Penguin Maybe? Ranking low for main term: Trying to find cause and correct
-
Hello,
For
nlpca(dot)com
one of our main keywords is the term "NLP"
We are ranking 25th for that term.Possible causes:
1. keyword stuffing on home page, though we need to use the term over and over again to describe ourselves. Also, competitors like nlpco(dot)com and nlpu(dot)com also mention "NLP" a lot
2. Backlink profile: see this spreadsheet. We have a lot of sites from other countries and many sitewides but all natural and almost all branded. Ou company names are NLP Institute of California, NLP California, and NLP and Coaching Institute.
3. nlpcacoach(dot)org is a sitewide footer link. So is iepdoc.nl. We're going to ask the first site to take our link down.
4. No "What is NLP" article. I think that might help.
5. Most of our 60 articles are posted on other sites. We author about 30 of them. I'm working on authorship via rel="author" and rel="me" links. There's usually 2 authors
6. Most of the title tags used to be 4 keywords separated by pipes -"|" I changed them all after the updates took the keyword "NLP" down.
That's about all I can think of. What do we do or clean up?
-
First off, if you're diagnosing a Penguin or Panda (or any Google algo) related problem, start by installing Chartelligence on Chrome. Now, whne you log in to Google Analytics and look at traffic, this plugin will let you overlay the Google algo change dates overtop your traffic chart. This is a HUGE help at spotting which algo hit you.
I doubt keyword stuffing on the page is the problem. You have to get REALLY nuts with that to get in trouble, honestly.
Sitewide links will get you in trouble, though. Get those removed, and then give it a month or two.
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
-
Do the links from top websites' forums boost in-terms of backlinks?
If we get any backlinks from discussions/forums of top websites like wordpress and joomla forums; do they count as valid and authority improving backlinks? I mean about the dofollow links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz1 -
Post-Penguin 2.0 Gust Blogging
I'm really just curious about everyone’s thoughts on post-Penguin 2.0 guest blogging. Is it still a viable option for link building? Is there anything you should proactively do to make it "safe"? What makes a guest blog post "advertorial" (or would it never be, if it is clearly marked as a guest post with a writer's bio)? Will moderate guest blogging on highly related, top ranked sites ever be a prime target for Google updates? I feel like guest blogging is still a viable way to build links, as long as it is on high quality and highly relevant sites that post content people actually read. Limit the number of links to 1-3 for every post, use generic or branded text as anchor text rather than your "top keyword" anchor text of old, and make the content interesting (educational or funny, not just for the sake of getting links) and completely unique to the site you are posting on. Just my 2 cents. Anyone else?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jaredkipe0 -
My ranking dropped 3 pages on 18 november 2012
Hi There my site ranking dropped suddenly today for my main keywords such as security companies in london and security services in london from first page to 4th-5th page. these keywords were ranked on homepage http://www.armstrongsecurity.co.uk/ other keywords from some internal pages, such as this one http://www.armstrongsecurity.co.uk/security-services/event-security-london.html theygot hit slightly and went couple of listings down the road for event security london, event security companies london as well. same slight hitting happened on this page for main keywords http://www.armstrongsecurity.co.uk/bodyguard-for-hire-london.html can anyone help me, how to get the rankings back? my site authority is around 60 which is far better than most sites ranking higher than me now. these are some problems that i understand so far. keyword rich anchor text link profile for my main keywords over optimised pages let me know if anything you might find suspicious on my site that i can fix either on site or in my link profile. looking forward to your help. thanks gill
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | spciuk0 -
Help! Why are my rankings down?
Hi, Over the last couple of days I have found a HUGE drop in traffic. I checked a lot of our rankings, and we are definitely out of the game for at least a few keywords (not on 1st page). Our ranking has dropped on other keywords. We even dropped to #2 (for the first time ever) for our branded keyword search term. What happened?! Could it have been the Penguin update, 1 month after it was released? Help!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MangoMan160 -
We seem to have been hit by the penguin update can someone please help?
HiOur website www.wholesaleclearance.co.uk has been hit by the penguin update, I'm not a SEO expert and when I first started my SEO got court up buying blog links, that was about 2 years ago and since them and worked really hard to get good manual links.Does anyone know of a way to dig out any bad links so I can get them removed, any software that will give me a list of any of you guys want to do take a look for me? I'm willing to pay for the work.Kind RegardsKarl.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wcuk0 -
Redirecting doesn't rank on google
We are redirecting our artist's official website to copenhagenbeta.dk. We have two artists (Nik & Jay and Burhan G) that top ranks on Google (first on page 1), but one of them (Lukas Graham) doesn't rank at all. We use the same procedure with all artists. http://copenhagenbeta.dk/index.php?option=com_artistdetail&task=biography&type=overview&id=49 Doesn't rank but the old artist page still does. Is it the old page that tricks Google to think that this is the active page for the artist?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Morten_Hjort0 -
Lost ranking for single term
We are working on a site with a page that has been ranking on page one of serps for quiet some time. It all the sudden completely lost its ranking for a single term (no major changes to on page made), but still ranks on the 3rd page for a few similar terms. Those terms used to rank a bit higher. Is it possible that some old spammier link building techiniques could have caught up with this site? The page itself is still indexed, has a few terms it is ranking for - but just completely gone from index for primary term.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Hakkasan0 -
Google rankings dropped like a stone
I've heard of this happening many times, but never to me. My client was Page 1 or 2 for 20 phrases, and they ALL dropped like a rock overnight. The site hasn't been banned by Google, as it's still indexed and the company name is returning results.There were no major changes done to tags or the code, and nothing black hat has been done. The only phrases that didn't drop contain the company name, and the results in Bing and Yahoo either stayed the same or moved up slightly since last week for all the terms. There's also no threat of spam, and it's very search engine friendly. The URL is http://www.universalaccounting.com. Help!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JamesBSEO0