Drop in rankings, next step
-
So based on a question asked yesterday, I am wondering what my next step is.
Yesterday's question was, I have made updates to Title and Meta Descriptions for my client's site and suddenly they are not showing up in the top 50 for numerous keywords that they used to. The only words in the page source that were edited were "fluff" words that were replaced with relevant keywords reflected in much of the on-page copy yet now the client is not showing up. Ideas?
From responses and research, it seems there's a lag time in Google to pick up the updated titles/info and these changes can cause a drop in rankings for a short time - however, I can't very well turn to my client and say sorry your website isn't showing up for a few weeks...wondering what my next step should be, or is there a greater issue I'm missing.
-
What do you mean by over-optimized?
-
There are many possible reasons. Try resubmitting a new xml sitemap to Google Webmaster tools and that should speed up the process.
-
That is frustrating for sure, seeing as no other changes have been made. There's usually a reason or two as to why such drops in rankings would occur. It's worth starting with an on-page analysis (SEOmoz's tool is great) to see if any serious errors or such like are identified. Perhaps the site is now over-optimized which can happen.
Perhaps something has happened that you don't know about, such as your client purchasing links without you knowing, or some issues with the hosting provider. Is good to rule out as many possible reasons as you can.
-
Great ideas, thank you. I actually did the term targeter for Organic T Shirts for http://greenpromotionalitems.com/organic-t-shirts.htm and got an A so that's good. I do notice that when the site does show up in searches, it is all the old meta descriptions and titles (changes were made 2-3 weeks ago). Any clue on why that may be happening?
-
The short answer for your question, yes it normally takes a week to two weeks to get sites fully re-indexed in Google. Of course there are special occasions when it turns around faster, but generally speaking 1-2 weeks. The easiest way to check if they have been reindexed, is to search for branded keywords and see your new titles/meta descriptions are in the SERPs or if it is still the older ones.
As for optimizing your pages, shoot for an A in the term target tool (http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/on-page-keyword-optimization/new).
-
Thank you for the suggestions and we will definitely be focusing in on those. I think my confusion is that for certain terms that the site used to appear for, it no longer is, even though we now have more targeted SEO for those very same terms.
-
Hi there
It could be that the new relevant keywords that you have replaced the 'fluff' words with within the Titles and Descriptions are more competitive than those previous words, resulting in a drop in rankings.
If you're now fully targeting the site towards more competitive keywords than before, it's justifiable to expect a drop in rankings.
Additional supportive content (still unique, relevant, valuable content) plus some good distribution and PR should attract some new inbound links, hopefully on relevant anchor text.
So you may well have a justifiable reason there, plus an action plan to remedy the situation, which a client will likely be appreciative of.
Regards
Simon
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
-
Researching search volume drop
I am seeing a pretty precipitous drop in search volume traffic (see link). My keyword rankings don't seem to have suffered too much over this period. In fact, my #1 keyword have actually increased slightly in this timeframe. Two questions... Is there some way to assess overall search volume across my tracked keywords (to see if this is just a case of overall searches dropping)? Is there a recommended plan of attack for investigating drops like this - beyond overall search volume, what other data might be important in identifying the cause of this. In short, I'm looking for some logic/structure for how I investigate this, using Moz tools and reports. Thanks. Mark omE1VPc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarkWill0 -
Site experiencing drop in Google rankings and organic traffic after redesign.
Hello, The company that I work for recently implemented a complete redesign for our company website. The former site was old, cumbersome and in desperate need of an update. We streamlined the site structure and made sure to redirect as many pages as we could find to new thematically related pages with 301 redirects. After the launch of our new site we saw a large upswing in "soft" 404 errors despite the fact that most of these pages do redirect upon inspection. So in relation to the soft 404s, for example, is it merely a matter of labeling them as fixed if they redirect properly, or could their be an underling issue with the site itself? Also, a majority or the urls labeled "not found" in webmaster tools are properly redirected. Do these merely need to be marked as fixed, or is there something else that needs to be fixed like the sitemap structure? I appreciate any and all input. Beyond Indigo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeyondIndigo1 -
Ranking dynamic landing pages
I have a client and I'm working on a project with their development team. We're creating dynamic landing pages populated with their lead data. Similar to the style of linkedin. For example, someone searches for "demand generation manager" and one of our pages with contact information (some) shows up in the search results. www.leadgenius.com/demandgenerationjobs (or something like that. we have yet to flesh this out). We're also looking into different backlinking strategies to support optimizing the above mentioned pages in addition to their new site launching this month. What is the best way to optimize the dynamic pages as well as the main site in tandem or independently?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Intergen0 -
Website No Longer Ranking In Google:
My website was on first page google couple of months ago, now nothing. Shows up in Bing page one. Some queries/pages still showing OK, but some not at all. Example "residential elevators illinois" found nowhere. http://www.accesselevator.net is the website. Have found 900 poor quality links and used disavow tool. Any further suggestions? Their Page Rank also went from a 3 to a 2. Implemented nofollow on all outgoing links. Need advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trailblazerzz90 -
Wrong page getting ranked
Hi all, we have product category pages on our ecommerce web site and we also produce blog content (such as buyers guides, setup guides etc) to help with ranking and give our site some good quality, unique content. However we are sometimes finding that the buyers guide / blog content gets ranked by Google over our product category page. I'm hoping, if I give an example or two, some one smart out there may be able to point me in the right direction as to how we can avoid this and get the product category page ranked instead? You will see from my examples we are linking internally using the keywords from the buyers guides to the product category pages in order to show the most important page to Google for these keywords and are trying to structure the product category pages as well as possible to make it the most optimized page for the term. Example: Keyword "twin dvd player"... product category page: http://www.3wisemonkeys.co.uk/dvd/portable-dvd-player-car/twin-dvd-player/ ... blog page actually getting ranked for this keyword: http://www.3wisemonkeys.co.uk/advice-center/dual-screen-and-twin-dvd-player-explained/ Keyword "site radio".... product category page: http://www.3wisemonkeys.co.uk/audio/radio/site-radio/ .... blog buyer guide page actually getting ranked for keyword: http://www.3wisemonkeys.co.uk/advice-center/Site-radio-buying-guide/ Any help / pointers appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasef0 -
Why Keyword is not ranking
I have blog website - http://uncutweb.com/ My website ranked for keywords - What Color Shoes To Wear With Gold Dress, Keywords is having Moz Difficulty Score: 35% with A grade moz On page Score. But why my website is not ranked for What Color Shoes To Wear With Purple Bridesmaid Dress or **What Color Shoes To Wear With Coral Dress???**They have less difficulty score and having A grade.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ross254sidney0 -
Significant drop in web rankings
We have two websites and last week we had a significant drop in search engine rankings. Some of these search rankings we have been top 3 for the past 5 years and now we are not in the top 20. Last weekend we changed our hosting provider and IP addresses for the first time in over 7 years. Now is there a way we could work out if we have been hit by the latest Penguin update or if the change in hosting / IP has caused these drop in rankings? I would appreciate any thought or ideas at all.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jacksons_Fencing0 -
Ranking problems
Hi All My site is live for a year now. I;m getting tons of traffic (alexa 54k) and business are good. The only problem is that I have 0 page rank....I have checked again and again the site;s structure to see if there is anything wrong with the site but everything seems to be ok. Google just added search links to the site (megamoneygames) which looks very nice. For example, none of my competitors have search links but they all have page rank of 4 while I have 0. In addition, for some reason the site's age (days) shows 0 although it is live for a year now... Do you have any idea of what is going on? do I have errors in the site? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Pariplay0