Established Site Dropped From #2 to #25

15 years ago

Originally Posted by five-texans

I have been sitting in the #2 or #3 position for my top 2 primary keywords for almost 3 years. About 3 weeks ago they dropped to page 3 of Google, somewhere between #22 - #26.

At first I thought I was being penalized for something, but some of my other keywords are still at #1 in Google, and others have double listings at #1 and #2.

It's strange. It's not as if the competition out linked me and I got dropped down. I have spent the last 10 days getting a variety of links for my primary keywords, and even some higher PR sites... but my site is still sitting on page 3.

Any suggestions or experience with this?

I have had times when my site dropped several positions, but I was able to get it back up in a couple of days with some linking, improved onsite optimization, article writing, etc.

Any advice would be grateful. There is a huge difference in traffic to my site, and I'm trying to get this thing fixed ASAP.

Thanks,

Rich

Happens all of the time. There is little science to the search engines,
and they are always changing.

- John

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dburk 15 years ago

Hi Rich,

I heard a lot of folks complaining about similar drops recently. I'm not sure, but I think it may be a recent tweak in the algorithm. It seems to value or devalue backlinks in a slightly different way than previously.

The pattern seems to score the relevance of a page differently, giving slightly more emphasis to on-page factors than previously.
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watershawl

15 years ago

I agree with XFactor, Google may have just changed their algorithm. It may have been tweaked to give more weight to in-bound links or more weight to relevancy, you never know since it is secret. All you can do is guess.

Thanks

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five-texans

15 years ago

Don,

Thanks. I was talking with a friend tonight, and sometimes just talking out loud can help with things.

Some of the strange things are, the site who was #1 is still #1, but it's been scrambled up after that. I don't recognize half the sites that are on pages 1 - 3, and some of the sites that are on page #3 with me now, used to be on page #1 with me.

That led me to conclude that I might want to spend some time testing some of the on-page factors of my site and see if I can get a bounce back up. I did a screen print of pages 1 - 3 to see if I can see any patterns in the title tags. I'm going to change my title tag tonight and see if I get anything.

I'll work on some other on-page factors over the next several days and see if I can crack this.

But, like I mentioned above, I am still #1 for some of my other pages, and I still have my #1/#2 double listing for another primary keyword phrase. So, all hell has not broken loose, but I have lost about 65% of my traffic right now due to the drops in my top money keyword phrases.

Thanks

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kkchoon

15 years ago

This happens all the time, and the way to minimize your site being dropped significantly overnight is mixes of variety of links.

The more types of links you mix for your site, the less likely you are going to hit by algorithm changes...

Mixing directory, articles, bookmarking, blog comments, profile based links, forum and many other types of links will surely help you gain better position in long term.

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five-texans

15 years ago

Thanks... I know the drops and bounces happen all the time. But, there is a reason for the bounces. It isn't just arbitrary.

Throwing a few more links at it doesn't seem to be fixing this drop. I have quite a variety of links, articles, directories (including Yahoo for $300 for the last 4 years), blog comments, posts, high PR, low PR, home page links, interior page links, etc. Overall, thousands of links of a wide variety.

In fact, the more I analyze this, I feel it is less and less of a linking issue. I outlink, or can outlink 99% or higher of my competition. I could be wrong, but I am leaning toward spending the next few days testing on-page factors.

It could be something very basic. We'll see.

Thanks

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brp002

15 years ago

Dude i dropped on some of my good keywords i was hitting on. Now they are not even ranking so I dont know either... I am pretty PO'ed because my traffic dropped dramatically in the past 3 weeks.

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Thinkfast 15 years ago

Hi,

As i notice now a days that google dance frequently and thats why lots of sites going up and down regular. May be he is changing his algo.

But cant say exactly what is reason ?

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- FredJones 15 years ago
  
  There may be many reasons. Few obvious ones are:
  1. Google dance - you know all about it.
  2. Competitors improving - probably not in your case.
  3. One or two critical backlnks dropped - this might be the case for you (likely to be).
  4. Google search algo change - we have all been hearing about it for the last 2 months - my PR-6 site dropped from #6 (out of 58 million) shaprly to #29 probably because of this.
  5. You are not seeing the same Google server - are you still going to "google.com" rather than starting to go to say "google.co.uk" - or are you getting redirected by your ISP by any chance?
  
  There may be many other factors but these are the obvious ones as I said.
  
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five-texans

15 years ago

Thanks Fred. I think time will reveal more of the answer, and maybe some feedback from those folks who do extensive testing with hundred of their domains on dozens of servers (i.e. Jerry West).

But, until then, I can only do what I can do.

I worked the last 2-3 weeks on off-page factors with getting more links from a variety of sources. That did very little, if anything. I will continue to work on link building this upcoming week. More quality links never hurts.

I turned yesterday to on-page factors. I did screen prints of the first 3 pages of the Google serps to compare Titles on 3 of my major keywords where I have dropped. I found some significant differences in the Titles between page 1, page 2, and page 3 of the serps.

It may sound wierd, but it almost seemed that things stepped backward in time. Those pages that were on page 1 of Google almost seemed to be keyword stuffing. In fact, the #1 position uses the keyword phrase 4 times in his title.

There were other observations that I am testing now to see if it makes a difference. I just changed my Title tag to meet up with some of the page 1 sites to see if that makes any difference at all. Hopefully it won't take too long for the results.

I'm going to be working on some other on-page factors this upcoming week, but I can only test one thing at a time to see what the results are.

Thanks
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freetraff 15 years ago

Did you start any link building recently on this site?
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five-texans

15 years ago

No. It's a 5-year old domain. I am getting ready to renew my Yahoo Directory listing for $299 for the 4th time with this domain. It has several links that are aged 3-5 years on it.

So, I don't think it's a bounce from being a new domain or anything. I do believe it's some type of algo change because there are some of the other established sites that were with me on page 1, now on page 3.

Also, since this is a major money site for me, I don't take chances with it doing anything black or gray hat. All white hat stuff. So, I don't believe it's a penalty, sandbox, or anything.

Thanks

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InternetMarketingIQ

15 years ago

Thats the game. You figure it out and you get back on top or you fade away. Same reason Charles Barkley, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and Larry Bird are no longer pulling in big bucks.

Competition and youth has moved in and figured out how to rank ahead of you. Now it's your turn to climb back up.

Why do people think that once they rank high they should stay there forever? Ranking is an ongoing battle.

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jokarl

15 years ago

Originally Posted by InternetMarketingIQ

Thats the game. You figure it out and you get back on top or you fade away. Same reason Charles Barkley, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and Larry Bird are no longer pulling in big bucks.

Competition and youth has moved in and figured out how to rank ahead of you. Now it's your turn to climb back up.

Why do people think that once they rank high they should stay there forever? Ranking is an ongoing battle.

I dont think that in his case that all competition suddenly move ahead of you. That is usually a slow process and he fell like 15 spots instantly so I definatly think its an algo change.

Thanks

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five-texans

15 years ago

Yeah, I've fallen 22 spots and I can't figure out how to climb 5 steps back up, let alone all 22 steps back up.

Right now, Google seems very slow to react to any on-page or off-page factors I have been working on. In fact, the top 20 sites haven't moved in the last 10 days.

I'm hoping that the next wave of the algo change comes through soon so I can get myself back up to page 1... and then to #2 or #3.

Thanks

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bay37

15 years ago

Google has been super-slow at updating things lately. Something is happening. Slowly.

Many of my sites haven't moved for over a couple of weeks now, even though I've been working on building backlinks and stuff every single day. Something is definitely up with Google.

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Kirahster

15 years ago

It seems like when people start to figure out how to manipulate search engine rankings that google mixes things up a bit.

With all of the backlink packets that are available out there, I am sure that they are trying to figure out a way to make their search results less "spammy". Especially so that Bing is not producing better results.

That is my 2 cents.

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AlbertF

15 years ago

In most cases, when you are a lot of link building previously, you tend to drop in rankings and in a few days or weeks, you bounce back up better than ever. I believe you should tweak a few things here and there with on-page optimization, but never change your post titles or that such as it can effect many other things as well.

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kkchoon

15 years ago

Originally Posted by AlbertF

In most cases, when you are a lot of link building previously, you tend to drop in rankings and in a few days or weeks, you bounce back up better than ever. I believe you should tweak a few things here and there with on-page optimization, but never change your post titles or that such as it can effect many other things as well.

Yes, that's why it is better to spread all your links evenly through few days, so at least Google won't suspect you and temporary drop you from the first page!

I won't recommend you change your on page items, because sometime Google drop you to see if you change anything, if so, it may take months before you are back on track.

Having said that, if you don't do anything that Google consider you trying to manipulate the result, you should be ok.

My recommendation is keep building more High PR links to your site, should be able to bounce back in no time..!

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submit_articles 15 years ago

From my own experiences, if you want to prevent that from happening, you have to have links pointing to your sites on a regular basis. That means there are certain measures you can adopt:

1) Try some kind of viral link building campaign like article marketing.
2) Generate buzz in the forums and blogosphere so that others keep linking back to you.
3) Keep buying links in from authority sites or related sites. But spread out the purchases - e.g. a few links each week.
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- five-texans 15 years ago
  
  As an update:
  
  I followed the line of thinking that this was an algorithm change, and not because of competition, linking or anything else.
  
  #1 Competition doesn't cause your site to drop 22 spots in a day or two
  #2 I have a wide variety of links coming from multiple sources. It is a 5-year old ecommerce site that is strictly white hat. No linking schemes, bad neighborhoods, etc.
  
  So, I followed the line of thinking it was an algo change. I remembered listening to the original Stomping The Search Engines CD's with Brad Fallon talking about how he made small changes, one at a time, to things like his Title Tag, H1 tags, keyword density, etc.
  
  I then went and did a print screen of the first 3 pages of Google for my 3 primary keywords. I found there were significant differences between what my Title tag looked like and what those on page 1 now looked like.
  
  Up to this point, I probably had not changed my Title tag in over 2 years.
  
  So, I made the changes based on my observations. That was 3 days ago.
  
  Here are the results so far:
  
  Keyword Phrase #1 - moved from #25 up to #4
  Keyword Phrase #2 - moved from #25 up to #18
  Keyword Phrase #3 - moved from #22 up to #4
  
  In addition, I made some moves up in Yahoo as well.
  
  Anyway, it is not back to where I was before, yet, but it is much improved.... and traffic is beginning to pick up again and the phone has been ringing more.
  
  I will let it sit for a day or two to see it is adjusts any more. I will continue to get links, and then try another on-page change after that.
  
  Gotta keep testing to gain another position or two in the serps.
  
  Thanks
  
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AlexTampa

15 years ago

Originally Posted by five-texans

At first I thought I was being penalized for something, but some of my other keywords are still at #1 in Google, and others have double listings at #1 and #2.

its more than likely a phrased based penalty from anchor text links

You need to work on your trust rank

Thanks

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five-texans

15 years ago

That may be something to consider if it was just my site, but when all the sites get moved around, it's not a site penalty or anchor text penalty that is fixed with trust rank.

Besides, Google is not going to penalize you for the way another site links to you. That is something out of my control. If that were true, then I could start linking to my competitor's sites with "penalizing" anchor text to get them dropped out of the serps.

When one site moves, I can understand the logic of a site penalty of some kind. When all the sites move and shuffle around, logic leans very heavily toward an algorithm change.

Thanks

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seojr

15 years ago

Welcome to the world of seo

If your site has dropped before and you just thought HEY!! and carefully added some smart seo tactics to bring it back up

I would advise to not let this repeat by using one of the many web services that will track your competitors sites to see what back end things they are changing and be alerted in time

Also if your in a competitive market - this is naturally what happens, be one step ahead if not 4!!

Thanks

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cmdsonline

15 years ago

Algorithms do change, according to an interview Aaron Wall did with Google, sometimes up to several hundred times a year!

With that being said, if you added more keyword density to your pages, title, or meta tags, that could have caused you to drop off, if google thought you went overboard.

Otherwise, keep doing what your doing and it will rebound.

I have actually seen this happen when rankings recover within a few days back to the 1st page after dropping substantially.

Thanks

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Established Site Dropped From #2 to #25

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