Page has dropped dramatically

10 years ago

Originally Posted by Oscarfishlover

For the past two or three years I have ranked at #1 on Google for the search terms "how to cycle a fish tank" all of a sudden, the page has dropped to number nine on the first page of Google. I simply don't understand why this has happened. Anybody shed some light on what may have caused this?

You have not provided any information, so anything anyone suggests is just going to be a guess at best.

What have you changed on the site?
What work are you doing with the site?
Are you building links?
Are you using fake social signals?
Have you had any downtime with your hosting?
Has your site been hacked?

There are tons of things that can cause a ranking drop.

Thanks
1 reply

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Oscarfishlover 10 years ago

No, no changes on the website. The only thing I did do a few days ago was to change the description on that particular page slightly. However, it's difficult to imagine how that can have affected the position so dramatically. Maybe I'll try rewriting the description and see what happens.

No, not building links, my website has several thousand back links already. It's a fairly mature website, launched in 2006

Not sure what you mean by what work am I doing? If you mean maintenance than not really know, it's just a hobbyist website for people who keep Oscar fish.

Again, I don't know what you mean by fake social signals, never heard of that term before

As far as I am aware, the site has not been hacked. It's using all up-to-date software

It appears that that is the only page that seems to have taken a dramatic drop in places on Google. I've checked various other phrases I'm pretty much either at number one, or in the first three. But it is rather annoying, because "how to cycle a fish tank" is a popular search term and I really would like it back at number one. I'll try messing with the description, maybe have a look and make sure I haven't taken out some keywords.

For your information, this is the page I am talking about

How to Cycle a Fish Tank
- Thanks
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yukon

Banned 10 years ago

You've most likely lost internal or external links.

I noticed the only place you mention the exact keyword phrase is the page <title>. I would mention it at least once on the ranked page as plain text.

You also have a few internal pages stuck in Supplemental SERPs that mention that keyword phrase.

[edit]
You do mention Cycling a Fish Tank, that should be close enough.

Thanks
1 reply

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Oscarfishlover

10 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

You've most likely lost internal or external links.

I noticed the only place you mention the exact keyword phrase is the page <title>. I would mention it at least once on the ranked page as plain text.

You also have a few internal pages stuck in Supplemental SERPs that mention that keyword phrase.

[edit]
You do mention Cycling a Fish Tank, that should be close enough.

what do you mean by supplemental SERPS

Thanks
1 reply

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yukon

Banned 10 years ago

Originally Posted by Oscarfishlover

what do you mean by supplemental SERPS

16 pages that mention the exact keyword phrase (how to cycle a fish tank) are in Supplemental SERPs. I have no idea how long it's been like that.

Thanks
1 reply

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Oscarfishlover

10 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

16 pages that mention the exact keyword phrase (how to cycle a fish tank) are in Supplemental SERPs. I have no idea how long it's been like that.

Is this a bad thing?

Thanks

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Oscarfishlover

10 years ago

As they say, a change is as good as a rest. I've changed the heading slightly and modified the description, will see what happens in a few days time

Cycling a Fish Tank - Learn How to Cycle Your Aquarium

It's important to cycle your aquarium before adding fish. Fish will die if your tank is not cycle is. Learn how to cycle your fish tank properly

Thanks

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Oscarfishlover

10 years ago

There is something that you guys may be able to clear up for me. I have what I refer to as "helpful articles" on my site. Now I have two menus pointing to the same articles. I have a drop-down menu, and then on each article I have a left-hand menu. Now it's been like this for years and I haven't noticed any detrimental affect by having the site set up this way. Having said that, this recent dramatic drop in one article has obviously made me look a little more careful at how things are set up.

So to give you an example of what I'm talking about. We have an article on "how to cycle a fish tank". You can access this page from two menus. The following is the URL of both menu items

Cycling a Fish Tank - Cycle Aquarium Using Fish

How to Cycle an Aquarium

But what worries me is the way I have it set up, I basically have two URLs pointing to the same page, this is what worries me slightly. I'm not sure if it could be deemed as duplicate content, although there was only one article. I think it's worth mentioning that the many items located under the main menu, "helpful articles" are the ones that normally get indexed in Google, in other words the ones that you normally find when searching.

Now I'm using Joomla! 2.5 so I always put in the page heading when setting up each menu item.

Sorry if I've confused you, I'm sure that most of you will be able to decipher what I have said

Thanks

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online only

10 years ago

Hi Oscar,

I don't want to be harsh, but ..

Your site is most likely penalized by google. Such site (like you have), will never ever get real 1000 backlinks (https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/ove...rfishlover.com)

Thanks
1 reply

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Oscarfishlover

10 years ago

Originally Posted by online only

Hi Oscar,

I don't want to be harsh, but ..

Your site is most likely penalized by google. Such site (like you have), will never ever get real 1000 backlinks (https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/ove...rfishlover.com)

I have heard of websites being penalised by Google. What action they take the something I cannot answer. However, going by Google analytics, my website receives an average of 2500 visitors a day. Many of the time it's telling me that it's exceeded 3000. Most of these hips come from organic search queries which I can see, there are thousands of them so I know these are real people. Also, I've tested various of the top search terms I get and I would say that more than three quarters of them are #1 on both Google.com and Google.co.uk. So if I am being penalised, it will be interesting to see how my website performs without any penalisation.

As for back links, according to Rankerizer there are 24,774 back links linking directly to the homepage.

According to Travis Traffic there are over 70,000 back links.

However, I think I know what's happening, I know that the URL of Oscar fish lover is contained in my signature on quite a few forums. So I suspect that these pieces of software actually counting any page they come across that contains my URL. If we were to deduct all of those back links them they would obviously be considerably less. Having said that, I must have collected a lot of back links in the seven years the website has been running. I know that Yahoo answers contains many many back links to my pages, as does dozens and dozens of forums.

Finally, I've never received any indication from Google that the website has been penalised. I have an account with them, I use Google AdSense so I am always vigilant and look out for messages from them.

I also checked Google analytics and have backtracked back to 2012 and the amount of hits has only increased over time, there is absolutely no indication that organic hits have been affected. Two or 300 less visits than the previous day is not really an indication that anything is wrong, it purely means that not as many people visited the website. I like to keep an eye on where I stand in the search terms and the only one that has been affected is the how to cycle a tank page. But I will keep an eye on that, and see if it changes

Thanks

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yukon

Banned 10 years ago

Going from #1 to #9 isn't a penalty.

Either you've lost links, something has changed on your site or competition is now stronger.

Thanks

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netanel23

10 years ago

Sorry but you've got quite a few examples of links that exist that were clearly built for SEO reasons. Chances are your site is starting to see the effects of these links and it will only be down hill from here unless you clean them up.

Take a look at this link for an example: hxxp://geophyslab.srcc.msu.ru/wiki/index.php?title=User:Gcmadsafd
Or this one:
hxxp://www.spanishpodcast.es/prueba/node/9?page=3656
hxxp://wiki.make.iecworld.com/index.php/%E7%94%A8%E6%88%B7:Hjybal33
hxxp://wiki.make.iecworld.com/index.php/%E7%94%A8%E6%88%B7:Qzqu179rty

and many more. If you did NOT build these links than you have a negative SEO campaign underway and it looks like it's working.

It's time to start getting rid of these low quality links as each algo update will have bad results for you until you sort this out.

Thanks

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Page has dropped dramatically

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