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Help: Rankings just dropped!

by leowald
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have been ranking for the past few weeks between 1-3 position for almost all of my target keywords. I just dropped yesterday to number 10 and more. The only change that I did was to create a different site on the same topic and link from it to my site that just dropped. The reason I did this was because my competitors did that. In fact that is the only backlinks they have.
Do you think this is the reason? Should I just then remove the new site I created? Or is it just google moving things around to test?

TIA,
leo
#dropped #rankings
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Are you sure you were ever really ranking and that you just were not seeing personalized results?

    One link is not going to tank a site.
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    • Profile picture of the author leowald
      Yes. I was using paid software and I asked people to search on their computers and check for me.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    And you checked the rankings manually to ensure that they did in fact drop and it is not just an error with the software?
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    • Profile picture of the author leowald
      Yes - when the rankings were good I called someone and verified and now that they are bad I also called and verified.
      Can it be that it just went down for a day or two and will go back up?
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by leowald View Post

        Yes - when the rankings were good I called someone and verified and now that they are bad I also called and verified.
        Can it be that it just went down for a day or two and will go back up?
        It's possible. Google might be testing something which can cause that sometimes.

        QDF is also a possibility if it is a new site.
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        • Profile picture of the author leowald
          What is QDF? It is not a new site but I did make a lot of changes to it.
          Thanks.
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          • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
            Originally Posted by leowald View Post

            What is QDF? It is not a new site but I did make a lot of changes to it.
            Thanks.
            Okay, now you are changing your story.

            Your first post said

            The only change that I did was to create a different site on the same topic and link from it to my site that just dropped.
            Now you are saying you made a lot of changes. That's different. You might have F'd up the rankings yourself then.

            QDF is quality deserves freshness. Sometimes new sites rank artificially high before dropping back down. To be honest, I think it was a lot more prevalent in the past. I do not see it happening much now.
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            • Profile picture of the author leowald
              I only added one offsite link... I did make onsite changes. Mostly I speed up the site, added a bunch of products, added breadcrumbs. Only things that would improve SEO and it seems like it did. The new site was indexed right before the ranking dropped.

              Thanks for your help.
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              • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
                Originally Posted by leowald View Post

                I only added one offsite link... I did make onsite changes. Mostly I speed up the site, added a bunch of products, added breadcrumbs. Only things that would improve SEO and it seems like it did. The new site was indexed right before the ranking dropped.

                Thanks for your help.
                That makes zero sense. How can you say it seemed like it helped SEO when all of your rankings dropped?

                Those kind of changes can actually have a negative impact.

                Breadcrumbs are wasted links in most cases. The more links that appear on a page, the weaker each link is, so adding breadcrumbs often just makes all of your internal links weaker.

                Adding a bunch of products can have the same effect depending on how your site is setup. You might have just added a bunch of internal links that made all your links weaker.
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            • Profile picture of the author irawr
              Banned
              Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

              QDF is quality deserves freshness. Sometimes new sites rank artificially high before dropping back down. To be honest, I think it was a lot more prevalent in the past. I do not see it happening much now.
              I setup a bunch of new sites in the past few days, so far the privacy policy is ranking pretty well on them. Clicking the cache link actually sent me to a 404 page on Google, I've never seen that before. Usually the link just isn't there.
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