Dropped 50 places for Page Title Change
-
Hey Guys,
I've got a keyword set that is really annoying me. You see on the 19th July I changed my page title for the home page to what I thought would be something more competitive and instead of climbing from rank 9/10 I dropped out of the top 50. So I waited 2 weeks to see if it changed and it just stayed out of the top 50.
After two weeks I changed it back again and I've been out of the top 50 ever since. I havnt made any real significant changes to the site as I've held off waiting for the keyword ranking to return but I dont think it will.
I was trying to improve the keyword phrase "bahamas all inclusive" for the website www.smallhope.com. I'd managed to get on to page 1 rank 9/10 depending.
I changed the title;
from "Bahamas All Inclusive - Andros Bahamas Hotel - Bahamas Vacation - Small Hope Bay Lodge All-Inclusive"
to "Bahamas All Inclusive Vacation - Small Hope Bay Lodge All-Inclusive"
This is really bad for us and I'm not sure what to do.
I had a whole plan in place starting with the Title and moving on to the H1 tags, but now I'm not so sure. I've put everything on hold. If this was you what would you do to get back to page 1?
Thanks,
Adam
-
Just wondering how you are making out with this. I checked Google US and didn't see you rank in the top 50. Curious to hear an update. Hope its going well.
-
What do think about the large amount of words in the image alt tags? I am just curious. I cant help but think it may look a bit spammy. Am I wrong?
-
I think that's it then! Ha that is a weight of my mind, now I have a reason I can create a solution. I just checked my Webmaster Tools data and we went from a stable level of 3000 impressions on the 24th July going straight down to 1000 impressions by the 28th July then picking up slightly and staying around the 1600 level ever since.
I checked the Panda update and they said ~1% have been affected but I've got a lot of duplicate page data on there. I'm going to push forward with a complete change to the text on the front page. Ahh that is a weight off knowing what the problem probably is. Whew....
Thanks for all the help guys its really really appreciated.
Adam
-
There have been several Panda updates since then. There was one on July 24th, 2012 so it's possible that this update picked up your potential Panda issues.
-
Bear in mind theres been alot of recent Google algo changes, your rankings may have changed because of something other than page titles.
BTW - I say that especially applies to the travel industry - ive seen alot of flux for aggregators of late.
-
Ahh I hadnt thought of that, the drop though was about shortly after I changed the title and requested a google reindex of the site. I wonder if the changes caused Google to push through a re-evaluation and penalised it based on the Panda update.
The Panda update was in Fed and my changes we the 19th July, so pretty far apart, but could still be linked.... hmm...
-
I'm guessing this is not really connected to your title change. On what date did you drop from the SERPS? Is it concidental with a known Panda Update?
The reason I am asking is that a quick look for duplicate content on your site, shows this: Google search for a phrase from the site in quotes : 2530 results!
If Google thinks your page is a duplicate of others out there then it has no reason to offer it up to searchers.
I didn't have a thorough look though, but I'm thinking that the drop is not directly related to your title change.
-
Yeah I might at that, just the fact that I'm not in the top 50 though is a very bad sign for the rest of my plan ....
-
Try to continue with your plan
I think Google doesn't have an "undo" button... When I'm optimizing the title I'm also changing the meta description to suit the new title, that way if Google doesn't find an appropriate part of text for the description, it will use the optimized one.
-
With this though its over a couple of months with multiple sources of confirmation. My total organic traffic in GA dropped 20% about a week after the change and my Webmaster tools impressions have halved as well.
Right now checking in multiple sources I'm not even in the top 50 since making a title change and then reversing which is very worrying...
-
I know changing the Alt tags and other on-page optimisation was part of my original plan. Change title, stabilise, change h1 tags, stabilise, change alt tags etc..
Unfortunately the title change bombed my placement, so before I make some more changes I'm trying to start from my initial position and move forward.
Just dont seem to be able to get back to before I set my plan in motion.
-
You need to remember that SEOmoz is constantly changing their ranking algorithm, just like Google is, I think that they have a place to track changes.
-
I lost rank on a product page for too many of the same type keywords. I scaled them back and ranking improved a few weeks later. A program I use indicated this :Your Image Alt attributes seem very long . The average wordcount per Alt tag is 8.8 . Possibly too high.
-
Thanks Leat, I know its odd. I think I've been penalized for spam like behaviour when I changed the title. I'm a little concerned as America is the main source of traffic.
-
Europe, Romania
-
Can i ask you where you are based?
-
I did a manual check and your website is ranking on the 10th position for the search "bahamas all inclusive" on google.com.
Your title in the search is "Bahamas All Inclusive - Andros Bahamas Hotel - Bahamas Vacation..."
Update: I've searched through an US proxy and the website is not even in top 50...strange!
-
Ahh no I'm not after that. I know the rank has dropped and I have had this confirmed in multiple places including webmaster tools and google analytics.
So the rank has dropped.
I need to increase the position for those keywords.
Adam
-
I would try rankchecker it spiders out to find your actual rank. Or Google the keywords and find your sites current rank. I believe SeoMoz does an update kind of like Semrush but not positive.
-
SEOMoz with Google US as the preferred search engine. Not too bothered about the others for now, as I'm hoping they'll fall in to place.... hopefully....
-
Can I ask what you are you using for your rank check?
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 webcache of product page redirects back to product page
Hi all– I've legitimately never seen this before, in any circumstance. I just went to check the google webcache of a product page on our site (was just grabbing the last indexation date) and was immediately redirected away from google's cached version BACK to the site's standard product page. I ran a status check on the product page itself and it was 200, then ran a status check on the webcache version and sure enough, it registered as redirected. It looks like this is happening for ALL indexed product pages across the site (several thousand), and though organic traffic has not been affected it is starting to worry me a little bit. Has anyone ever encountered this situation before? Why would a google webcache possibly have any reason to redirect? Is there anything to be done on our side? Thanks as always for the help and opinions, y'all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TukTown1 -
Magento 1.9 SEO. I have product pages with identical On Page SEO score in the 90's. Some pull up Google page 1 some won't pull up at all. I am searching for the exact title on that page.
I have a website built on Magento 1.9. There are approximately 290,000 part numbers on the site. I am sampling Google SERP results. About 20% of the keywords show up on page 1 position 5 thru 10. 80% don't show up at all. When I do a MOZ page score I get high 80's to 90's. A page score of 89 on one part # may show up on page one, An identical page score on a different part # can't be found on Google. I am searching for the exact part # in the page title. Any thoughts on what may be going on? This seems to me like a Magento SEO issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CTOPDS0 -
If a page ranks in the wrong country and is redirected, does that problem pass to the new page?
Hi guys, I'm having a weird problem: A new multilingual site was launched about 2 months ago. It has correct hreflang tags and Geo targetting in GSC for every language version. We redirected some relevant pages (with good PA) from another website of our client's. It turned out that the pages were not ranking in the correct country markets (for example, the en-gb page ranking in the USA). The pages from our site seem to have the same problem. Do you think they inherited it due to the redirects? Is it possible that Google will sort things out over some time, given the fact that the new pages have correct hreflangs? Is there stuff we could do to help ranking in the correct country markets?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ParisChildress1 -
Why does Google rank a product page rather than a category page?
Hi, everybody In the Moz ranking tool for one of our client's (the client sells sport equipment) account, there is a trend where more and more of their landing pages are product pages instead of category pages. The optimal landing page for the term "sleeping bag" is of course the sleeping bag category page, but Google is sending them to a product page for a specific sleeping bag.. What could be the critical factors that makes the product page more relevant than the category page as the landing page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo0 -
Splitting down pages
Hello everyone, I have a page on my directory for example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamBayPublishing
https://ose.directory/topics/breathing-apparatus The title on this page is small yet a bit unspecific:
Breathing Apparatus Companies, Suppliers and Manufacturers On webmaster tools these terms hold different values for each category so "topic name companies" sometimes has a lot more searches than "topic name suppliers". I was thinking if I could split the page into the following into three separate pages would that be better: https://ose.directory/topics/breathing-apparatus (main - Title: Breathing Apparatus)
https://ose.directory/topics/breathing-apparatus/companies (Title: Breathing Apparatus Companies)
https://ose.directory/topics/breathing-apparatus/manufacturers (Title: Breathing Apparatus Manufacturers)
https://ose.directory/topics/breathing-apparatus/suppliers (Title: Breathing Apparatus Suppliers) Two Questions: Would this be more beneficial from an SEO perspective? Would google penalise me for doing this, if so is there a way to do it properly. PS. The list of companies may be the same but the page content ever so slightly different. I know this would not effect my users much because the terms I am using all mean pretty much the same thing. The companies do all three.0 -
Dropped from Google?
My website www.weddingphotojournalist.co.uk appears to have been penalised by Google. I ranked fairly well for a number of venue related searches from my blog posts. Generally I'd find myself somewhere on page one or towards the top of page two. However recently I found I am nowhere to be seen for these venue searches. I still appear if I search for my name, business name and keywords in my domain name. A quick check of Yahoo and I found I am ranking very well, it is only Google who seem to have dropped me. I looked at Google webmaster tools and there are no messages or clues as to what has happened. However it does show my traffic dropping off a cliff edge on the 19th July from 850 impressions to around 60 to 70 per day. I haven't made any changes to my website recently and hadn't added any new content in July. I haven't added any new inbound links either, a search for inbound links does not show anything suspicious. Can anyone shed any light on why this might happen?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | weddingphotojournalist0 -
Rel canonical on every page, pointing to home page
I've just started working with a client and have been surprised to find that every page of their site (using Concrete5 CMS) has a rel=canonical pointing to their home page. I'm feeling really dumb, because this seems like a fatal flaw which would keep Google from ranking any page other than the home page... but when I look at Google Analytics, Content > Site Content > Landing Pages, using Secondary Dimension = Source, it seems that Google is delivering users to numerous pages on their site. Can anyone help me out?! Thanks very much!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | measurableROI0 -
Duplicate page titles and brand name
Duplicate page titles and brand name. According to SEOMOZ in my one of web site .there are many duplicate title tags some of them are company names .my problem is Do i need to make unique tile tags for each pages with keywords and what about putting company name in each page. 2)Is it necessary to put company name (Brand name ) in each page.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0