NEED HELP, Figuring Out Ranking Drop!
-
Hello, I need help from somebody, anybody, in trying to figure out why my site dropped so much for the keyword “wildblue” and “wild blue”. On the week of Feb. 13, 2012, my website jumped from middle of the first page to the fourth page, and then a week or two later jumped completely out of the index (or at least off the top 5 pages). We do not engage in any deceptive practices. Our entire website is centered around this keyword, and we are very relevant, and have informative and continually updated content for visitors.
I thought at first we got hit by Panda, but our overall organic traffic has not decreased, it has actually been steadily increasing compared to same time last year. I have tried over the past several months to get us back up, or at least figure out what happened, with no luck. If anyone could advise me on what might have happened, how to correct it, or even has any ideas of how I could figure out what happened I would greatly appreciate it.
Website is:
-
Trademarks can be registered in some countries, but not worldwide. Will it be any difference in selected country search if trademark is not valid there?
As i see in some results, google just hides the result if that page had official trademark violation, but does not penalize the website.
-
Well, we didn’t change URL structures or hosting or anything. However, Wild Blue is a trademarked term. However, we have permission from WildBlue to use the term for marketing purposes. This leads me to the same puzzler, which is that so many other sites similar to ours (many of the them much less relevant) replaced us in the rankings. I have tried for several months to figure this out. I hate to give up as this is so pertinent to the very core function our site and the information we provide, but I just don’t know what else to do. I even submitted a reconsideration request to Google. I haven’t heard back from them yet.
-
Is it possible that "Wild Blue" is a trademarked term? Just a thought, but I wonder if you could have been taken out of the index because of a DMCA takedown request?
Did you do anything else during the time period preceding the drop? Like change url structures, change hosting, etc.?
-
I appreciate your help. When our site was ranking for that term it was about 5 years old. We have ranked extremely well for that term for the entire existence of our site, with the exception of after February. This drop actually occurred even before Panda was released (about two weeks before I think). I did get one of the unnatural linkings Alerts In July (well after the drop occurred). However, I did a lot of research on it, and my conclusion was unless you got one of the warning messages related to unnatural linking don’t worry about it, as the site has not actually been penalized. From my understanding this message was more or less a “change what you are doing before it gets worse” type of message. Frustratingly we have never engaged in shady practices.
The only thing we have done that people now say has no effect is article marketing. Last year, we did invest some resources in creating some very high quality articles and submitting them to a few different directories. These were very informative and useful, and not the least bit spammy. Once Panda came out we stopped. To further complicate things, we didn’t focus any of these article efforts on the “WildBlue” keyword. Prior to Feb. we didn’t have to do much work for this keyword because we naturally ranked so well.
We actually use to have that keyword in our title, but took it out just a bit ago because we were not gaining any traction, and thought it best to reinvest that space with another keyword. The most puzzling thing for me about this situation, is that I understand gradually dropping for a specific keyword due to several factors. However, being completely dropped from the rankings in one week from a keyword that your entire website is designed to represent is still very puzzling to me.
-
There are a few things that stand out to me when looking at your site. First of all, you don't have the words "Wild Blue" in your homepage title, so if you are trying to rank your home page for this term that would help. I do see it on your inner pages, but do you have links built to the inner pages?
Your linking profile looks very unnatural, especially when you rank it by anchor text. However, if your drop happened in February of 2012, it wasn't because of Penguin because that didn't happen till April. Have you checked your webmaster tools for unnatural links warnings? This could be the cause. You've got a lot of anchor texted links as top anchors. A natural profile would have your url and brand as the most popular anchors.
When you were ranking for "wild blue", how new was your site? You may have gotten a honeymoon boost and then dropped down a few weeks or months later. However, it is a little strange...I don't see you in the first 8 pages for that term. I would expect at least one of your inner pages to rank...but again, if it's a competitive field and you've got no links to inner pages (I didn't check...just assuming), and don't have the keyword in your title then this could just be normal and not due to a penalty at all.
-
Why do you think other non-brand owners, would replace us? Looking at it from Google’s perspective it seems as if it would be counter intuitive to replace one website in the rankings with another one just like it.
-
I think that is a good conclusion.
-
Well, I thought about that too. However, many of the people that jumped ahead of us are not the brand owner either, nor are they in my opinion as relevant to the subject as we are.
-
Ive just this minuted posted a discussion about Google hurting aggregators on this very forum http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-google-making-life-harder-for-aggregators.
I think you may be seeing ranking drop for a branded term as I believe Google is working on reducing sites optimised for branded terms when they arent the brand owner.
-
No, wildblue.com is owned by another company.
-
Are you also wildblue.com? That site ranked in first when wild blue is search
-
What do you think caused your problems in ranking?
-
I kept adding new links and in time I recovered. I varied the links anchors to bring the direct to non direct ratio closer to 20%.
-
Any suggestions on what to do, or advice from what you did?
-
I had the same thing happen to a few of my keywords.
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
-
Can the disavow tool INCREASE rankings?
Hi Mozzers, I have a new client who has some bad links in their profile that are spammy and should be disavowed. They rank on the first page for some longer tail keywords. However, we're aiming at shorter, well-known keywords where they aren't ranking. Will the disavow tool, alone, have the ability to increase rankings (assuming on-site / off-site signals are better than competition)? Thanks, Cole
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ColeLusby0 -
Sudden Recent Drop in Impressions in GWT - WTF?
I noticed this recent drop in impressions in Google Webmaster Tools. It started mid-February, and I know there was the page layout algorithm on the 6th, and I've heard mention of a Panda update around the 11th, so I started to wonder what was resposible. A manual penalty was just recently removed, too. As I dug deeper, I discovered other problems. For one a misredirected blog causing 404s, plus a redirected site whose duplicate pages were never removed from Google's index. There are also two exact match domains 301 redirected to the site, but there were no links or content prior to the redirect. In a site:operator search, one is showing a duplicate homepage. When the wordpress.com blog was redirected, it was not redirected to the /blog subdirectory. Could the resulting 404s which go back as far as I can see in GWT (3 month limit) be the cause of this drop? We're talking about hundreds of blog pages and their links. FYI the main nav in /blog pointed to the old site until 2/7 when I pointed them to the existing domain (so hundreds, if not thousands of links were being redirected) The million dollar question is: is it just the 301 redirect issue causing the problem here? It looks like I might just have exacerbated it when I fixed the nav menu links. Will fixing the redirect rescue the impressions? My plan of attack includes killing the 301 redirects from the exact match domains with no backlinks, and removing the old site from Google's index from within GWT. Any yays or nays? FYI, a 301 redirect of .index.html, default.asp, and non-www was done 1/8,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kimmiedawn
the reconsideration request was sent 1/24, manual penalty lifted 2/10. Index.html still redirects twice, going to www.site.com/index.html before resolving at .com. Same with default.asp. IarDs8u0 -
Does the proximity to the center of the city have anything to do with higher rankings in local results ?
Does the proximity to the center of the city have anything to do with higher rankings in local results ?? If yes then how ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mnkpso0 -
Month old site and alreasdy ranks 3 for competitive keyword
I know this individual does this with several sites and then offers them for sale to his competitors. Obviously spammy thru and thru, but how can google reward a site thats not even two months old, with 1900 + links with a ranking of #3 for a highly competitive keyword? Please dont post the actual name or url of the website as we dont want to give him any more credit but this blows my mind as he has done this several times with other sites and never gets penalized. http://tinyurl.com/b9jysa5 Any ideas as to how he can accomplish this besides almost 2000 links in less than 2 months? How is that even remotely natural? I know his other sites have been reported to google but they never did anything about it. Thanks for any feedback.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | anthonytjm0 -
Passing page rank with frames - Is this within Google Guidelines?
It appears this site is gaming Google for better rankings. I haven't seen a site do it this before way before. Can you tell me what enables this to get such good rankings, and whether what they are doing is legitimate? The site is http://gorillamikes.com/ Earlier this year this site didn't show up in the rankings for terms like "Cincinnati tree removal" and"tree trimming Cincinnati" etc. The last few months they have been ranking #1 or #2 for these terms. The site has a huge disparity in MozRank (8, very low) vs. Page Rank (6, high). The only links to this page come from the BBB. However, when you look at the source code you find 100% of what is displayed on the site comes from a page on another site via a frame. The content is here: http://s87121255.onlinehome.us/hosting/gorillamikes/ When I go to onlinehome.us I'm redirected to http://www.1and1.com/. I'm only speculating, but my guess is onlinehome.us has a high page rank that it is passing to http://gorillamikes.com/, enabling Gorilla Mikes to achieve PR of 6. Does this make sense? In addition, the content is over optimized for the above terms (they use "Cincinnati (Cincinnat, OH)" in the first three H2 tags on the page. And all of the top menu links result in 404 errors. Are the tactics this site is using legitimate? It appears that everything they're doing is designed to improve search results, and not in ways that are helpful to users. What do you think?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | valkyrk0 -
How to rank internal pages?
Hello, I have a website about consoles, on the homepage are a few thoughts about what consoles are and a short history. The main attraction are the pages about Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, PSP Vita. So, I want to rank my homepage and my internal pages about the consoles ranking for "xbox360", "play station 3" each one on a separate page of course. Basically I want to rank brands. My main questions are: 1. How much link builing should I do for my homepage considering that I'm not really interested in ranking it as much as the internal pages? In percentage how it would look like? Random (stupid) example: 60% links to homepage, 10% to each internal page? 2. I guess I must do links for internal pages otherwise they won't rank good, only linking to homepage. 3. Considering the penguin update, my main keyword should be around what % of the overall anchors to each internal page? Thank you very much for your help!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | corodan0 -
My page rank dropped by 20 places 1 day before it was cached....any connection?
Hi I've been rather silly and been linking out to other websites for reciprical links. I added about 20 and just discovered some were bad neigbourhoods. On Sunday my rankings tanked but the page was only cached the following day on the Monday. Just wondering if there is any connection. I genuinely did not know that linking out could was bad and have removed all reciprical links as a precaution.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BelfastSEO0 -
Sudden drop in rakings for a keyword.
Hi, A few weeks ago my homepage - http://www.linearsky.com dropped out of the rankings completely for a keyword I was promoting (web design staffordshire). I was thinking that one of the reasons could be a sudden link spike. The reason being is that I have been doing some development work (for a client) on one of my sub-domains. Now this is a Magento site with thousands of products, with my keyword rich link in the footer. From looking at the Google webmaster tools, it seams that alot of these pages got indexed accidently. Could this sudden link spike be enough to be penalised by Google? Apart from that the only borderline black hat stuff I have been doing is some reciprocal link swapping with a few websites in my niche - http://www.linearsky.com/misc/links.html I also bought a paid link on http://www.iwebtool.com/browser_details, (that I have now asked to be withdrawn) to see what kind of boost it would give me. I know this is unethical, but a number of page one competitors were also using this said link. Also it was only indexed for a few weeks. Could Google really pick this up so quickly? Any ideas of how to resolve this? Many Thanks Marcus
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | marcusuk-3041050