a very high percentage of page ATF is text), and another large rectangle Adsense ad that is midway down the article (after you have to page twice to get there). So, it's a very low ad to text ratio and ATF looks very clean. I have room for one more Adsense ad closer to the bottom of the article, which would be about five page downs through the page. My question is, will placing another ad way down the page affect my ranking in any negative way? I'm so pleased with my #1 ranking I hesitate to add it. But the page converts in Adsense so well, and heat maps show a large number readers do read all the way down the page, so I'd like to pick up some more ad revenue.
On-Page Optimization | | bizzer0 -
Rankings dropped overnight
We have been doing some optimization for a client. They were not ranked for many keywords before we started, and up until last week 10 were on page 1, with the the last few following closely behind. Everything was moving in the right direction. In this weeks ranking report every one has dropped significantly and some 30 places in one week. We have made no significant changes to the site in the last few weeks. The only issue we picked up on was the slow site speed on their current host 1&1. Any ideas what could have caused the site to have lost ground on all rankings so significantly?
On-Page Optimization | | FLDESIGN0 -
Sudden drop in ranking for important keyword? No penalty / other issues detected
Hi For our site we previously ranked well for the term "botswana safari holidays" on the page: http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/africa-and-the-indian-ocean/botswana.aspx We've suddenly seen a dramatic drop for this term, currently ranked #43 on Google UK. There are no penalty notices in Webmaster tools and the only edits to the page recently have been to include the term "Botswana safari holidays" in the page title and the on-page h2 (previously Botswana safaris and holidays). Any suggestions why we have seen a large decrease for this term? We expect to see some fluctuation but this one seems a bit dramatic. We've not lost any backlinks to the page that we know of. Thanks for the help.
On-Page Optimization | | KateWaite0 -
You notice rankings go up when..
you link out to wikipedia? I feel there are always benefits to linking out to authority sites like this
On-Page Optimization | | imageworks-2612900 -
Home Page is Not Ranking Anymore on this ecommerce site
Hi Everyone, I work regularly on this site www.cheapsnapframes.co.uk which is a cubecart based site and upto a few months ago the home page used to rank on poster frames we were on page 1 of google now we are on page 2 but it has dropped the home page and favours a category page. I have been looking at this to try and figure out why and I have today realised I had some external links on the home page pointing to the .com which the site used to run from but has been setup as a 301 redirect so I have changed these to internal links. I have used the on page tool and get an A but its been showing an A for a long time. Is there any other reason why we have lost out on this keyword term? Thank you in advance Tracy
On-Page Optimization | | dashesndots0 -
Should I include location in title tag to rank higher in local search
I'm working on a site for a small guest house (http://www.tommysonthebeach.com). I have created a Google Place page (Bing and Yahoo Local) as well and I have the address in the footer on every page. I have the location (Indian Rocks Beach) at the beginning of most titles tags because that is how people tend to search, e.g. "Indian Rocks Beach vacation rental." In theory I would think that I don't need location in the title tag because Google knows the location, and I could use the real estate for other keywords suchs as "pet friendly" or "beach hotel," etc. But when I look at the SERPS, those ranking highly all seem to have the location at the beginning of the title tag. Thanks. P.S. The site is currently not showing up in Google local search apparently because Google thinks it's a vacation rental agency, which are not allowed in local search. I'm trying to get that fixed.
On-Page Optimization | | bvalentine0