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
-
Page dropped after backlink
This is a bit of a odd one... I put two new pages on to my website. And built one backlink to each page (each from separate domains). The pages and backlinks have indexed quite quickly. The odd thing is that one of my pages has dropped significantly in ranking but the other has boosted significantly in ranking! The 1st page has come to page 1 of google, the other pages dropped to page 3 of google. Prior to building the links the ranks was stable. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
How to rank if you are an aggregator or a directory of resource?
Most of the SEO suggestions (great quality content, long form content, engagement rate/time on the page, authority inbound links ) apply to content oriented site. But what should you do if you are an aggregator or a resource directory? You aim is to send the user faster to other site they are looking for or provide ranking about the resources. In fact at a very basic level you are competing for search engine traffic because they are doing same things. You may have done a hand crafted, human created resource that is better than what algorithms are showing. And your site likely to have lot more outgoing links than content. You know you are better (or getting better) since repeat visitors keep coming back. So in these days of Search engines, what a resource directory or aggregator site do to rank? Because even directories need first time visitors till they start coming back again.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Maayboli0 -
Site Rollback for Careless Website Design That Caused Rank Drop
New PPC Client (out of necessity) had their site redesigned for mobile without much care given to it by a "SEO Expert". None of the meta data was copied over to the new images and pages, much of the old content was simply deleted, intra site links completely changed. Huge hits in organic rank, resulting in traffic declines occurred as their lead volume hit zero the following month (April 21 until Present). Any concerns I should have in doing a simple rollback beyond redirects and GWT (Search Console) ops? Current plan is 1. Setup redirects back to old site 2. Launch PPC campaign to recover call volume and leads. 3. Optimize old site for mobile simultaneously with simple responsive framework for menu, text. 4. Start disavowing poor-quality links that were added (got 10 with spam rating >4). 5. Eventually move them back to Wordpress and the theme they paid for with site content, meta data, etc all in tact.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jclmns0 -
Ranking on google search
Hello Mozzers Moz On page grader shows A grade for the particular URL,but my page was not ranking on top 100 Google search. Any help is appreciated ,Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sobanadevi0 -
Is it normal to initially rank low in the SERPs, then over time gain rank?
We just released a very targeted page for a specific item about 18 hours ago. For the main keyword as well as multiple variations, we currently are ranking around # 40 to # 50 depending on what the exact query is. Is it normal to initially rank lower in the SERPs and then as the page ages, gain? Thank you for your insights!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DJ1231 -
Fantastic engagement - poor rankings
Hi all, I've got a website that, for the life of me, I just can't get to rank highly: mariart.com.au Our DA/PA is higher than many of our competitors, and the engagement is amongst the best I've seen (7624 unique visits with: Pages p/visit = 7.28, Bounce rate = 5.26%, though Avg duration is only 2:36). Have I missed something fundamental here? Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlphaDigital0 -
Google Ranking Wrong Page
The company I work for started with a website targeting one city. Soon after I started SEO for them, they expanded to two cities. Optimization was challenging, but we managed to rank highly in both cities for our keywords. A year or so later, the company expanded to two new locations, so now 4 total. At the time, we realized it was going to be tough to rank any one page for four different cities, so our new SEO strategy was to break the website into 5 sections or minisites consisting of 4 city-targeted sites, and our original site which will now be branded as more of a national website. Our URL structures now look something like this:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cpapciak
www.company.com
www.company.com/city-1
www.company.com/city-2
www.company.com/city-3
www.company.com.city-4 Now, in the present time, all is going well except for our original targeted city. The problem is that Google keeps ranking our original site (which is now national) instead of the new city-specific site we created. I realize that this is probably due to all of the past SEO we did optimizing for that city. My thoughts are that Google is confused as to which page to actually rank for this city's keyword terms and I was wondering if canonical tags would be a possible solution here, since the pages are about 95% identical. Anyone have any insight? I'd really appreciate it!0 -
Ranking with other pages not index
The site ranks on page 4-5 with other page like privacy, about us, term pages. I encounter this problem allot in the last weeks; this usually occurs after the page sits 1-2 months on page 1 for the terms. I'm thinking of to much use the same anchor as a primary issue. The sites in questions are 1-5 pages microniche sites. Any suggestions is appreciated. Thank You
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | m3fan0