My google rankings went down
-
I've been working with a company to get some incoming links since April 2011. We are targeting only 2 keywords. For one keyword I was ranked number 1 until a couple of weeks ago. In fact, most of my rankings went down including those keywords that the company was not working on. They are writing 5 articles per month and posting them to their proprietary network. Could those backlinks could harmed my rankings?
-
Movement from position 1 to position 4 is not that unusual. I imagine this has caused a subastatntial drop in traffic as the CTR tends to drop sharply after position 3, but I wouldn't consider this a dramatic drop in rankings caused by problems with your backlinks. It is possible that some backlinks might be devalued by Google which has caused a small drop,
More likely this is caused by a Panda update. Panda wasn't a one time update, and this Search Engine Watch article suggests an update around the time of your drop (http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2080631/Google-Quietly-Launches-Panda-Update-Version-2.2). This probably means that Google sees your content as a little weaker than your competitors.
Based on this, I don't think you need to make any major changes. Try to get some more good content up on your site. And I'm not sure how active you are in the social realm, but more social engagement (I suspect Google is a big fan of +1's) could help.
I'm not sure if your on-page efforts are also limited to two keywords, but if so, I'd consider expanding that a bit. Diversification will make your traffic and revenue less susceptible to fluxuations like this. Moving into the social media will also give you another way to produce traffic that isn't reliant on SEO, while usually increasing the efforts of your SEO.
-
Do you know when was the last panda update?. It was feb 24 2011?
-
If it were me, I would shift the spend from linkbuilding to an SEO firm that will not only provide a good SEO audit, but is willing to provide some education as well.
I'd also focus on putting together a few really great pieces of content related to your niche. While researching for this sort of content, make note of other good sites and blogs that your site aligns with, so you can engage with them. Hopefully, through this engagement, they might find the content you've created helpful to their users/readers and link to your site. This is a pretty conservative approach that doesn't yield quick results, but I tend to be in favor of building for the long term.
There are a lot of ways you can start to generate more natural links to your site. I'd recommend doing some research on SEOmoz because my philosophy isn't the only way to go. You've got to figure out what works for your situation.
-
Hi Theo,
I am sorry I did not provided more info. This is my first time here. I answered below each question, in caps.
• Were there any (shady) links build?
HONESTLY, I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT DOES MEAN.• How did the company perform for these keywords in the past?
WHEN THE LINK BUILDER COMPANY STARTED WORKING ON 2 KEYWORDS, THEY GRADUALLY INCREASED THEIR RANKINGS WHILE THE OTHERS REMAINS WITH THE SAME RATING. SUDDENLY, 2 WEEKS AGO ALL KEYWORDS (THE ONE THEY WERE WORKING ON AND THE OTHERS) WENT DOWN, FROM POSITION 1 TO 4.• Were these keywords over-optimized (for example using loads of exact match anchor texts)?.
NO, THE ARTICLES SEEM NATURAL.• Could there have been any impact of a Panda Google update?.
NO. THE SUDDEN DROP STARTED ON JULY 12, APROX.• Did any on-page changes take effect that might have caused these rankings to shift?.
I DID NOTHING ON THE PAGES. THE ONLY THING WE DID IS UPGRADE OUR SHOPPING CART RELEASE. IT WAS AROUND THAT DATE. HOWEVER, I AM ALSO ON THE SHOPPING CART FORUM AND NOBODY EXPERIMENTS ANY DROP BY UPDATING THEIR SHOPPING CART ENGINE.thanks,
-
Hi Joe,
I did not received any notice from Google Webmaster Tool indicating unnatural linking detected. The company is only working on proving me links. They give me every month the list of the articles they wrote and the links, that's it. How can I avoid this sort of unnatural linkbuilding?. The only thing I did today is find out what are the page and domain authority of the links they are providing me. What that company told me is that they only build links and there is nothing wrong they can do to make my rankings decrease. And what they pointed out is that my rankings went down on the keywords they were working on and also in others. Since I am not expert, I trusted them. What else I can do?
-
Yes, the links could be hurting your rankings, but as Theo points out, a number of things could be causing your rankings to drop. Have you received any notices in Google Webmaster Tools about possible unnatural linking detected? Do you handle your own SEO or have a consultant? Are you relying on the company doing linkbuilding for you to provide you with your SEO analysis? Linkbuilding can sometimes be harmful to the health of your website, so it's a good idea to have someone knowledgeable about SEO to keep an eye on the incoming links you're getting to make sure they're good quality. Or you can avoid this sort of unnatural linkbuilding altogether. Depends on the level of risk you're willing to accept.
-
Pretty much anything is possible based on the data you've provided us at this moment..
- Were there any (shady) links build?
- How did the company perform for these keywords in the past?
- Were these keywords over-optimized (for example using loads of exact match anchor texts)?
- Could there have been any impact of a Panda Google update?
- Did any on-page changes take effect that might have caused these rankings to shift?
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
-
What does google think about legit link exchanges where one is follow and one is no follow?
Hi Experts! Here is my Question for you. I am doing a link exchange in a legit way to increase sales for my site and my associate's site. My associate just wants a sales increase and no link juice. He has a very low DA so I want to give him a no follow link. Is it suspicious of fishy that I give a no follow link and receive a followed link in return? Please let me know how to proceed, I don't want to take any changes. Can you tell me the best way to proceed with this link exchange? Thanks
Link Building | | Ruchy0 -
Manual action and no ranking impact?
Hello, I received the message in Google Webmasters Tools about unnatural links to site (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UFHCw4Q_FQ) for two of my websites. I have a hard time undestanding why since I don't buy links, I don't do link exchanges and I don't directories or article directories. Anyways, I received this message on Friday and I didn't lose any rankings on either of those sites or at least not on my main keyword which is the only one that matters. Is it normal that I didn't lose any rankings? Would you advise I do anything specific? Thanks a lot.
Link Building | | EndeR-0 -
Why Would Google Webmaster Tools State More Links Than Details Show?
I am trying to clean up links. I've gone into webmaster tools and it reports that I have 216 links from a particular domain. When I click thru to get details it reports all the links point to 1 page, then when I click on that page it only reports 1 inbound link. The links are coming from a directory site which appears to have been penalized. OSE doesn't report any links from this domain. Should I be overly alarmed? How can I determine what is correct, and whether I should take action (the site wants to charge me to remove each url). Thanks in advance. Alan
Link Building | | rmsmall0 -
Slapped by Google update
Last couple of days we read things about Google algorithm and some things about companies or people doing "negative seo".. At first, nothing was wrong... if you play the game by the rules you won't get penalized you think... right? Today I checked rankings for some sites we're optimizing, and I fell of my chair! A site that was building better rankings week by week just dropped heavily and we have no clue if it's the algorithm update... Attached there are some screenshots, the first one showing the ranking for one of the most important keywords for that business, the others are link profiles & moztrust & rank for that root domain. As you can see, link profiles are much stronger that competitors, but that important keyword is dropping in rankings... We still have to do some on page optimizations (double title tags & some some canonical tags that have to be added, but that can't be the reason for this major drop?? Or am I missing something??? Any ideas? Are External Followed links growing to fast? (The blue line in screenshots is the site we're working on) rankings-may.jpg moztrust.jpg followed-links.jpg
Link Building | | nvs.nim0 -
Rankings on Google compared to Bing &Yahoo
Does anyone have any information about the differences between the search engines, im ranking #1 on google but only about 3rd or 4th on bing and yahoo. Cheers
Link Building | | eirianprice
EP0 -
Can changing our links page make our rankings drop through the floor?
Hi all, When I first started at my current job, most of the link building (aside from submitting to free directories left, right and centre) was replying to every spammy reciprocal email and adding them to our links page! Now we're all a bit wiser about such matters (thanks SEOMoz!), I want to get our links page turned into something actually useful. My plan was to get it neatly categorised, with recommendations, cut out unrelated links that would be useless to visitors and call it something like "Our Friends" I thought this might be useful for future link building efforts, but in its current state, it's a complete mess. However, I am worried about cutting out a lot of links if they have been reciprocal ones. Are the sort of sites that would be sending typical spammy link exchange emails for window installation in NY likely to notice our UK education site taking away their link six months later and take away ours? If they do, will losing links from these sites harm us? Perhaps more importantly, is my plan a terrible idea in the first place? Look forward to hearing from y'all!
Link Building | | TEFLScot0 -
SEO Optimization is causing rankings to drop
The more I improve my site and the more links I try to get it seems that my site is just ranking worse and worse. Any ideas? domain name: www.musillawfirm.com Top Keywords wanting to rank for: Melbourne FL DUI lawyer Melbourne FL immigration lawyer cocoa FL DUI lawyer cocoa FL immigration lawyer
Link Building | | musillawfirm0 -
Adding to intl versions of Google?
I ran the SEOmoz Competitive Link Finder tool for my URL and 5 of my competitors. The #1 result (where 3 of my competitors are listed but I'm not) is google.com.sg. Here's the URL where they are listed: http://www.google.com.sg/alpha/Top/Business/Investing/Derivatives/Options/Research_and_Analysis/ All 5 of us are US-based companies. Why would 3 of them be listed in the Singapore version of Google but not me? Is it common practice to add your URL to all local versions of Google, or should submission to the main google.com be enough?
Link Building | | scanlin0