Widespread Ranking Drops for Strong, White Hat sites
-
Hi Moz,
A few of our sites experienced widespread ranking drops across all keywords this morning. Both of these are very strong sites with a high DA (56), moz rank and moz trust above 5. We haven't been doing any black hat SEO, creating spammy links, or paying for links. Is anyone else seeing anything similar or have any ideas as to what type of Algorithm update this might be? We currently rank 67th for our name.
-
Overnight we dropped completely off the rankings. I have no idea what happened. I was excited we were doing so well the past 60 days and ranked for many keywords and long tails. This morning we disappeared from 100% of the rankings.
-
Hi,
There were recently quite a few major changes that affect the way the algorithm looks at common SEO tatctics meant to manipulate rankings, no matter the color of "hat" used.
My personal suggestion to you would be to keep pressing on, creating great quality content on your site - sharing that content in the Social realm - and trying to distribute great quality content to related blog sites.
Keeping in mind the need for a natural portfolio of not only anchor text links, but standard URL links and Brand Links.
Shane
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
-
Site hacked and now being spammed and rankings dropping
I have a client's site that was hacked in December and a whole bunch of spam pages were created. We've since removed those pages and they serve a 404 error now. But I pick up a new link almost every day from a another spammy site linking back to the pages that were created. I'm updating the Disavow as I see the new links reported in ahrefs but what else can I do to stop these buggers and how can I recover rankings other than building links and creating content
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
If we remove all of the content for a branch office in one city from a web site, will it harm rankings for the other branches?
We have a client with a large, multi-city home services business. The service offerings vary from city to city, so each branch has it's own section on a fairly large (~6,000 pages) web site. Each branch drives a significant amount of revenue from organic searches specific to its geographic location (ex: Houston plumbers or Fort Worth landscaping). Recently, one of the larger branches has decided that it wants its own web site on a new domain because they have been convinced by an SEO firm that they can get better results with a standalone site. That branch wants us to remove all of its content (700-800 pages) on the current site and has said we can 301 all inbound links to the removed content to other pages on the existing site to mitigate any loss to domain authority. The other branch managers want to know if removing this city-specific content could negatively impact search rankings for their cities. On the surface it seems like as long as we have proper redirects in place, the other branches should be okay. Am I missing something?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monkeeboy0 -
Does Mobile optimised site improve ranking and how to index it faster?
Hi i have several question with regards to mobile optimised site: Does having a mobile optimised site improve ranking in SERP? How can we push/index mobile optimised sites to users searching on mobile sites faster? e.g. returning m.abc.com or abc.com/m to users seraching on mobile earlier.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FWSBIO0 -
What would cause a sudden rise and drop in keyword ranking?
I made one change to my site - creating a good, relevant, title. A few days later, ranking for a keyword jumped pretty well - which is what I was expecting. We were ranked 9th. Then the next ranking report showed a 20 place decline. What would cause this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ocularis0 -
How do you transition a keyword rank from a home page to a sub-page on the site?
We're currently ranking #1 for a valuable keyword, but the result on the SERP is our home page. We're creating a new product page focused on this keyword to provide a better user experience and create more relevant content. What is the best way to make a smooth transition to make the product page rank #1 for the keyword instead of the home page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | buildasign0 -
Can you explain why the site is dropping off Google every other week?
Can anyone offer any insight into why since the Google Panda update www.bedandbreakfastsguide.com has been fluctuating on Google so much? One week it's ranked as it used to be, the next it's nowhere to be seen? If you take a look at the screenshot of our traffic, this is the traffic after 75% loss (dropped in two stages) you'll see we get traffic for a week and then nothing. This has been happening for months. Some points that might be involved: Around the same time the SEO guys suggested setting the canonical url to www.bedandbreakfastsguide.com (before there wasn't one so traffic was coming from www. and non-www). A lot of the original urls have been consolidated and rel="canonical" added throughout The "pages" of results all have had a rel="canonical" set to page 1 Could it be that the www is competing with the non-www despite the 301 redirects. We're doing everything we can to help this client (and have reduced their site errors from the millions to low tens-of-thousands) so it's not filling them with confidence when their site just keeps plumetting! What's also irritating/odd is that some of their competitors -who used to be ranked lower and have sites which contradict every rulebook still rank high. Hopefully you can spot something we've missed. Tim I8PNL
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TimGaunt0 -
Ranking & Traffic drops in last month
Over the last month, our rankings have been in a slow slide - that is until this week, when they absolutely crashed. Here are some example phrases: Phrase 11-Mar 5-Mar bug shields 24 9
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ShawnHerrick
floor mats 25 14
nerf bars 23 12
running boards 61 14
snow plows 25 18 For the life of me, I can't see what would have caused such drastic changes. Our site is almost completely unique content. Some things, like Warranty & Install instructions, are from the manufacturer to protect us from liabilities. We come up with our own feature text, and we have custom written articles, blog posts, research guides, etc. We also appear to be the only one of our competitors being affected in this fashion. Any thoughts would be helpful. Domain is realtruck.com.0 -
Migrating a site
Hello, I have what a I think it's a noob question.. I have a medium size website and need to put it into maintenance for the next 2 months, and afterwards activate a completly new site. My client asked me to do this, cause the same people whoe run the constant flow of information on the site, are the ones who are going to develop the new site, so he wants to just close it out So... what are the steps for doing this with minimum impact on any SEO advances made this past months?.. How do I tell the search engines, Hey, just under maintenance for a while....then... i'm back in the game but this is my new structure. and the old one should go here
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0