Huge fluctuations in google, on 5 year old domain

[ashleyrader]

I know Caffeine is in the process of being injected into the system, but I've been having a ranking issue that has been affecting me since September 09. I've tried every fix I could think of, but nothing seems to fix it for good. My main site ranks for a highly competitive phrase, and we ranked #5 for over 2 years. Suddenly in Sept our homepage goes off the map for that phrase, yet all of our other related keywords and internal pages were not affected rank wise. About a month later, we came back and were #5-7 again. Held there for about 2 weeks, and then same thing, off the map (literally not in the top 1000 for that phrase), but all other keywords stayed the same. Its gone back and forth like that ever since, we'll be back up on page 1 for a week or two, then off for a month. I think its a penalty, but then that doesn't explain the on again off again behavior, and its not like this is a new site - we have over 50,000 backlinks. I've tried everything I can think of, reducing our incoming link keyword density, tweaking all of our product copy, meta and description tags. There was an issue for a short bit with proxy servers caching duplicates of our homepage, but I dont' think that is the issue.

Has anyone else had anything like this happen to them?

[InternetMarketingIQ]

How do you "Fix" something if you don't know whats broken?

There is nothing as constant as change!

[tjcocker]

It could be your own efforts.

Just trying to think outside the box...

[nettech]

Maybe the competition is getting stronger?

[impulsell]

Originally Posted by nettech

Maybe the competition is getting stronger?

I don't think it's the competition getting stronger. The OP said that the site wasn't even in the top 1000.

[ashleyrader]

The competition has not changed, our other main keywords are also very competitive and we haven't had any changes in our rankings for those. Luckily our link building has been broad so we rank for many strong keywords as well as longer tail phrases, but it still hurts when the #1 keyword drops. Its some kind of penalty on the homepage exclusively when this happens, we will occasionally find our internal pages ranking for this phrase like in position 200 or 400 or something really low, but the homepage is nowhere to be found at all for the phrase (almost like its been deindexed, yet the homepage will rank for other phrases). Then all of a sudden after a month or so, boom, there we'll be back on page 1. This happened most recently last week. We were #7 for about 10 days, then back in never never land, but only for that keyword and only for our homepage.

I've been trying to think "outside the box" for 3 months now, I'll mess with things and then it will come back so I think I fixed it, and then a week later its back in the abyss so I never know if what I did fixed it, or if I'm just in some kind of a wierd ping pong game with google. (ha ha) But then other times I won't do anything at all and it will come back on page 1 for a short period and then disappear.

[gulliver2010]

same here... it's been months and i have yet to see my keyword back in its previous ranking position in a very competitive area... however i get good traffic from other organic keywords... Also you didn't mention if those 50,000 backlinks point to that particular keyword? are they still there? expired? Anyway in my experience swarming domains with lots of backlinks will not guarantee high SERPs especially if they are not related to the niche at all and if they are you need to check where they come from(authority sites? spammy sites? new domains? from the same domain? different IPs?).. That's one reason why i stopped backlinking from non-related websites.. A and P's links will help sites rank faster in the short term but once G finds out especially after caffeine+human reviewers mechanism is enforced all the backlinking efforts will go to waste... that's what i believe happened to my authority site... just a guess though...

[Mike Anthony]

Not enough information for any of us to be of any real assistance, We are swimming in the dark. I've seen enough to suggest but not prove that Google has a system in place for detecting link spam. It won't get your site for life but its somewhat of a timeout. Maybe your caught in the hold of that kind of algorithm. Only other thing is - who are you linking out to?

[dotslash]

I've had this happen on rankings for keywords on internal pages. My rankings will jump from page one to outside top 100, then jump back again (then repeated for many months). They're not for phrases I actively promote but I did target on writing the page.

In my case it is definitely not link related (some pages have no links at all), but seems more about on page SEO factors. Modifying keyword density (lowered) and modifying a couple of heading tags helped me on those pages. But I have no definite solution.

It seems to happen on my pages when I over optimise them slightly too much. It's as if Google really wants to rank these pages highly but has some slight reservation

Neil

[tjcocker]

Why does everyone think the big bad Google is watching their sites personally?

Human review does happen, rarely, the rest is their ranking algorithm.

All we have is a bunch of guessing. That's why you need many sites, to test them, compare, research, etc. Putting all your time and energy into one website will drive you crazy as you watch it rise and fall. I know some people have clients, or jobs, that require them to work on only one site. I feel for you.

[dotslash]

Originally Posted by tjcocker

Why does everyone think the big bad Google is watching their sites personally?

Human review does happen, rarely, the rest is their ranking algorithm.

Nobody here has said that apart from you. And of course the majority is the algorithm, which is why we are trying to analyse how it works with regards our sites.

[tjcocker]

Originally Posted by gulliver2010

A and P's links will help sites rank faster in the short term but once G finds out especially after caffeine+human reviewers mechanism is enforced all the backlinking efforts will go to waste... that's what i believe happened to my authority site... just a guess though...

Originally Posted by dotslash

Nobody here has said that apart from you. And of course the majority is the algorithm, which is why we are trying to analyse how it works with regards our sites.

Read everyone's post first. Poor Gulliver2010 there is downright fearful...

[WareTime]

Originally Posted by nettech

Maybe the competition is getting stronger?

Exactly the web is not a vacuum. Sure you control what you do, link spamming and such, but others build sites that compete and do the same thing on a daily basis.

Who knows what is happening? The solution. Write some content that your target audience (you do have an audience you actively target, right?) wants and they'll give you all the links you need to rank, they'll be NATURALLY distributed on different ip's and in no pattern such as a link wheel etc and your site will probably stabilize.