Our keyword rank fell drastically since our last moz crawl. What gives?
-
Our site was just crawled last night an we had a number of keywords fall 25% or so, from say # 30 to 38. What would cause such a drastic fall? We haven't taken down pages or changed changed page titles, url or content.
One thing we are having trouble with is our meta description and meta keywords for each page. Drupal 7 seems to be giving us trouble and the meta information isn't showing up anymore.
Would that cause the fall? Any other suggestions?
-
Wow, thanks for the great response. Where could I learn more about properly configuring it so my dev can make sure its done properly.
Since you mention that, moz does give me a lot of warnings (about 500) about duplicate page content and titles. Maybe that's part of the issue.
-
Sorry Dru
CDN is a Content Delivery Network.
It helps make your site faster by serving your images, CSS and javascript from a network across the world.
If you misconfigure it or configure it lazily (as I did) then it is possible for the search engines to access your content from the CDN and that can create duplicate content, accidentally, for which you may be penalized.
- and that might be a reason for a ranking drop.
-
Thanks!
-
Meta Keywords is not used by search engines
Meta description is used by search engines part of the time.
-
Sorry, I'm in idiot and have no idea what CDN means. Do you mind explaining Alan? Sorry for my novice-ness.
-
Do you have a CDN?
They started crawling some of my pages through the CDN, which I have never seen before, and they are dropping my real pages and replacing them with CDN pages.
-
I have seen some pretty massive fluctuations in two SERPS I keep track of over the past 24 hours. The changes in rankings haven't just affected my domains, but competitors domains as well (both good and bad for them). I am wondering if it has something to do with the changes Google launched in February.
Like others have said I am going to wait and see if the changes remain for a few days until I panic.
-
So meta description is meaningless for SEO correct? But it is helpful in the search engines to the person who searched so they can get a desc of the link provided right? That would be the main benefit?
-
from say # 30 to 38
This could be normal flux. Hang in there.
One thing we are having trouble with is our meta description and meta keywords for each page.
Meta keywords is meaningless.
If you have concerns about your site maybe a consult with a Drupal Expert would put your mind at ease and correct any real problems.
-
Thanks for the help Jeffrey. I've seen some fall for the last three weeks, but much more gradually than last nights crawl. Maybe 2 or 3 places the last two crawls and then 8 places last night.
-
Has it just been one day? I'd give it at least a day or two more before panicking. Things tend to move around in Google like that.
Meta keywords and description have zero direct impact on SEO rankings.
Don't bother filling in meta keywords at all. It's a waste of time.
Meta descriptions can be important for getting clicks, but they won't help for where you rank in Google if you're trying to optimize the descriptions with keywords.
-
We also had a similar situation the previous week. This week we seem to have stabilized. I'm trying to figure it out myself as we have been steady with our pages, and actually significantly increasing in content and # of pages.
PS. If this response helps, please hit the "thumbs up"!
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
-
What to do with PDFs that rank well?
Looking at some reports, I found that a client's site has PDFs that are ranking well for niche terms and getting some traffic. What can I do to get more out of them from a marketing standpoint? The obvious issue is that a PDF doesn't have the interactivity of a site visit, where we have analytics and CTAs. Someone has to follow a link back from the PDF to the site for us to even register a visit, let alone try to get their email or have them otherwise convert. My first guess is to make landing page summaries of the PDF content that link to the PDF, and canonical the PDF to the respective landing page. Has anyone tried this, or done something else that they would recommend again in this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JFA0 -
Not ranking
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SharonEKG
so our website (www.18brandz.com) has been up for 8 months now and has not been ranking yet, we are indexing, moz crawler SEO issues are regularly fixed and we are down to about 25 non major issues, i started using google lighthouse to optimize and had made changes. we post GOOD quality in house written unique content, we follow an SEO templet of guideline i wrote for titles/meta title tags, structure, site speed has been optimized and as for the moment we rank A OR B with no major issues on all speed checking sites possible (gtmetrix/google speed insights/ webspeed... etc) but nothing. and i cant figure out why we wont rank, our field of digital marketing is a tough one and very competitive , i know, yet not ranking for so long seems odd. our only know fact major disadvantage is the lack of links and no link building strategy. any suggestions? any idea?1 -
Keywords and keyword traffic
Hi I am struggling to know what keywords i should be targeting and how the website should be best optimised for said keywords. The website offers bespoke service in the lake district UK a popular tourist destination, The business operates within say a 30 km riadus of the area. So target vistors to the website would specifically be looking for services in the lake district. The trouble is for many targeted keywords for the area are quite low or no data shown. For example: tipi camping lake district, tipi hire lake district, Glamping lake district However nationally keywords for the service have a lot higher traffic i.e. tipi hire or tipi camping, glamping what keywords should be my target? and should I targeting my website for? I don't want to target customers looking for these services outside of the lake district and also by targeting keywords without the term lake district means my competition is greater as i'm competing with the whole of the Uk for serivces It can't provide. please advise thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bengo-990 -
Rankings drastically changing
I monitor our positions for a few keywords but they are very unstable. One day they will be at position 1, 2 or 3 and then all of a sudden not even on Google. We use an IP redirect to guide users to the correct site and I suspect this may be a cause. Could anybody shed some light? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JordanRowlands0 -
Why is my website not ranking? Has A grade on-site from Moz.
I have a website that I am trying to get to up the SERPs. However the site isn't appearing in the search - even when I search for the business name. The site is http://www.jl-engineering.com/ The keyword targeted is DPF Cleaning. Could anyone explain to me why the site isn't showing at all - and how to fix this? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SWD.Advertising0 -
Why my own page is not indexed for that keyword?
hi, I recently recreated the page www.zenucchi.it /ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.html on the third level domain poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it by putting it on the home page. The first page is still indexed for the keyword poltrona frau brescia . But the new page is no indexed for that keyword and i don't know why ( even if the page is indexed in google ) .. I state that the new domain has the same autorithy and that i put a 301 redirect to pass his authority to the new one that has many more incoming links that did not have previous .. i hope you'll help me thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidoboem0 -
Pages that were ranking now are not?
Hi Folks Noticed something strange just now pages that were ranking on position 10 on Google for searches such as 'ufc trainer kinect best price' at the start of this week are no longer ranking? Is what has happened to the site the famous google dance or sandbox effect as the site only officially went live on Monday If this is the case what is the recommended course of action to get back ranking competitively again? as I have no idea on what has gone wrong as I has always tried to follow best practice from these forums and the SEOMOZ and YOUMOZ articles My site is www.cheapfindergames.com Many Thanks Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ocelot0 -
Google Places - How do we rank
So, google places showing up on search results is great feature . . . But how can we get our results to the top? I mean I can see some terrible websites appearing at the top of the google places with their places page having no activity whatsoever. Is there a trick to this at all? What can we do to increase our ranking on Google Places because our old GOOD rankings are now appearing BELOW the map results Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kayweb0