Dropped off google but only for one keyword

13 years ago

One of my sites also experienced something similar about a month and a half ago. Two of my inner pages just disappeared from the SERPs and they both were ranking on the 1st page. I couldn't figure out why because the content was unique and of high quality (in my opinion).

I didn't do anything drastic, I just left it as is - I didn't even backlink those pages! A week ago after been in the abyss for over a month, both pages returned to the 1st page and they are now ranked even higher than they were before.

Keep in mind that these pages have PR, so they were not new or anything. I still haven't figured out why this occured, so, I guess it will remain a mystery.

Just wait it out and see what happens! Concentrate on another project to take your mind of it - that's what I did!

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inserate

13 years ago

Thanks for this, I hope you are right and it will be the same here. What a shock... Luckily, I am still #1 on yahoo and bing. Do you have any explanation for what happened, i.e., could it have to do something with your content?

Thanks
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IM Ash

13 years ago

Originally Posted by inserate

Thanks for this, I hope you are right and it will be the same here. What a shock... Luckily, I am still #1 on yahoo and bing. Do you have any explanation for what happened, i.e., could it have to do something with your content?

No explanation - just an unsolved mystery :confused:

I compared those 2 pages with my other pages and I could not find any anomalies. One page has over 1000 words and the other is close to 800 words of unique content. I didn't over optimize those pages either!

The only aspect that might have been a problem is the anchor text. I didn't vary my anchors when I built links to those pages.

Strange to say the least, but I am just glad those pages came back with a vengeance.

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inserate

13 years ago

That is interesting. I do not vary the anchors at all when I build links. I thought this is how you build links that respond to keywords in the first place! Am I doing something wrong here?

Thanks
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IM Ash

13 years ago

Originally Posted by inserate

That is interesting. I do not vary the anchors at all when I build links. I thought this is how you build links that respond to keywords in the first place! Am I doing something wrong here?

Some people believe varying the anchors is a way to allow your link building to appear more natural to Google. Others care less! I vary my anchors now days just for the sake of it.

There are way too many variables to isolate one specific element that may or may not have caused your webpage to dissappear.

If it is a new page it could just be a typical Google dance! I guess you just have to wait this one out.

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inserate 13 years ago

Thanks, I will try varying anchor text from now on forth. I just started with this page about a month ago, and the 30 or so anchorlinks may not have been an issue so far. I went ahead and optimized site titles, meta descriptions and meta tags to make sure they are all different for starters. If there is anything broken with my page at this point, it will not be that tough to fix, but I do hope it will come back up on the radar.
- Thanks
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playa4thee

13 years ago

If I do a search for one of my site's webpages I see it coming out on the 1st page about 4th or 5th. But when I check the page in a rank checking site it says that it is not yet ranked. What gives? Any Ideas? Thanks

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inserate 13 years ago

That is a different problem... Luckily you are to be found on search engines. These ranking pages are not accurate from my experience.
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whawk57

13 years ago

Just a google dance. Just leave it and don't worry and create new posts.Wait it out, usually between 2 weeks to one month.

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FtlLuke 13 years ago

Originally Posted by whawk57

Just a google dance. Just leave it and don't worry and create new posts.Wait it out, usually between 2 weeks to one month.

I agree...I see this all the time. My site will drop significantly in rank for a particular keyword or vanish all together only to return in a higher position than it was before. Sometimes this happens in a matter of days and others it is 2-4 weeks. Don't stress about it and focus on your other activities. It's likely just the Google Dance.
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- inserate 13 years ago
  
  Thanks. I hope this is the case
  
  What worries me is that it returns no results for my main keyword at the moment, per google.com/webmasters. I agree that google thinks I am spamming, but I wonder what triggered that. The hint with duplicate links per site definitely was helpful.
  
  Thanks
  
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  anistars 13 years ago
  
  Hey guys, do you think that spamming method can be really punished by the G? - If so, anybody would can do that with competitors' websites... But there's mo many factors involved, man!
  
  It's strange but 3 keywords disappeared at all but other ones stayed the same - and it's all for one single page!
  
  I guess I'll wait, will let you know then...
  
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Davioli

13 years ago

I had the exact same problem a few months ago. After doing a ton of experiments I found that the following was causing it:

- I was linking to the page with the same anchor text from two places on my blog. So basically, In the top navbar as well as the widget navbar, I was using the same anchor text to link to the page. All pages on my blog thus had two links going to this page .. both with the same anchor text.

- I changed one of the anchor text's to something else and after three days the page was ranking again.

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inserate

13 years ago

Interesting, thanks for this insight.

So you are saying that there can be several links from page linking back to the main page, but they should have different anchor text?

Was your blog on a different URL than your page? And did you link to yourpage.com/ or a page within that, e.g., yourpage.com/site.html?

One issue I have with this though is that I use two navigations on my page, one on the top and one in the footer bar, on case the top nav does not load due to whaetver browser incompatibility reasons. So each page links to all other pages with two links, with the same anchor text.

Thanks
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Davioli

13 years ago

Originally Posted by inserate

Interesting, thanks for this insight.

So you are saying that there can be several links from page linking back to the main page, but they should have different anchor text?

One issue I have with this though is that I use two navigations on my page, one on the top and one in the footer bar, on case the top nav does not load due to whaetver browser incompatibility reasons. So each page links to all other pages with two links, with the same anchor text.

I'm not sure for small websites, but in my case it was for a 400 page website with all 400 pages linking twice to this page with the same anchor texts. Change one of them and see what happens.

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inserate 13 years ago

That makes a lot of sense, thanks for this input.

I updated all articles in the anchor layer and external blog posts so there is different anchor text and only 1-2 links. Let us see what happens!
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sunnyday123

13 years ago

May be Google find you spamming for that keyword. This is new algorithm of Google.

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JamesGw

13 years ago

Too much anchor text with that one keyword. Mix it up a little bit and your site will recover. Try busting out like 50 links with "click here" and "mydomain.com" for the anchor text.

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anistars

13 years ago

Originally Posted by JamesGw

Too much anchor text with that one keyword. Mix it up a little bit and your site will recover. Try busting out like 50 links with "click here" and "mydomain.com" for the anchor text.

This is a great idea!!!

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inserate 13 years ago

Thanks for your suggestion. I pretty much removed all links back to my site, just to get it back into google. Out of the box it ranked number 6 or so, as the domain name is the keyword. Not to rank at all for that keyword is totally strange. I will try making new links with click here, per your suggestion.
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Gdetonator

13 years ago

Originally Posted by inserate

Hi all,

I have a strange problem for which I have not found an answer yet.
My site was ranking on number three for a particular niche keyword for the past month. As of a few days ago, my site does not rank at all anymore that that particular keyword, but is still listed on google when I search for site:[mysite.com]. or for the direct URL.

I thought that my site was blocked or sandboxed for whatever reason google determined. BTW, I have not done any spammy link building activity or excessive keyword stuffing, I had just employed a normal linkwheel strategy with an anchor layer of about 5 pages and articles and about 100 backlinks to those anchor layer sites.

I have since written a request to google from the webmaster tools site for reconsideration of my page, and they promptly answered me that no manual anti-spam actions had been taken for my site and it should show up normally in google.

Has anyone had the same problem, and how have you solved it?

Many thanks for any hints!!

I had same proble with one of my site couple of months back, the site has ranked #1 for that keyword since 2010 and just in one single day last 2 months, the site just disappeared for all keywords though it wasn't deindexed and when I contacted, they explained to me that nothing was wrong with the site and worst yet, I couldn't wrap my head around the cause cos I didn't do anything new on the site or at least not in the last 6 months... haha.

After waiting endlessly for it to come back with no results, I wrote one new post and made a video and added to the site and it came back to the first though it's no longer the #1 but I thinks first page still rocks.

Maybe you can try this but I'm not saying it's a cure for the problem but it may just help you.

Cheers

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inserate

13 years ago

Could it be a problem with google that I have the same blogs like the domain linking back to it? I.e., my domain is domain.com and I have domain.wordpress.com, domain.blogspot.com, domain.blog.com, hubpages.com/domain, and domain.weebly.com linking back to that site (with different anchor text each).
I use these blogs for my article marketing campagins.

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inserate

13 years ago

Thank goodness, as of today I am ranking again. I believe it also had to do something with my error pages, which had two links back to the page (one on the logo and one with "click here". Anyway, I will definitely be more careful in the future with:

- Several links on the same page going back to the main page
- Anchor text (especially profiles on blogs etc that have all the same anchor to the homepage)
- Meta descriptions
- Meta tags
- Title tags

Thanks for all your help and input!!

Thanks

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Dropped off google but only for one keyword

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