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
-
Citation, Google Plus and SEO questions
Hi, I have a website www.gemslearninginstitute.com. We offer different after school programs for kids located in Canada. I have a very basic knowledge of SEO. I have a few questions. Just wondering if someone can please help me. We offer UCMAS Mental Math Program, Tutoring and Chess School/Coaching and runs a Chess Club. I would like to boost my google ranking and get more local traffic. 1- My citation is not consistent. Which program should I use to correct the citation and delete duplicate or inconsistent listing automatically. 2 - Should I do the citation with my company name only “GEMS Learning Institute” or Should I do like this “GEMS learning Institute – UCMAS-Tutoring-Chess”. Which one is better? 3- Right now I have two different google plus business pages. One with the name of “GEMS Learning Institute” and the second one is UCMAS. Should I have only one page as GEMS and delete the UCMAS. 4- I am not sure how to check if my site is penalized by google. 5- How can I measure things which are working on not? Can you please recommend next steps should I take after doing citation to improve the ranking? Thanks in advance and appreciate help.
Link Building | | fslpso0 -
External Ranking Help
Hello, I am working on the following website: completesteamclean.ca and I have reached a plateau on how to increase my ranking to defeat my two top competitors. When I run competitive link metrics it would appear that where I seem to be lacking is in external links and linking root domains. Does anyone have any tips on how I can build these areas of the website? Any insight would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
Link Building | | MainstreamMktg0 -
How is this site ranked so high on Google?
How on earth does "southeastasiatravelblog.com" rank No 3 on Google for "Asian travel blog"? It's just a collection of basically PR type travel articles. I have profiled its backlinks using Open Site Explorer and 71% of them are dead. The rest seem to be mostly "run of site" links from his other websites, which aren't particularly travel or Asia related. The highest PA for a live backlink to this site is a link from within his own website (PA 27, DA 15). Most of his backlink anchors are URLs and look fairly EMD to me. The site has few shares (6 FB shares, 7 FB likes, 1 Twitter share). So what makes it rank so highly for this phrase? My site I'm comparing against is "travelnasia.com" which is a fairly new domain with a DA 23, PA 31 and about the same amount of shares but far fewer backlinks at this stage because I recently changed URLs to shake off what might have been an algorithm penalty from Google. I am now receiving a growing level of Google search traffic again, but it's a long climb back. I'm looking at strategies, which is why I was checking out the site above.
Link Building | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
Url variables, page rank and canonical question
Hello.
Link Building | | adrianTNT
I am having some back-links to my site that look like: http://site.com/page.html**?source=a**
http://site.com/page.html**?source=b** I assume these two will have two different ranks, is this issue fixed if I use canonical on the landing page? Thank you.0 -
Why Can't My Ecommerce Site Rank?
I've already done the on-site SEO things, URL's are all SEO-friendly, etc AND I've already done a few rounds of link building to some of the interior pages on my site, and I still can't get my site to rank. What other strategies can I employ to get my site to rank? I don't believe my keywords are that competitive (fleece blankets, baby blankets, etc.)
Link Building | | locallyrank0 -
How does Google treat multiple backlinks on the same page?
Hello mozCrew Just a quick yay or nay. We have an embeddable code on our site for customers who want to post our link on their website listed here: http://www.accupos.com/etc/embed-code-restaurants.php But in our link, there are actually 2 separate links, one branding link that says the name of our company, AccuPOS, and another link which targets a specific target keyword "Restaurant POS Software". My question is, does Google only give credit for the branding link, since it is listed FIRST? Or will we get double credit? Is this a good or bad practice, and what would you recommend? Thank you! Derek Moore
Link Building | | DerekM880 -
Google unranks target keywords
I have read a number of changes in Google (see:http://searchengineland.com/too-much-seo-google%E2%80%99s-working-on-an-%E2%80%9Cover-optimization%E2%80%9D-penalty-for-that-115627)
Link Building | | LeeAnn30
But as of late I am having some problems with my website, and I am curious if anyone of you are also experiencing the same.
The problem is this in SEO it is a SOP that you use your target keyword as your anchor text having the url as the landing page for the page you want to rank for.
But recently the pages I want to rank for specific keywords are going down instead Google is ranking my homepage for keywords I don't want to rank for.
So instead of having my target pages rank it is my homepage that gets shown in Google, now this is what is really interesting the keywords I rank for are not in the meta title, description, keywords of the homepage in fact there are no specific keywords at all in the content!
I checked the backlinks and I have never created any backlinks to my site using those keywords I rank for.
And this is happening at a very fast rate, rankings and pages going down and only the homepage is showing up in Google.
I really want to know your thoughts.0 -
Is the frontpage/deeplinking ratio of backlinks an important ranking factor?
Hi, i am asking me since a while, if the relation of the amount of frontpage backlinks divided through the amount of deeplinks pointing to a domain is an important ranking factor? In this area, i am not so much looking in the total numbers of backlinks, but more at the number of linking root domains. Do you have explore the ratio of frontpage/deeplinking as ranking factor reqarding the 100% of external backlinks? So for example, what do you consider better, asuming all root linking domains in theory are equal, for the SERP of the main keyword for which the frontpage is running on Google. Case A Frontpage = 80 Linking Domains
Link Building | | Braumueller
Subpages = 20 Linking Domains 80 / 20 = 4 / 1 (4 times more frontpage linking domains than deep linking domains to subpages) Case B Frontpage = 90 Linking Domains
Subpages = 10 Linking Domains 90 / 10 = 9 / 1 (9 times more frontpage linking domains than deep linking domains to subpages) Case C Frontpage = 95 Linking Domains
Subpages = 5 Linking Domains 95 / 5 = 19 / 1 (19 times more frontpage linking domains than deep linking domains to subpages) Greetings from Hamburg,
http://www.suchmaschinen-experte.de0