Site Dropped 70 positions in one day - Google Dance???

[bigcat1967]

hey guys:

About six weeks ago I started backlinking w/ a new anchor text and was ranked around #290 in my niche. Well - over the last six weeks I sky-rocketed to #25 and held steady at that position for about two weeks. Then today, I dropped to #95.

I've done other sites before - and I've seen them do the google dance and then settle down. Haven't seen anything like this. What do you guys say? - is this a google dance where my site will bounce back up or maybe I shot up to quickly and it's settling around #95.

(also - I will keep backlinking)

[Terry Kyle]

Hi Bigcat,

I've experienced this on sites or pages in the past when I broke one of my SEO Golden Rules - one page>one keyword.

I find this especially with my various Amazon book pages. I start to vary the anchor text to make the backlinks look 'natural' and the page starts sinking. Then I go back to the original exact anchor text only in my backlinks and those pages come back.

It's weird but it's almost like Google gets confused about what term to rank a particular page for and then starts to rank that page for NEITHER.

My best advice?

Go back to your original anchor text only (optimise and backlink OTHER pages on your site for OTHER keywords) and keep adding plenty of new backlinks.

If that doesn't turn things around, PM me and I'll share a 'jump-start' technique that should do the trick.

Hope that helps.

[Benjamin Ehinger]

When in doubt go back to what was working the best. I would continue with the backlinks with only your one main keyword and see what happens.

[thomashoi]

I think such google dance will be coming very often since many
marketers are doing all sorts of seo just to gain high ranking but
ignore quality content.

The best thing to do is to always get your readers to opt-in your
list and followup closely to build a loyalty following.

This way, when google dances again, you still have your
list to make money from.

[Glassjaw009]

After you change anything on your website, or start trying to rank for new keywords, Google will always have your site dance around. During this period, I try to focus on other sites and let them do what they do. Every minute spent watching the dance is a minute spent losing money. Hope this helps. I would wait 2 weeks or so and see what happens. Odds are you'll pop back up higher.

[bgmacaw]

What you're seeing is the "Query Deserves Freshness" and/or "Query Deserves Diversity" algorithms in action. These algorithms give a temporary boost to new content (or newly discovered content related to a keyword) but it is only temporary. After the algorithms' effect fades the site/page will drop back down to its natural level based on its backlinks.

Sometimes, if you've done good backlinking, it will rise back up in rankings. Sometimes the competition is too tough, your links too few or so forth and it won't come back up. The common mistake people make is that they assume that they've done something 'wrong' and panic. They stop link building or do wild stuff that might cause their site more trouble.