Dropping rank for everything but main keyword?

[Matt Ward]

I'm hoping/guessing this is a symptom of Google dance, but I'm not sure, because of the weirdness.

On 7th-8th of March my main website dropped for every keyword except the main one. It's been picking up a lot of longtail traffic for the past few months, and seemed to grow even more after the big algorithm changes last month (Mar 5th was a traffic record). On 7th-8th it lost all the longtail stuff.

Right now it's ranking only for the main keyword at #1 still, so I don't think it's a penalty, but it's lost every other ranking it held, which accounted for about 25% of the total traffic. I had a few other keywords on page 1/2, and now they've all dropped. The site gets zero longtail traffic now, only for the single main keyword.

All of my content is unique, but I don't know if it lost that status because my web host got hacked and I had to rebuilt the site from scratch from what I had saved.

Any ideas? I know all about the Google dance, but I've never heard of it happening where the main keyword stays #1 but every other keyword drops. I don't think it's a penalty, because again, it still holds #1 for the main keyword. Is this typical of a dance? It's only 4 months old, so probably not stable in the SERPs yet, I guess.

[iAmNameLess]

You said you had to rebuild from scratch? I think that might have to do with it. I would assume maybe something changed with your on page optimization, or google just didn't like that the site was rebuilt.

Can you confirm if your main keyword has solid backlinking done for it? I think that may be it as well, for the reason of that keyword staying number 1. You might have different tags, maybe your title isn't the same as it was, and certain on page factors that might be effecting your long tail keywords.

[gittar1122]

It may be Google dance or you become victim of new Google algorithm launched in past week:

This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

Content is King and Google is hitting sites with low quality content.


Official Google Blog: Finding more high-quality sites in search

[Matt Ward]

Originally Posted by iAmNameLess

You said you had to rebuild from scratch? I think that might have to do with it. I would assume maybe something changed with your on page optimization, or google just didn't like that the site was rebuilt.

Can you confirm if your main keyword has solid backlinking done for it? I think that may be it as well, for the reason of that keyword staying number 1. You might have different tags, maybe your title isn't the same as it was, and certain on page factors that might be effecting your long tail keywords.

Well, it was about a month ago that I rebuilt the site, and that's actually around when I started to get a lot more traffic. I don't know if I got better rankings because of it, but I don't think the loss was because of it.

And yeah, my site is heavily backlinked for the main keyword. It was also sitting at #2 for a secondary keyword related to the main one, but now that is #138.

I am guessing/hoping it's a Google dance, but I've never heard of it happening where one main keyword stays in its spot and everything else plummets. If it was due to the algorithm change, wouldn't it have happened earlier? Like I said, I had my highest traffic day ever and then 2 days later it lost all long tail traffic.

I think my stuff is "high quality" IE, it's all self-written unique articles about 500+ words each. However, I submitted it all to article directories which I am now kind of regretting. It seems like almost every AD post I made was scraped by ~50+ sites and reposted, many of them without my author box intact. I think I'm done with submitting my unique articles to directories.

I just did some searches for random strings from a few of my articles, and the first few results are all my article directory posts, and then the sites that scraped my stuff, and my site is pushed into the supplemental results. WTF? Yet, it still maintains #1 for that main keyword. Who knows, maybe that'll drop too.

I feel like taking a day and rewriting everything so it's completely unique.

[Andrew Skelly]

there are some great articles about the new 2011 google algorithm update explained in easy to understand terms... just do a search.

Hope this is helpful.

[inter123]

What country did most of the traffic come from? If US then it is unlikely due to algo changes as that has already taken place. If it is for another country such as Canada, perhaps Google is rolling out the Farmer algo changes to other countries.

[robertwin45]

Matt- did you get this sorted?
It should be a 404 Not Found. Or if it was a genuine URL that has changed/been deleted (or near typo) you should use 301 Permanent Redirection to the nearest (most relevant/helpful) current URL.