Have I suffered a keyword specific penalty?
-
Hi all,
We've been working on improving our ranking for a specific keyword for the past couple of months. Progress has been steady if not spectacular (it's a very competitive keyword). Last week we obtained (not bought!) a site wide link from a partner (nothing fishy, they are business partners in the same industry) as well as a link each from a relevant resource site and a directory with good PA/DA. The anchor text used on the new links is keyword rich.
This week our rankings have fallen dramatically from page 2 to page 39 for our targeted page although other pages on our site still rank well for this keyword. The targeted page is still indexed by Google.
Could Google just be reassessing our ranking for this page and it will return to its previous rank or is it likely it has received a keyword specific penalty?
Thanks in advance.
-
Thanks for letting us know, and that's great to hear!
-
Hi Keri,
We took all of the above on board and decided to redesign the page completely adding more content to the page and decreasing the number of links. Our rank improved almost immediately so a great result!
Thanks to all who helped out.
-
Now that it has been a few weeks, how have things settled out? Can you give us an update, and is there anything we can do to help?
-
I'm 100% confident that nothing breaks Google's guidelines. The only thing I can think of is that our anchor text is overly optimised. That's my worry.
Thanks again,
Brendan.
-
Sorry, I responded before reading the end. I would suggest that if you really believe that page has been penalized individually, you submit to Google for reconsideration. You do this through WMT and simply login to the account and on the left side mid way down will be the link to reconsideration requests. Click and follow directions. Caveat:
Don't do this until you have read and understood the guidelines and are sure your site complies. It is likely this is all due to the on page changes and not due to Google. You do not want to have them look closely at your site and then decide something is wrong, potentially costing you a real penalty.
Best
-
Thanks Robert,
You've managed to calm my nerves somewhat!
Now I'm off to take a look for those Chinese Gambling Sex Enhancer sites you speak of!
Thanks again,
Brendan.
-
I still don't believe there is an issue. First, there are 1) a sitewide link from a business partner, 2) a relevant resource link and 3) a directory link.
If you had 100 links to the page in the last two weeks from Chinese Gambling Sex Enhancers, etc. well, maybe it would be an issue. But based on what you described I do not see it.
-
Hi Robert,
Thanks for your reply. The reason I asked about the penalty is because the new links used keyword rich anchor text. Couldn't this be the proverbial straw that triggered the Google penalty? Obviously I take this in to consideration when link building and mix it up as much as possible but the vast majority of links to this page are internal and as such use 100% keyword matching anchor text.
For your info, the site is very well established in the market however we have made a lot of changes to the target page recently (URL, page title, alt text etc). I know there can be no categoric answer to this but you seem confident that I shouldn't panic and just sit tight. Could you tell me why you think I haven't been penalised? Are there any methods of testing for keyword specific penalisation?
Thanks again,
-
Brendan,
I would say a week will not tell the story. With changes like you describe here, not to mention even simple changes in the content and on page SEO, we often see wild swings in rankings initially. Think about the times you have seen a site that is brand new all of a sudden show up on page one ahead of quality well established sites and then fade into obscurity over days or weeks.
We likely see this more often as we deal with a lot of emerging issue type sites where in the early stages (3-6months) there is not as much on the web as there is with maturity of the issue. Once the later adopters begin to arrive en masse, we see a lot of the "bumpy" rankings.
With changes we make to pages, we usually do not panic at negative rankings movement until at least 3 to 4 weeks have passed. (We do however suffer from nausea quite a bit during that time frame It is funny that with positive changes we tend to be a little more accepting..... Must be human nature...
Best
-
This has happened with us too a few times, usually we bounce right back if not higher in the listings a week or so later.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
I need how many link for a keyword
i seo keyword "sim số đẹp", my competitor have 4k ref domain for this keyword. So Do I need more than 4k ref domain with anchortext "sim số đẹp"? Please help me. Thanks.
Link Building | | simthanglongdotvn0 -
If i have 6 posts in a niche site, i want each one to rank for separate keyword. Should i internal link all of them together?
I have the following posts X + Word-1 + Y X + Word-2+ Y X + Word-3 + Y X + Word-4 + Y X + Word-5 + Y X + Word-6 + Y Should i internal link them all to each other? I want each post to rank for its keyword Untitled.png
Link Building | | EslamElewa100 -
Why did I lose my rankings for a keyword "CRM" even after getting quality backlinks?
Initially my website is ranking on third page of Google.com for the keyword "CRM". So to improve rankings I got good number of quality backlinks by guest posting in various websites. But now my website is ranking on 6th page, which is a big concern for me. But for Google.in there was neither any improvement nor any fall in the ranking. I have following doubts in my mind 1. Does the sudden increase in backlinks (quality backlinks in the from of guest posts) effect rankings in a negative way? 2. Why did it effect on Google.com and not on Google.in? 3. What needs to be done on urgent basis to recover from this? Kindly help me with all your suggestions. Thanks
Link Building | | sandeep.clickdesk0 -
Keyword Alt text in Links
I am wondering about alt text in links. My website was ranking in the top 1-5 position for all my main keywords from 2006-2012. I took a big hit in april 2012 and my rankings tanked with the penguin update. I've really just left seo alone for the past year as I assumed my rankings would come back, obviously not. I am still ranked 90-120 for my main keyword a year later, other keywords I am still ranked between position #7-11 which I am happy enough with. I did not receive any warnings from google so I'm not de-listed and don't have a manual penalty. My main problem was if someone wanted to link to my site I just asked them to use the exact same alt text in the link pointing to my site. So after using seomoz explorer I see I have just over 2700 links which Is great because I never approached anyone for links I just told them the alt text I wanted when anyone approached me, which shows people felt my site was good. My main problem is I have 600 of the 2700 links with the exact same alt text. Should I use the disavow tool to remove links with that key word phrase? Would that help? I look forward to any help with this. Thanks.
Link Building | | Want1stPlaceYesterday0 -
Keyword variation.
Hello dear community, I'm just starting to really understand how seo and in-page optimization works that to SEOMoz. I have done alot of seo for my other pages in the bad way expecting great results which acually hurt me more than help 😞 So right now I'm working on application which takes screenshots of your desktop and upload small files on the portals you select. I have done the website (template and most of the content) but I would like to know when I'm going to start and build some links, what are some of the best keywords I should choose? I do understand already than this is not an exact math, but any kind of help would be awesome! I would like to focus more around "screenshot" keyword and not that much on file upload. I know I may ask kind of much, but anything is better. With great respect, Akhlis
Link Building | | akhlis0 -
Are there benifits to aquiring domain names with keywords of a niche site and redirecting them to the niche site?
I f i purchased a domain with keyword another one of my sites targeted and redirected it to that site are there benefits in doing so? & as long as the domain contained the keywords would it matter if the domain name contained another word?. also would it be better to put just a few articles on the site and then point keywords in the article to the niche site?.
Link Building | | askshopper0 -
One folder/keyword seems penalized.
Hi, One of the keywords i am optimizing for seems to be penalized. We are selling childrens clothes and we have 1 folder/url for each producer/designer. Main page is strong compared to competitors and we are ranging 1st for 2 most important keywords. Most of our other producer pages are ranking 2nd-4th. I took some time to rank and I had a some catalogues(hotvsnot, addsitelink, webzdirectory, 3 blogs) link into this specific folder some 3 months ago. It didnt seem to rise in ranks staying in range 12th-23rd spot. Which seemed sort of weird to me. 2 Days ago it dropped to around 120th spot. No other pages on site dropped. Looking at it now I do see that its almost 100% 'producername' in anchor text which i guess is the reason for the ranking problem and maybe the drop in rankings a couple of days ago. Blog links are completly natural, catalogues are not i guess. The total sum of links doesnt seem natural because the anchor text is same on all. Still its not that unnatural if you sell nike shoes to have a catalogue called nike and the anchor text to be pointing to it to be nike, but still. So my question is: do i try to change anchor text in catalogues or have them completely removed ? Do i get blogs etc to link to my site using an other word than the producer name that might seem less natural ?? Thanks for your help.
Link Building | | danlae0 -
Date specific keywords, what to do for following year?!?
Hi, Lets say I have a page with the keyword 'film releases 2012', I rank the term and it picks up some back links and social signals. The year ends and search begins for 'film releases 2013'. Do I: 1. Create a new page targeting 'film releases 2013' and redirect the old page to the new one. 2. Just have one page with the url .co.uk/film-releases/ and when the year ends for 2012 just change the 2012 to 2013 (title, h1 tags etc). I'm 99% sure number 2 is the best option but the only negative is the url does not contain the year. I could just have the 1 page with the date in the url and when it enters the new year change the url to contain the new date but that would break any backlinks, so I could redirect anyone trying to get to the old url to the new one which should pass the PR across. But im guessing I would lose some PR in the process so maybe not having the date in the url would not effect SEO to much so rolling with number 2 is best bet. Cheers
Link Building | | activitysuper0