Optimisation change caused a drop

[sanchez1960]

We are a web design company and SEO has never been our main thing but we can do it for clients quite well.  We were ranking under web design and our location quite well up until 3 months ago.  We didn't really have much on our page for web design but targetted website design instead.  Our SEO guy who has proved himself for getting some of our clients to the top of Google under very generic search terms recommended we focus on Web Design, so I changed the site accordingly.  2 days later Google has seen our changes and now we've changed our H1 and copy.  However, our ranking has dropped 1 place yet again.  Obviously I've now panicked and am stressing (even feeling sick) about what to do.  He is away until next week so I can't ask him.

Could it be that Google has seen we're targetting the word and pushed us down? Shall I wait for the link building he's doing?  My own link building lately seems to knock us down a place with every new link I'm doing (and I'm only adding the odd link - not spamming at all).  What's odd is that we're still doing extremely well for keywords that aren't even mentioned in our copy at all really.

If you could help or offer advice I'd be very grateful.

[sanchez1960]

You're right, I should not have panicked.  I've got my placements back now.

What's more confusing is that my website design and local county now appear better than before and I've not got that keyword on my page anymore.

Anyone care to explain?

[DougRoberts]

My first piece of advice - DON'T PANIC!

Reactionary changes made in haste will more than often make the situation worse.

I'm in a similar situation, ranking near the top for web design and my location. While my ranking seemed to be relatively stable in November, I've noticed that it's been bouncing around +/- 1 or 2 positions. Looking at the Looking at the slightly longer picture though, I can see that I'm flipping places back and forth with higher ranking competition who appears to be dropping. (I'm ranking higher increasingly often). I'm hoping that my next push to build some more links and post some additional high-value content is going to help.

The point here, is that it's the overall trend that matters. If you disappear from the search results completely then I'd worry. If you're just experiencing a bit of a wobble then I'd watch for a trend.

That doesn't stop you building links and promoting you business/site which would help anyway.

Don't let yourself get overly fixated on the ranking position either. While generally the higher the position the more traffic you can get, you can actually find it's possible to get more traffic than a higher ranking result just by having a good, compelling snippet (title/description).

So, don't panic. Get the evidence, look for the trend and then make strategic rather than reactionary decisions and continue with good quality promotion of your site/business.

Hope this helps and good luck.