Home page sudden drop in rank, but not others.
-
Over the weekend, I noticed "www.thematstore.com" drop out of the search results for "chair mats", where previously it was between 10-12 ranked. The other pages on the domain have remained the same in regards to rankings for their intended keywords.
The only thing I changed (on Nov 29th) is the title tag from "Chair Mats - Commercial Quality Chair Mats, Custom Made", to "Chair Mats - Best Custom Chair Mats, Commercial Quality".
I know there is a lot that needs to be done on the site, and the site architecture is a bit of a mess (I recommended building a new site)... but I was hoping to gradually fix these issues without gambling with a rank drop.
Not sure why the home page all of the sudden dropped out, any suggestions?
-
Thanks for the ideas guys. Good advice Jamo, and that's a great point Marie... I've seen this happen before, just puzzled me that the home page dropped out of site in my SERPs. It's always nice to discuss because of the uncertainties with SEO, thanks for your help.
-
If I were you I would do absolutely nothing for a couple of weeks.
When I search for chair mats I see you at #14. I also see you at #1 for best custom chair mats. Sometimes Google bounces you around a bit before promoting a site up higher.
There were no major algo updates that I'm aware of last week. (There was a Panda update Nov 21 but not since then).
I would say, Don't panic...sit back and see what happens.
-
Joe,
I think you should change the title back to what it was. This could go 2 ways. With the changed title it now drops but afterwards goes up higher then before, or you change it back and start off by testing with something else to help improve your rankings. The first version of your title: Chair Mats - Commercial Quality Chair Mats, Custom Made does contain the keywords twice (i would go for 1 but 2 might work for you) but has a nice coverage. The second version of your title has the second keyword more prominent in the title. This could result in drop because it is considered keyword stuffing by Google (not saying it is but it could be).
That is what i would do, change it back.
Your description: " Chair Mats of commercial quality. Build your Chair Mats on-line using our exclusive chair mat ordering system... any shape, any size. A+ BBB rating! <a class="attribute-value">"</a>
It contains your keyword 3 times in frequent order. I would remove at least 1.
You could also try changing your H1 tag:
Now you have this: Lifetime warranty on our most popular chair mats!
I would change this to: Chair Mats with a lifetime warranty on our most popular models.
I wouldn't change everything at once but change 1 or 2 things and wait on Google. See what happens and then change the next thing and the next.
Hope this helps you out a little.
Kind Regards
Jarno
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
-
Why Would My Page Have a Higher PA and DA, Links & On-Page Grade & Still Not Rank?
The Search Term is "Alcohol Ink" and our client has a better page authority, domain authority, links to the page, and on-page grade than those in the SERP for spaces 5-10 and we're not even ranked in the top 51+ according to Moz's tracker. The only difference I can see is that our URL doesn't use the exact text like some of the 5-10 do. However, regardless of this, our on-page grade is significantly higher than the rest of them. The one thing I found was that there were two links to the page (that we never asked for) that had a spam score in the low 20's and another in the low 30's. Does anyone have any recommendations on how to maybe get around this? Certainly, a content campaign and linking campaign around this could also help but I'm kind of scratching my head. The client is reputable, with a solid domain age and well recognized in the space so it's not like it's a noob trying to get in out of nowhere.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Omnisye0 -
Sudden Rankings Drop for Good Keywords.. Did I Do This? Please Help :(
Hello, I noticed a gradual rankings drop for 3 important keywords over the last month, with a pretty big plummet the last two weeks. Overall in the last month+ we dropped from position 9 to 41.I noticed this when I dug further after noticing traffic dropping since February (not a drastic traffic drop). I should note that the keywords took people to my client's homepage. Their branded keywords have no suffered and I looked at a couple others that haven't either. Now, there is a link in the site footer (we have site wide header and footer) that takes you to a static page that contains links for the 2 digital flipbook catalogs the customer has (one for US and one for Canada). My concern is that at the end of January I had a developer implement a noindex/nofollow meta robot & robots.txt disallow specifically on the HTML pages/URL of the Canadian catalog ONLY. It specifically pointed to that flipbook URL. This catalog is nearly identical to the US catalog and I thought I'd be eliminating duplicate content and helping with crawl budget. After looking further into it last week (reading up about internal nofollows not necessarily being detrimental, but not recommended) and noticing the drop in search visibility traffic (starting gradually in March), I had the disallow/nofollow removed. This was last week, and over this last week the traffic took an even bigger drop (not amazingly drastic but enough to be concerned) and I noticed the keywords that we did ok for dropped even more this last week (down to 41). I'm concerned this has to do with the change I made at the end of January and reversed back. I should note that I don't think these catalogs or the static page that links to them brought any traffic. The keywords I am concerned about fell on our homepage (where the link to the static page that contains the links to both catalogs is in the sitewide footer) The catalogs are a couple hundred pages. I honestly don't see how this could do it, unless it has something to do with the footer being sitewide? There have been site upgrades/dev changes over the last couple months too (although I am not sure if that affected other clients who received the same upgrade), so this is hard to pinpoint. Sorry this is so long but I'd appreciate someone offering some insight to help ease my mind a bit!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AliMac260 -
Strong Site, Pages, Ranking Low
Hey Mozers This is a question which has been bugging me for a while now I have an authority site in my niche which has a stronger DA than pretty well every competitor, but certain sections of the site underperform. For instance, when you search for 'Jerusalem Dead Sea tour', my item, http://www.touristisrael.com/tours/jerusalem-dead-sea-day-tour/ does not appear in the first few pages. I have a page that appears on the first page, but it is less relevant than this product page. This is an example, there are tens of cases like this. So the question is, am I signalling to Google not to rank these pages, and is there something I'm missing with regards to strengthening product pages in this tour section? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ben100010 -
301'd an important, ranking page to the wrong new page, any recourse?
Our 1,300 page site conversion from static html to Wordpress platform went flawlessly with the exception of 1 significant issue....an old, important, highly ranking page was 301 redirected to the wrong corresponding new page. The page it was redirected to is about a similar product, but not the same. This was an oversight that slipped through. It was brought to my attention when I noticed this new page was still holding the old page's rankings but the bounce rate skyrocketed (clearly because the content on the wrong new page was not relevant). Once identified, we cleaned up the redirect. My fear is that all the juice built up on the old .html page that ranked well has now permanently been passed to an irrelevant, insignificant page. -Is there any way to clean up this mistake? -Is there anything I can do to assist Google in associating the correct 'new' page with correct 'old' page after the wrong redirect was initially set-up? -Am I going to have to start from scratch with the new page in terms of trust, backlinks, etc. since google already noted the redirect? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seagreen0 -
Google Authorship: Having others write content and authorship link to/from G+ profiles Impact Ranking?
Hi all! I am considering having several others write content for a new website and authorship link each to/from G+ profiles. Any idea of how that will Impact page/website ranking? I would think it would give more credibility to each page, and the website as a whole. No?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BBuck0 -
Traffic drop off and page isn't indexed
In the last couple weeks my impressiona and clicks have dropped off to about half what it used to be. I am wondering if Google is punishing me for something... I also added two new pages to my site in the first week of June and they still aren't indexed. In the past it seemed like new pages would be indexed in a couple days. Is there any way to tell if Google is unhappy with my site? WMT shows 3 server errors, 3 Access denied, and 122 not found errors. Could those not found pages be killing me? Thanks for any advise, Greg www.AntiqueBanknotes.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Banknotes0 -
How do you transition a keyword rank from a home page to a sub-page on the site?
We're currently ranking #1 for a valuable keyword, but the result on the SERP is our home page. We're creating a new product page focused on this keyword to provide a better user experience and create more relevant content. What is the best way to make a smooth transition to make the product page rank #1 for the keyword instead of the home page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | buildasign0 -
Not sure why Home page is outranked by less optimized internal pages.
We launched our website just three weeks ago, and one of our primary keyword phrases is "e-business consultants". Here's what I don't get. Our home page is the page most optimized around this search phrase. Using SEOmoz On-Page Optimization tool, the home page scores an "A". And yet it doesn't rank in the top 50 on Google Canada, although two other INTERNAL pages - www.ebusinessconsultants.ca/about/consulting-team/ & /www.ebusinessconsultants.ca/about/consulting-approach/ - rank 5 & 6 on Google Canada, even though they only score a grade "C" for on-page optimization for this keyword phrase. I've always understood that the home page is the most powerful page. Why are these others outranking it? I checked the crawl and Google Webmaster, and there is no obvious problem on the home page. Is this because the site is so new? It goes against all previous experience I've had in similar situation. Any guidance/ insight would be highly appreciated!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | axelk0