Multiple keyword rankings declined dramitically. Why??
-
SEO Moz has reported 7 of my keywords declined dramatically overnight. One word even went down 18 positions in Google. I have a few ideas on why, but none of them really make sence.
1.) The night before the decline I deleted around 6 "test pages" from our website. None of them could be reached through our website but they could be found by typing in the url. Most of these pages only said things like "test", but one of them was a draft of a keyword rich page within my website that only included some of the keywords that went down in ranking. Could the fact that I deleted this page be the cause of the ranking decline?
2.) About two weeks ago I purchased a url volusion-store-design.com which is one of my keywords and forward the address to an internal page within my website http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Store-Design. Could have this hurt my rankings, like Google is considering it duplicate content or something?
If anyone has some ideas please help.
Here are the keywords that I lost ranking for:
volusion developers ---- down 18
volusion features ----- down 5
volusion store design ----- down 2
volusion templates ------ down 11
volusion designers ------ down 4
free volusion templates ------ down 4
ecommerce volusion features ------ down 3
Here are the pages these keyword were pointing to:
http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Store-Design
-
I see your point, Back Burner.
-
Clarification: I'm not the one getting advice here, and I do think good help was offered for free, which should always be appreciated.
I just find anything that starts with sigh a little condescending - maybe it's just me, but I have encountered this condescension elsewhere in this forum from many very smart PRO members and I personally find it irritating.
Anderson probably doesn't even care and I probably shouldn't have said anything... No offense ninja just a pet peeve.
-
might be related to the new google algorithm update that happened yesterday. also happened to a specific high ranking keyword landing page for the company's domain site I work at.
went from rank #2 to #12 over night.
Keyword BMW Wheels
now our other landing page has taken the #2 spot, our BMW replica wheels.
http://www.webpronews.com/google-algorithm-new-updates-announced-2011-12
I think our site is affected by
"Related query results refinements: Sometimes we fetch results for queries that are similar to the actual search you type. This change makes it less likely that these results will rank highly if the original query had a rare word that was dropped in the alternate query. For example, if you are searching for [rare red widgets], you might not be as interested in a page that only mentions “red widgets.”" - Webpronews.com
any ideas? or am I wrong?
-
When you get good advice it is generally best just to say "thanks".... and sometimes abrasive advice is a little more motivating - at least that is the effect that it has on me.
-
I honestly think my response is constructive. I stated my opinion and followed it up with my recommendations. It's not like I called the guy names and didn't offer help.
-
I agree with these recommendations, but your delivery coulda been a little more constructive...
-
Was "volusion-store-design.com" a brand new domain you purchased? Assuming it is, forwarding it to your main site gives absolutely no SEO benefit to your main site. This is because this new URL has no authority so there's not any benefit to pass along to the new site.
Either way, it seems doubtful that either of the two things you described would hurt your rankings. Give it a few days and see what happens to your rankings before trying to figure out if you have a major problem.
-
In my opinion - and it is just an opinion - trying to figure out specific reasons for fluctuations in ranking is an exercise in futility. There are just way too many factors going on - both within your website and outside of it - that Google is using to determine rankings.
Not to say you shouldn't be concerned about the decline in rankings. Here are two observations for you:
-
These are pretty competitive keyword terms, and the pages you have been using to target these keywords have a PA of 1, indicating to me that you will probably see ranking fluctuations until you get some quality links to these pages. Compare your PA to the top 5 results, which all have PA in the 30s and 40s or more.
-
How long have you been tracking your rankings using SEOMoz Campaigns? Did you have steady rankings spanning several months and then see a decline or did you start tracking recently? I ask because (at least in my experience) low PA pages targeted towards more competitive keyword terms tend to move up and down on a lot on the SERP, so if you just started tracking you could have come in on a peak and now be seeing the valley.
-
-
sigh
First, short-term changes aren't something to worry about. Google could be reevaluating your site, topic, and niche to see where you should fit in. It does this with high ranking pages. It happens. Relax.
Second, deleting pages that Google doesn't know about isn't going to affect your rankings. Especially if they were relatively useless pages. You might want to block these pages in robots.txt or with a htaccess password so it definitely isn't an issue in the future.
Third, why did you buy a URL to simply forward it over to a specific internal page? That looks suspicious. It's obvious you purchased the URL in order to boost your rankings for that keyword. If Google isn't on to you already, it will be soon. A better solution would be using the URL to build a small micro site (10-12 pages) about the topic, make the micro site rank, then link out from the micro site (1-4 links) to the specific pages on your main site.
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
-
Google not giving ranking to the intended page of my website.
Hello friends, This is my very first question, I hope I will explain my issue correctly. I have created two pages related to SSC CGL keyword on my website: https://www.ibtindia.com/ssc-cgl-notification-exam-date 2) https://www.ibtindia.com/ssc-cgl-apply-online I want to target the keyword SSC CGL Apply Online on the 2nd URL but Google is only considering the 1st page for all the "apply" related keywords as well. Can anyone suggest to me how to get the second page in rankings for its intended keywords? I will be very thankful for this help. I tried adding image but its showing dummy. Please you can check it op GOOGLE SERP Second page
Search Behavior | | namitathakur0 -
In a pickle. SEO for Personal Brand, Book or Keywords?
I'm getting ready to take on a new client for SEO, but she is having a hard time understanding I'd like to rank her for "Her" and her new book, rather than keywords for her ambiguous keywords which show very little to no search volume from Keyword Planner data. Her website and domain name are only 4 months old Her book launches sometime in December (most likely January 2016) Her services (she's a consultant) provide little keyword volume She is persuaded she needs to rank for her service keywords I feel strongly we need to get her name, her method/approach and her book optimized She is seemingly difficult to work with, but once I build trust in SEO for her, so will be a great, long client Her consulting services are based on Change and Transition for wealthy individuals going through career change, divorce, pay increase, pay decrease, depression, children, etc... targeting Executives, C-Level Execs In this situation, what would you all do? How would this website or person even be optimized? Blog articles? Press releases? Guest blogging? Video blogs? Podcasts? It's a tricky one and hoping the Moz community can lend some ideas as this type of SEO would be new for me, yet I'm up for the challenge! Thank you in advance and look forward to your replies! - Patrick
Search Behavior | | WhiteboardCreations0 -
Has anyone found a best practice for ranking a client who has one central office location, but a large, regional service area that they want to rank for?
All the most recent local search ranking is based upon physical addresses, but what happens when someone provides services and has staff 100 miles from that central office location, but no physical address to work with?
Search Behavior | | BehrDesign0 -
Google ranks our competitor above us on 1000's of branded queires!!!
Hi all, I have noticed a very bizarre phenomenon in Google SERPs. When I search for a branded keyworks [Product + our brand].
Search Behavior | | ref.price
Amazon.fr appear above us on thousands of results. Google even ranks Amazon above us for queries like [ PriceMinister google plus]. I have tried to ask Google about it but I can’t seem to get an answer. Here is the topic I posted on Google’s forum: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/crawling-indexing--ranking/DFvTPr14o_o This seems like a mistake on Google’s side, some kind of semantic association with our two brands! Basically they are sending our customers to our main competitor even though they specifically searched for our brand (PriceMinister). I find the phenomenon quite interesting for the SEO community and frustrating for our company. Does anyone have ideas on this one? Do you think it's a bug from Google? Cheers Oliver0 -
My rank down how can i recover
hi i am new here http://www.constructionhelpline.com/ last 2 year we are in no 2 in these keyword in google.co.uk cscs cscs card cscs test from last 3 - 4 months our ranking is down i don't know why this happen can anyone expert can guide us please Thanks
Search Behavior | | constructionhelpline0 -
Why is my client ranking no.3 for a competitive keyword?
Hey guys, I'm doing a bit of detective work and I'm trying to understand why my client is ranking no.3 for the keyword "office desks" on google.ie. https://www.google.ie/search?q=office+desks&aq=f&oq=office+desks&aqs=chrome.0.59j60l2j62l3.10127j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 The strange thing about this is that 'office desks' is not in the 1. title tag 2. url 3. h1 tag 4. anchor text of the internal links 5. anchor text of the external links 'Office furniture' however is the optimised keyword here however this appearing no. 35 in SERPs for the same url. Any ideas what this might be? Regards Rob
Search Behavior | | daracreative0 -
Irratic page rank results - why?
Hi, Hi- I've changed the title and reposted this question as I didn't get any insight. I really am going around in circles for this; so any help that can be given would be really appreciated.I know that you guys have the knowledge so really hoping you can share it! Thanks - background: I run two sites: www.ragsmetals.com and www.yourgoldfund.com: They offer similar products but to different markets: one is predominently trade, one predominently customer focused. They vie for the same keywords.e.g. Buy Gold My Issue: I have been trying to build www.yourgoldfund.com up from an SEO point of view; it is FALLING in the rankings; I am doing NOTHING with www.ragsmetals.com and it is rising in the rankings. I checked webmaster to see if there were any warnings as a result of penguin (found out how to do this on here - thanks for that!) there are none. I have optimized the pages a lot. I have put time into getting in bound traffic, and even more excitingly some experts (from reputable domains) have just linked to our site because they like our content! So to me things should be improving . NOTE: My OSE listed inbound links are incredibly diferent from google Webmaster. What can I do. I am a scientific person so I love the fact that I have 2 sites to compare...interested to hear your thoughts. Many thanks in advance
Search Behavior | | girlie0 -
How is this Dr. Getting a Ranking on a National Site in a Local Listing?
Please follow the link for a visual. Any help would be appreciated. The query I used was "phoenix plastic surgeons". I have never seen a large national site like PlasticSurgery.org Rank in local for a specific Dr. Thoughts? Thanks! 7O1oK
Search Behavior | | Red_Spot_Interactive0