Major SERP Drop After PR Update

[Rick Diculous]

2 of my blogs got a Pr update, went from PR1 to PR2, but since then, the sites went from 1st page to 15th page! Traffic dropped from 2k hits a day to 200 hits.

At first I thought it would go back up after a couple of days, but it's been 3 weeks now and they are still way down. I did not make any changes in the sites exept that they were updated more often in the past couple of weeks.

Out of my 60 blogs, only my top 2 traffic getting blogs got the drop in SERPS. What do you guys suggest I do to bring those back up?

More Updates? More Backlinks? or leave them as is and they will go back up eventualy?

[It Should Be Easy]

I believe you should keep working with them as you do and they will eventually increase in ranking again, Google is just kinda unpredictable

[jigney]

If it has not come back to its original position in 3 weeks then it will be difficult to comeback of its own. My suggestion is to edit blogs little and write few more blogs and give link to old blogs with the keyword ,with you ranking has gone down. I tried this trick for one my clients and got success.

[billspaced]

Originally Posted by Rick Diculous

2 of my blogs got a Pr update, went from PR1 to PR2, but since then, the sites went from 1st page to 15th page! Traffic dropped from 2k hits a day to 200 hits.

At first I thought it would go back up after a couple of days, but it's been 3 weeks now and they are still way down. I did not make any changes in the sites exept that they were updated more often in the past couple of weeks.

Out of my 60 blogs, only my top 2 traffic getting blogs got the drop in SERPS. What do you guys suggest I do to bring those back up?

More Updates? More Backlinks? or leave them as is and they will go back up eventualy?

First to fifteenth page is a huge drop and no revival after 3 weeks is not good.

Generally, when you fall a little bit, I'd suggest you turn to the competition and see what they did.

But not every 150 competitors all of a sudden kicked your a$$. Were you doing a LOT of backlinking and then stopped?

[Rick Diculous]

Originally Posted by billspaced

First to fifteenth page is a huge drop and no revival after 3 weeks is not good.

Generally, when you fall a little bit, I'd suggest you turn to the competition and see what they did.

But not every 150 competitors all of a sudden kicked your a$$. Were you doing a LOT of backlinking and then stopped?

No, I started getting more for a keyword I was ranking 2nd. 2 2 months before it dropped, I started updating the blog 4 times a month instead of just one.

[Giannii01]

I would just suggest you keep doing what you did in the first place, its so unpredictable at the moment that its just a matter of testing everything to see what works now.

[thebitbotdotcom]

That's the problem with expending all of your efforts to ranks for keywords.

[allsystems]

Originally Posted by Rick Diculous

2 of my blogs got a Pr update, went from PR1 to PR2, but since then, the sites went from 1st page to 15th page! Traffic dropped from 2k hits a day to 200 hits.

At first I thought it would go back up after a couple of days, but it's been 3 weeks now and they are still way down. I did not make any changes in the sites exept that they were updated more often in the past couple of weeks.

Out of my 60 blogs, only my top 2 traffic getting blogs got the drop in SERPS. What do you guys suggest I do to bring those back up?

More Updates? More Backlinks? or leave them as is and they will go back up eventualy?

do you have duplicate content on your site as google has a new algo change that penalizes for duplicate content. Also have you created any more backlink just before or after the PR update,it may be a google dance but if your site is already indexed its unlikely. I would analyse the competitors in the top positions and see what they are doing

[The Blueprinter]

I also have a website that dropped in google ! I was in the third place and the next day I was in page 9 !! And I am also going down....................

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Rick Diculous

I did not make any changes in the sites exept that they were updated more often in the past couple of weeks.

Hi Rick,

Please keep the above quoted portion of your post in mind as I try to explain the most likely cause of your change in rankings, in my opinion.

First, fundamental to understanding how search engines rank SERP listings, you need to comprehend the following: Your blog doesn't have PR, the scope of the PR score is limited to individual pages of your blog. Each page has it's own unique score and your blog as a whole is not assigned a PR score.

In your post you did not mention how rankings may have changed for each of the individual pages of your blog, you didn't say which page had dropped in rankings and whether or not that drop was for one or more individual keywords, or if your rankings went up for other keywords (very likely did). so I am going to assume that you may not understand the above mentioned fundament concept.

So, by now you may be wondering how this applies to quoted portion of your post, let me try to explain.

I'm going to assume that your post was referring to the SERP ranking, of your primary targeted keyword, for the homepage of your blog. Your page's ranking is based significantly on the content contained on that page. As you update your blog by adding new posts, you are changing the content of your blog's homepage, thus changing the basis for your previous rankings.

Odds are good that the text that influenced your homepage's higher rankings has moved to the archived section of your blog. While that content is still part of your blog, it is now only found on the permalink and not the homepage. If you are building backlinks primarily to your homepage then that permalink page probably has few, if any, backlinks.

The solution is to build backlinks to your permalinks to get those pages ranking for your targeted keywords. If done well, you will have many pages ranking for numerous keywords all driving traffic to your blog.

[bay37]

Great post Don. Also (can't remember who said it): when in doubt - build more backlinks.

[jacksonlin]

I'm seeing slow signs of recovery now.

Is anyone else seeing this as well?

[Rick Diculous]

One of the two sites is back up where it was before it dropped. I have built backlinks, but not exessively.

[Alex Blades]

Originally Posted by Rick Diculous

One of the two sites is back up where it was before it dropped. I have built backlinks, but not exessively.

Keep doing what you are doing, for your other site. Your story kind of worried me, since it just dropped for no apparent reason, if it happened to your sites, it can happen to anyone... good luck with getting the other site back to its original position...

[Rick Diculous]

Originally Posted by Jose Carrion

Keep doing what you are doing, for your other site. Your story kind of worried me, since it just dropped for no apparent reason, if it happened to your sites, it can happen to anyone... good luck with getting the other site back to its original position...

Thanks. I will concentrate on this one for now with 2 or 3 different keywords. This is what I did with the first one.

[Alex Blades]

Originally Posted by Rick Diculous

Thanks. I will concentrate on this one for now with 2 or 3 different keywords. This is what I did with the first one.

Now that you mention it, that was probably the problem, optimizing for one keyword... Maybe Google is starting to tighten its leash on one keyword sites... I have a bad habit of optimizing my sites for one keyword, now I will start to do the same and use multiple keywords...

See it's possible to learn from others mistakes

You found the problem and solution in the same thread, very helpful post

[guzie]

Originally Posted by bay37

Great post Don. Also (can't remember who said it): when in doubt - build more backlinks.

Soooo...When In doubt build backlinks to each and every webpage or blog post? If this is true and I think it is...we have a-lot of work to do.
Paul