Changing TITLE tag and chaning content -> Pushed back to 550

[JackPowers]

SEO experts of WF (you know who you are) I could really use some help here.

I was ranking 2 for a keyword and pulling in some good cash. Since I didn't figure I could outrank 1 for a while I wanted to optimize the landing page so I changed the title (keyword first - before and after) and I added some new content (which was dupe, since changed to unique).

Problem is that after Google revisited the page it got demoted to around 550. That was a week ago. The page is still indexed just pushed back to page 56.

What's the best thing to do here? Wait it out or change the page back to how it was before?

[cagliostro]

Last time i upgraded the cms software, all TITLES were changed. That was a dissaster for me and i never recovered totally.

[n_touch]

Changing the titles can be tricky, I have seen some sites jump and other crumble. I am not sure if you get a penalty for doing this, or not. The one thing that I would suggest is next time just build a new landing page, and then optimize it with unique content. That way you are not loosing the ranked page that you already had, and you get another page with another keyword to the top.

[iAmNameLess]

Hmm.... so all you did was change a title? Did you change anything else, like keyword density, alt tags, anything else?

[yukon]

First thing I would do is go to the Google Cache & see If the old content/title is still cached.

Then revert back to the old copy.

I'm betting that Google cache doesn't match your new page update & Google is thinking wtf am I supposed to use (the old page or the new page)?

Once that's done, build a few (3, etc...) new pages/post that include the old pages anchor-text/url (internal link), then a few new high PR external backlinks pointing at the new pages + old page that sank in the SERPs.

You didn't change the url of the page that has dropped in the SERPs, did you?

Actually If you are running Wordpress & use yout title as the url structure then you did change the url. That might explain why your page sank in the SERPs.

Maybe Google is looking for the old url?

[iAmNameLess]

Originally Posted by yukon

First thing I would do is go to the Google Cache & see If the old content/title is still cached.

Then revert back to the old copy.

I'm betting that Google cache doesn't match your new page update & Google is thinking wtf am I supposed to use (the old page or the new page)?

Once that's done, build a few (3, etc...) new pages/post that include the old pages anchor-text/url (internal link), then a few new high PR external backlinks pointing at the new pages + old page that sank in the SERPs.

You didn't change the url of the page that has dropped in the SERPs, did you?

Actually If you are running Wordpress & use yout title as the url structure then you did change the url. That might explain why your page sank in the SERPs.

Maybe Google is looking for the old url?

Yeah, good point. I assumed he was talking about his main domain home page.

[JackPowers]

Originally Posted by yukon

First thing I would do is go to the Google Cache & see If the old content/title is still cached.

Then revert back to the old copy.

I'm betting that Google cache doesn't match your new page update & Google is thinking wtf am I supposed to use (the old page or the new page)?

Once that's done, build a few (3, etc...) new pages/post that include the old pages anchor-text/url (internal link), then a few new high PR external backlinks pointing at the new pages + old page that sank in the SERPs.

You didn't change the url of the page that has dropped in the SERPs, did you?

Actually If you are running Wordpress & use yout title as the url structure then you did change the url. That might explain why your page sank in the SERPs.

Maybe Google is looking for the old url?

Google has now cached the new changes, the url remains the same. I really don't want to change the copy back since the new one converts much better.

I will take your advice and build some new pages and backlink them.

[JackPowers]

Update: 13 days later the page is now ranking at nr. 16, which is not what I hoped for obviously. Well, I hope this is just some sort of reset that will be removed once the links to the page stay in place.