My Domain Authority is high but don't rank in serps
-
So i'm a beginner/intermediate SEO and uptil about 3 weeks ago i enjoyed Top 3 rankings for all my keywords(VIrtual Assistant,Virtual Assistants, Virtual Personal Assistant,Virtual Personal Assistants and so on) for my site www.247VirtualAssistant.com. All of a sudden i dropped in rankings and can't figure out why. I ran a link analysis and nothing looks like it changed, in fact i still command much higher domain authority than my competition, but i'm stuck on the bottom of the 2nd page. I can't tell if i'm being penalized, if the other sites all of sudden just outperformed me or something else is happening here. I've also noticed a lot of "dancing" in my serps, I've been in 2nd last position on the 2nd page, then 1st of the third page, then last on the 2nd page and so on. Can someone please help me make sense of this?? Thanks!
Thomas, a very confused an desperate website owner
-
I'm not 100% sure of the latest follow vs nofollow ratio guidelines, but running your homepage URL through OSE suggests that maybe too many of your top links are nofollow (18 out of your top 50) - most seem to be fairly spammy blog type comments. Perhaps try and target less spammy links?
Just trying to be helpful, please don't take it the wrong way.
Brad
-
Thank you, that makes a lot of sense and it's something I've wanted to combat for a little while. I beleive i can fix the copscape problem by just rewritng all my content but duplicate content on my site itself("Would you like to know more about Virtual Assistants? Fill out the form below for a FREE consultation!") comes from my contact form which is on most of my pages. Do i need to have a unique version on each page?
Thank you! This site and this community rocks!
-
Hi Shajan,
I've only taken a quick look at your homepage but it looks as though you might well be over optimising. The phrase "virtual assistant appears" 38 times on the page which is too much considering the amount of text on the page. It doesn't read very naturally. There was a great post on SEOmoz a couple of weeks back which you might want to take a look at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lessons-learned-by-an-over-optimizer-14730
Hope that helps,
Brendan.
-
Sounds like you could have been caught up in the latest panda update or you have some other quality related issues. As a quick check I ran your homepage through copyscape.com and it came back with 10 or more matches and I tried googling a chunk of your text which came back with more than 100 other matching sites:
Google this in the double quotes to see what I mean:
"Would you like to know more about Virtual Assistants? Fill out the form below for a FREE consultation!"
You have uniqueness issues for starters so looks like you have been filtered my friend. I would give this a read for starters:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/fat-pandas-and-thin-content
Then make an honest appraisal of your site and your content. A batch crawl with copyscape would be a good idea and then just remove or rewrite the weak or duplicate stuff and you will make your way back into the rankings if everything else is straight.
Hope it helps
Marcus
-
I don't think you're being penalized, you wouldn't just drop one page down. I suggest you take a good look at all the recent changes you've made on and off site. This could be the case of some of your links being lost or devalued.
Higher DA does not guarantee better ranking, it does help your pages to rank better but you still have to optimise them for your keywords.
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
-
Why did our highly ranked keyword drop to 51+ for just one week?
One of our most important keywords (ranked 5) dropped to 51+ one week and then went back to 5 around the time we launched a new site. Why did that happen?
Technical SEO | | virtuance_photography0 -
Why would my domain and page authority drop from 11 and 21, respectively, to 1 overnight?
Overnight the domain authority dropped from 11 to 1 and the page authority dropped from 21 to 1 with out any changes being made to the website.
Technical SEO | | dkyle0 -
Should I noindex my blog's tag, category, and author pages
Hi there, Is it a good idea to no index tag, category, and author pages on blogs? The tag pages sometimes have duplicate content. And the category and author pages aren't really optimized for any search term. Just curious what others think. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Rignite0 -
Why would this site outrank a Pr2 site with higher domain authority?
I am trying to get a pr2 site to be on top 7 local spot for the keyword Van Nuys Bail bonds but have discovered a site which has barely any back links and is not even a year old on top results. Their backlinks are from lower authority domains than what we have. How could this site be beating a 7 year old pr2 website? The site I'm working on is http://bbbail.com/ The site that is ranking in 5th spot local with pr0 is http://www.vipbailbonds.org/ is it maybe because it is a .org site? Also I notice that all websites in top spots have www, could that be a factor as well?
Technical SEO | | jesse13410 -
What should the combined domain rank of 2 sites?
We have just combined 2 sites by redirecting a site with a domain ranking of 35 to a site with a domain ranking of 27 (this is because the we want to use the address with a ranking of 27) After a week I now have 1 domain with a ranking of 26?? So my questions are; Should the ranking have increased already? What should I expect the ranking to increase to if at all? Is there something I could have done wrong when transferring? Thanks
Technical SEO | | benj450 -
Redirecting domain to the main domain (hosting cost?)
Hello Everyone, I have the following situation. There is main domain and a secondary domain that is related to the page on the main domain. I want to integrate the content of the secondary domain into the page on the main domain and redirect the secondary domain via 301 to that specific page. As i understand I can do it via .htaccess using rewrite mechanism. http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection But the question is does it mean I have to keep paying for the hosting for the secondary domain? Because htaccess has to be located on the web server so I would need a hosting plan for it? Is that true? Is there any way around it? P.S. to avoid any confusion - I am talking about hosting plan - not domain registration fees
Technical SEO | | SirMax0 -
On-Page Report Says 'F', and I'm Confoozled As to Why
I'm primarily interested in how we failed in our "Broad Keyword Usage in Title" category. The Keyword Pair we're gunnin' for is: "Mac Windows" Our current page title is: "CrossOver: Windows on Mac and Linux with the easiest and most affordable emulator - CodeWeavers" This is, I grant, ugly. However, bear with me. SEOMoz Report Card says "Easy Fix!" and suggests: "Employ the keyword in the page title, preferrably as the first words in the element." I humbly submit that "Mac" and "Windows" IS in the page title. So what am I missing? Is it the placement of the words relative to each other, or relative to the start of the sentence? Or is the phrase "CrossOver:" somehow blocking the rest of the sentence from being read? Are colons evil? I'm genuinely mystified as to why (from a structural standpoint) our existing title tag is failing this test, and I'd be delighted for answers and/or feedback. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | CodeWeavers0 -
Domain authority and keyword difficulty
I know there are too many variables for a certain answer, however do people take their domain authority into account when using keyword difficulty tool? I have a new domain which only has a score of seven at the moment. When using the keyword searching tool what is the maximum difficulty level keywords people would target initially? Obviously I would seek to increase the difficulty of the words over time but to start off its a hard choice between keywords which can be ranked for in a reasonable period of time and the keywords which are getting enough traffic to make the effort worthwhile.
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0