Webpage has bombed outside of Top 50 for search term in one week. What's the cause?
-
I've been monitoring the performance of some pages via the email Moz sends every week, and until this week two pages that I've managed to get ranking have ranked between 20 and 23 for the specific term. However, today on the email one of the pages for one search term has bombed out of the top 50 while the other page has remained unaffected.
What could be the cause for this? I've looked at Google Webmasters for an indication of a penalty of some sort but there is nothing glaringly obvious. I've no messages on there, and I haven't bought a load of spam links at all.
What else could I check?
-
"two pages that I've managed to get ranking have ranked between 20 and 23 for the specific term. However, today on the email one of the pages for one search term has bombed out of the top 50 while the other page has remained unaffected."
Sometimes, if you have two pages that are ranking for the same search query it's not uncommon for Google to decide that only one of the pages needs to be presented to the user. If both are serving the same user intent then essentially Google may consider it (semantically) duplicate content, despite the fact that both pages may be worded differently, etc.
From my experience of having multiple pages ranking for the same keyword, the pages will keep battling it out in the SERPs bouncing up and down. One week, there'll be a cluster of 3 ranking terribly. The next week one will shoot up, while the other is nowhere to be seen. Personally I've found that Google seems to prefer it if there's only one page ranking for the term (it's an easier decision for Google to make and it won't get so confused which one to rank as more relevant to the query). By merging similar pages, I find that it ends up being stronger in Google as it's not having to compete in the SERPs with similar pages on your website.
I hope that helps at all, even if it's only from anecdotal evidence.
-
Hi Mick,
The first thing to do is always verify the ranking change. Open up an incognito window in Chrome, search the term and see if it has dropped there as well. Google fluctuates quite a bit and sometimes ranking shifts are ephemeral and will return.
Second, we do find that there is far more fluctuation beyond page 1. Whether this is due to cruder metrics, lack of stabilization by engagement metrics, etc. is unknown, but what is certain is that greater fluctuation seems occur the deeper you get in the search results. I would not be highly concerned with this rankings loss at face value.
However, there are some things you can check.
- Have you lost any links pointing to this page recently
- Have you made any substantive changes to the site, such as internal link structure
- Have you introduced alternate content on your site that may now outrank this page
These are just a couple of the first steps you can look at.
Good luck!
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
-
How to switch from URL based navigation to Ajax, 1000's of URLs gone
Hi everyone, We have thousands of urls generated by numerous products filters on our ecommerce site, eg./category1/category11/brand/color-red/size-xl+xxl/price-cheap/in-stock/. We are thinking of moving these filters to ajax in order to offer a better user experience and get rid of these useless urls. In your opinion, what is the best way to deal with this huge move ? leave the existing URLs respond as before : as they will disappear from our sitemap (they won't be linked anymore), I imagine robots will someday consider them as obsolete ? redirect permanent (301) to the closest existing url mark them as gone (4xx) I'd vote for option 2. Bots will suddenly see thousands of 301, but this is reflecting what is really happening, right ? Do you think this could result in some penalty ? Thank you very much for your help. Jeremy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JeremyICC0 -
- Truth ? ''link building isn't considered a suitable way of promotion as per recent search engine updates''
I need SEO. A SEO consultant said: ''link building isn't considered a suitable way of promotion as per recent search engine updates'' they mention: ''Therefore we would be undertaking a range of promotional exercises such as blog postings, social book marking, press release, etc that are more effective for ensuring best possible rankings for the website.'' Do you agree? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigBlaze2051 -
Why is my client's site not ranking anymore? Like big time!
Ok, I'm reaching out to all of you Moz'rs for some help with this one. My client's site has dropped off the face of google in a real short period of time. It went from page 1 (avg rank 3 to page 6 (avg rank 50) and below in the matter of 2 weeks. Here's some facts: 1. DA is a 22 and homepage PA is a 31. It outranks all other sites in its competitive set. 2. The homepage used to be the page that displays for keyword searches, now its the FAQ page, which has a lower PA of 23. Why has the home page seemingly vaporized? And, why is the FAQ showing as the first result? What should I start checking. I feel paralyzed, not sure where to start. More info: a. There are no alerts present in Webmaster Tools. b. For some reason the homepage (domain.com) was 301'd to domain.com/home.html. Domain.com is indexed by Google, however, domain.com/home.html is not. If this is the issue, what is the best way to handle it? Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rhoadesjohn1 -
Don't affiliate programs have an unfair impact on a company's ability to compete with bigger businesses?
So many coupon sites and other websites these days will only link to your website if you have a relationship with Commission Junction or one of the other large affiliate networks. It seems to me that links on these sites are really unfair as they allow businesses with deep pockets to acquire links unequitably. To me it seems like these are "paid links", as the average website cannot afford the cost of running an affiliate program. Even worse, the only reason why these businesses are earning a link is because they have an affiliate program; that to me should violate some sort of Google rule about types and values of links. The existence of an affiliate program as the only reason for earning a link is preposterous. It's just as bad as paid link directories that have no editorial standards. I realize the affiliate links are wrapped in CJ's code, so that mush diminish the value of the link, but there is still tons of good value in having the brand linked to from these high authority sites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | williamelward0 -
Multiple Locations Google Places (URL's)?
I'm managing a restaurant chain with 10 locations. Can they all share the home page url of the corporate site in Google Places or is it better to link each location url separately? Meaning can I use www.company.com for all locations in Google places for all locations or is it better to go with www.company.com/location.html for each location. The page authority of the home page is 60 while individual location pages the page authority is in the 20's. Hope this makes sense. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YMD
Gary0 -
Is it worth submitting a blog's RSS feed...
to as many RSS feed directories as possible? Or would this have a similar negative impact that you'd get from submitting a site to loads to "potentially spammy" site directories?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterAlexLeigh0 -
Sitemap - % of URL's in Google Index?
What is the average % of links from a sitemap that are included in the Google index? Obviously want to aim for 100% of the sitemap urls to be indexed, is this realistic?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stats440 -
Different pages ranking for search terms, often irrelevant.
Website: www.templatemonster.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | templatemonster
Problem: Positions dropped while pages which were ranking previously disappeared from top 100 and now different - often completely irrelevant - pages are ranking. Examples:
Search term: Joomla Templates
Previous Position: 8
Current Position: 35
Previously Ranked Page: http://www.templatemonster.com/joomla-templates.php
Currently Ranked Page: http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php Similar situation with the following search terms: virtuemart templates, virtuemart themes, prestashop templates, prestashop themes, magento themes, zencart templates, zencart themes, zen cart templates, zen cart themes When: according to the Google Analytics (drop in visitors stats) this happened on July, 2nd Preconditions: we had 45 minutes downtime on July 2-nd - but could this 45 mins have had such disastrous results?
No redirects or canonical URL were used which could lead to such change of ranking page.
No changes in the site's informational structure and design.
In webmaster tools (inbound links report) we saw a website yesterday which had over 800,000 links pointing to our domain - http://moviebestwatch.com/ - and today this site is NOT found in Webmaster Tools report! Also, site is down, domain is quite new (how could it have possibly developed 800,000 pages in such a short time?) and whois is privacy protected. Is this some dirty trick from competitors - could it have possibly influenced our positions? Still, what I completely fail to understand - how could a page like http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php be the top ranking page for 'Joomla templates' if there is: not a single mention of the word 'Joomla' on the page (or source code), i.e. the page is completely irrelevant to the search term not a single link with 'Joomla templates' anchor text pointing to that page, neither external nor internal PS. No similar changes in other search engines noticed. Also, the pages in question have been re-spidered July 4th and cache shows the right pages, i.e. it is not that Googlebot has seen logotypes page instead of Joomla templates page. I checked any possible reason I could think of (see "Preconditions") but still have no clue - what is going on?1