My OSE stats have never been better but my rankings are tanking
-
For some reason my traffic to [Antique Banknotes] has declined drastically over the past month even while my OSE metrics have gone up. A typical example is this 1892 five dollar bill. I used to rank first for this search but now I am 3rd.
Worse, a search for ten dollar bill used to have me near the top which brought a lot of traffic. Now I am way out in the weeds. Can anyone help me understand what is causing me to drop so much?
I know there is a new competitor who outranks me with the url [Antique money] he is likely the cause of my fall in the ratings. I don't know why but OSE loves his site even though I seem to beat him in most areas OSE measures. His Page authority for instance is 45 while mine is 37 but I have higher scores in every category. I don't understand that.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
-
Hey Sha,
Had to give you a thumbs up as I did not consider the issue with disavow links not influencing OSE. Great Point. Thanks,
-
So basically it seems that we don't have much determinism when it comes to ranking anymore. Seems like we really lost something. I guess I will muddle along an hope that I stumble into that special sauce that once brought me #1 rankings.
-
A competitor of mine is ranking 1 step above me for a my exact match domain keyword they aren't optimized for. They have a similar amount of linking domains with similar anchor text style proportions (i.e. between exact and partial match etc.) Their DA is a little lower than mine and their PA is the same.
The main difference I suspect might be that I have only 3 facebook shares compared to their 47, I think that could be why, I have read that search engines are ranking social shares even a little bit higher than links. I actually have 16 shares but according to addthis not all of them can be crawled due to factors like social sharing privacy settings.
-
Hi Greg,
That is an impossible question to answer I am afraid
OSE results are an indicator of how your site stands according to the metrics that influence PageRank.
Your actual rankings may be influenced by any number of things which are known only to Google:
-
Algorithmic filter effects such as Penguin, Panda, Exact Match Domain etc;
-
Manual Actions (penalties) applied for any number of issues, from link spamming to cloaking or even abusing rich snippets markup. Check Slides 6 and 7 of this deck for breaches of the quality guidelines that will lead to a manual action ;
-
Disavowed links (any links that you have disavowed and are disregarded by Google remain live links which inform the OSE results because Moz is not privy to the list);
If your rankings have tanked recently, I would be using OSE to see if there are any obvious issues with anchor text ratios, links originating from places that are undesirable, changes in authority of sites linking to yours etc, rather than trying to correlate the numbers with your results.
Sha
-
-
I actually can't complain that the competitor doesn't have better PA and DA numbers... he does. But I don't know why. In every individual metric I have a better score but he has better rankings, Moz rank and Moz trust. I don't understand why.
Here is the OSE query that shows what I am talking about. http://bit.ly/13iev60
If someone with experience could scan these numbers and tell me if something jumps out I would really appreciate it.
-
I agree things are unpredictable the point i was trying to make was you cant look at ose and say i should rank higher since i have a better score. Those days are over.
-
David,
I wish I could see it as that simple, but I just don't. What I am seeing is there are situations where there are results that frankly are not relevant to the query and they are ranking with hardly any links, etc. Or, you see where a high DA site has a page that is PA of zero ranking ahead of more relevant pages, etc which have say a PA of 55, etc. A classic example in this is go look at practically any service business wherein you use a city plus a discipline: Tucson Plumber. (I have not tried that one). 50 to 60% of the time we see something like Indeed.com with 3 different urls ranking all of which have PA of less than 10. How can a major PMSA (say top twenty) with that type of search not return 10 listings for plumbers?
When you look at queries, the relevance of showing jobs for plumbers is, well, not relevant for that search.
What I am saying is there is no longer a way to speak with real certainty about a question like this re SEO. I think there may be a time when we have more clarity, but it is not now. I miss those days.When you say non anchor text manipulative, what is that?
Thanks,
Robert
-
Google has changed the algorithm and ose stats are no longer a great indicator as to who will rank. Now quality links that are relevant and non anchor text manipulative etc are more important.
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
-
Content change and variations in ranking
Hello, I have create a new webpage and asked google in the webmaster tool to crawl it. Within minutes it is ranked at a certain spot. I did make changes to it to increase the ranking and right away I could see variations in ranking either up or down ? I have done the same same thing for a page that has been existing on my website for many years. I changed the content, asked the webmaster tool to re-crawl it. It got the new content within minutes but the ranking doesn't seem to change. Maybe my content isn't good enough but I doubt. Could it be that on old pages it takes a couple weeks to see ranking changes whereas on new page it is instantaneous. Has anyone experienced something similar ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Keyword rank and redirecting
I'm creating a new amazon affiliate site. I've researched other successful sites. I've noticed that they are ranking for 1000s of keywords, but many of these long tail keywords are redirected back to a main page. I can see how this can reduce the overall total amount of content pages on the site. How are you able to rank for the keyword in the first place if the the page is redirected?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lkomontt760 -
Profound Rankings Drop - But only on Branded query
Hi all. I apologize for any redundancy in advance. I've seen similar queries about branded search but nothing that quite resembles mine. First of all, my site is Withdrawal-ease.com In the last few weeks, I've seen a significant drop in ranking for specific pages on my site that normally rank well in a brand search. I was trying to figure out what the heck was going on. So I looked at a bunch of queries for branded terms and it looks like I've been penalized...but I haven't For instance, when I google "Withdrawal Ease" I would typically see my home page first and then 3-4 of my most popular pages/posts directly underneath in the organic listings. Some of those popular pages include: http://withdrawal-ease.com/proven-home-remedies-for-opiate-withdrawal/ http://withdrawal-ease.com/how-to-detox-from-opiates-at-home/ http://withdrawal-ease.com/how-to-detox-from-suboxone-at-home/ Although the titles are similar, the content is all original and comprehensive...it's good content that has always ranked very well...and still does. But as of Late March they don't show up for branded searches. Now, when I google "Withdrawal Ease" I only get my home page listed and the other pages have all fallen to #60 according to Moz, WMT etc. What is strange is the fact that these popular pages still rank highly for my key terms and relevant searches. I have not noticed any significant drops other than when I do a branded search. I have added a picture from WMT as an example. The image displays a search from my brand name and my most popular page that would typically have ranked #2 below my homepage. As you can see. the impressions and clicks fall, then jump and then totally disappear for my branded query. Looking at the chart, one might observe that the mobile update seems to roughly correspond to the rankings drop but we've been very diligent about being mobile friendly and all of the checks for mobile friendliness pass with flying colors. I've looked at Robot TXT files and everything is fine there...all of our diagnostic tests have turned up nada as far as I can tell. Again, I have not been informed of any manual penalty and my backlink profile is not raising any alarms on Moz; I get a 1 on the spam score. We do not actively seek out links because I DID have a manual penalty in 2010 due to a horrible experience with an SEO firm. It took me over a year and 15k to clear out all of the spammy links that this guy got and I was finally cleared of the penalty in 2013. So I'm totally flummoxed. My organic search is now down significantly across ALL browsers...but again, just for branded searches. I have also attached an image of my crawl stats just in case this may shed any light. Thank you all so much for any help that you can provide; it's been extremely stressful and frustrating so I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. Whoa.jpg crawl%20stats.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gcat3330 -
Wrong page ranking for keyword - should I move the better content over?
We have a page which is outranking another page for a keyword that is very important. The page that is lower in the rankings has far better content. I think this is happening due to links as well as the url structure. domain.com/ranking/notranking Here is the page we want to rank: http://bit.ly/1vqhSoZ Here is the page that is higher in rankings: http://bit.ly/1vA1wXQ So I think I should just move the content over from /notranking, to /ranking. The content is clearly better on the lower ranking page but I think due to links the /ranking page is higher in SERPS. So I guess my question is, would it be wise to move all that content over, and then 301 redirect the old page? Or leave the way it is and hopefully Google will get it right over time?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DemiGR1 -
Internal Linking for better seo
On our site http://villasdiani.com we have a blog called Kenya news, which is a category where we regular post articles. I am always creating external links to the category Kenya news so as it would pass juice to the posts in it and the posts have back links to category. There are no internal links among posts in the category. As our main target is to rent beach villas and boutique hotels, each of that posts in the category Kenya news has only a link either to category with beach villas or to category with boutique hotels. My question is, if this is good practice?, is it just not too much links going to categories to beach villas and boutique hotels form the Kenya news?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rebeca1
Thank you very much for any thoughts Iris0 -
No PageRank but good Moz stats?
Hi, Why would a website with good Moz stats such as DA/PA 45, mR/mT 5.0+ have 0 PageRank? Have these sites done something? I have seen some sites with similar Moz stats have PR3/4 and when I have checked a year later the PR has dropped to 0. Does that indicate Google has hit those sites and removed their PageRank? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bondara0 -
Deep Page is Ranking for Main Keyword, But I Want the Home Page to Rank
A deep page is ranking for a competitive and essential keyword, I'd like the home page to rank. The main reasons are probably: This specific page is optimized for just that keyword. Contains keyword in URL I've optimized the home page for this keyword as much as possible without sacrificing the integrity of the home page and the other keywords I need to maintain. My main question is: If I use a 301 redirect on this deep page to the home page, am I risking my current ranking, or will my home page replace it on the SERPs? Thanks so much in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClarityVentures0 -
Design features as a ranking factor?
i created a new design of my website, very clean and highly orientated towards conversion. its a far better looking site than the old one but the navigation is almost the same. a few days after i uploaded the new site we were ranked number 1 on the biggest keyphrase in my industry. Does google crawl design feature, maybe with something like conversion heat mapping software and include that as a ranking factor? love your thoughts on this one.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | corgi2