What Happend To My Ranks? Not Panda Related - Detailed Info Inside

[mjwoodi]

I have a .co.uk domain that was setup in November 2009 and it has always done pretty will in the SERPS. In Oct-Dec last year I could literally publish a post and be on the first page for a keyword with no backlinks at all.

All of my posts/pages feature-

• 100% unique content (min 500 words)
• Imagery
• Embeded video which is part of a video sitemap
• External links
• keyword density between 2 and 4
• keyword in first paragraph bolded
• Title tags are written like KEYWORD - Title, eg BLUE WIDGETS - What You Need To Know

Then this happened-




On december 22nd - december 24th i see a sharp decline in traffic, and then a further decline december 31st - Jan 1st?

On that graph I have marked out changes I have made to the site. The bottom bar that was deployed on Nov 30th was simply a floating price comparison bar stuck to the bottom of pages.

Other than that change, nothing else had changed on the site during that period.

Here's what I have done so far to try and fix things-

• Optimized load time (now 2.5 seconds)
• Deployed MaxCDN content delivery network
• Removed some pages which were similar, but 100% unique (unlock pages on graph)
• Change H2 tags to H1 (previously there were no H1 tags)
• Removed the bottom bar on nov 30th
• reduced price compare results to 3 from 10
• Ran a broken link check
• Noindex/Follow 2nd pages of tag/categories pages
• Improved blog posting rates to at least twice a day

I have 100% indexation rate across the site, an average load time of 2.5 seconds. I've tried everything I can think of, and can't seem to pin point the issue and after 5 months of trying to get it fixed I think an outside view is needed!

So what happened at Google mid-end december?

Any advice/thoughts/feedback is greatly appreciated, thanks for your time.

[Tony Dean]

Your graph is going down and down. This can only be from not having any new content over all that time.
Take for instance a Google News Site. The content can be changed every hour upon hour. Google News sites get a lot of eyeballs because they are ranked high because of constant new content.

I see nothing wrong with what you are doing except NEW Content every day would drastically improve your ranking.

It is the same with blogs. Everybody writing new content every day keeps your keywords up high in the serps.

Try a lot of new content every day to improve the graph.

Good luck.

[mjwoodi]

Hi Tony,

Thanks for your input!

I have in the past couple of weeks changed things so the blog gets updated at least twice a day, so perhaps im already on the right course in that respect but I'm sure something changed at google during the dec period.

Thanks

[yukon]

Wrong, Google news sites get ranked high because the news description is hard coded in the SERPs to never change it's location, towards the top of page #1 in the SERPs.

The reason Google news sites update their content so often is because that is part of the news TOS, & has absolutely nothing to do with ranking a regular site in the SERPs.

Originally Posted by Tony Dean

Your graph is going down and down. This can only be from not having any new content over all that time.
Take for instance a Google News Site. The content can be changed every hour upon hour. Google News sites get a lot of eyeballs because they are ranked high because of constant new content.

I see nothing wrong with what you are doing except NEW Content every day would drastically improve your ranking.

It is the same with blogs. Everybody writing new content every day keeps your keywords up high in the serps.

Try a lot of new content every day to improve the graph.

Good luck.

[mjwoodi]

Do you have any input on the problems described at all Yukon?