Sudden drop in ranking for major search terms
-
Site bumpbabyandbeyond com au. Help! We have been operating for six years and had steadily built up our ranking for major terms like maternity clothes, maternity clothing, maternity wear, reaching highs of 6, 8 and 10 respectively for AU sites AU wide about six months ago that we have steadily maintained. All of a sudden we have dropped away. A week ago I noticed we had dropped from 6 to 12 for maternity clothes. This morning we are 21! I can't see any obvious reason for this, but believe the eCommerce module of our inventory/pos software has had a recent update - I'm awaiting answers on this. We haven't actively had anyone link building or working on SEO after being badly bitten and shelling out a small fortune for an AU company to do very little over six months - rankings improved rapidly when I sacked them and did some on page minor work myself. But I don't have the time or knowledge to look after the seo, and am on the hunt for reputable white hat assistance. Is there anything obviously wrong that I need to fix ASAP? Any help would be much appreciated
-
Thanks so much Marcus! Webmaster tools - no messages or notifications, this is the HTML Improvements section... what other info would be useful? HTML Improvements Last updated Oct 11, 2012 Addressing the following may help your site's user experience and performance. Meta description Pages Duplicate meta descriptions 18 Long meta descriptions 0 Short meta descriptions 10 Title tag Pages Missing title tags 0 Duplicate title tags 11 Long title tags 0 Short title tags 0 Non-informative title tags 0 Non-indexable content Pages We didn't detect any issues with non-indexable content on your site. There has been an increase in 404's from 0 to 61 - I wonder if the update to my ecommerce package removed my redirects from the previous php version of the site to the current asp? Number 1 is the previous sites main page! Will get on this today... What info is most pertinent from my campaign? Happy to provide reports etc - but also don't want to overload with TMI - let me know
Thanks again Marcus! Cath
-
Hey,
The first thing to do is to determine if you have any obvious problems or technical problems and I would start by setting up an SEOMoz campaign for your site. This will crawl the site and report on any obvious issues that you can address. Additionally, review google webmaster tools and see if there are any notifications or problems being reported there.
From a quick review, there is nothing obvious from a technical perspective. Likewise, your anchor text and link profile look okay from the quickest of looks.
We did have a penquin update around a week ago and it could be that sites that link to you have been removed or lost equity and you are seeing a knock on effect. This could suggest why you dropped a bit, then a bit more as more and more links to your site get devalued as external pages are removed.
You certainly have some sub standard links for the keywords you mentioned:
http://brandedfeel.com/432869-Are-maternity-clothes-necessary-in-order-to-look-good-during.html
http://www.exportimportaustralia.com/directory/apparel_fashion/women_wear/
Likely thing here is that you have lost equity from some of these weaker keyword links and that has knocked you for some of your big searches. You may possibly have some technical issues as well so get that site set up in the campaign manager and report back on your findings and lets see what we can do to help.
Marcus
-
You are 22 in Sydney and 21 in Perth. No local results there because you're not located there, of course. It's possible that your improved Melbourne (local) results are forcing your other national results down to page 3. I'll ask around but never heard of that happening.
I can't imagine it would be better for you not to rank locally but anything is possible with Google.
-
Thanks for your response :). What about for Australia wide, which is how I usually check? Our online sales are normally at least as much as our instore sales, so results from other states/areas are pretty important to me.
-
Hi!
I'm attaching a screenshot from Melbourne, just now. You're in the Local results. That means many ranking trackers will give you the wrong results. I see you 21st for the term in organic results but because you show up in the 7-pack you are pushed down a little more. Google wants to see different domains on page 1 - not many of yours... so they tweaked it down a bit a few weeks ago. This is Matt Cutts' Twitter report on it:
**"**Just fyi, we rolled out a small algo change this week that improves the diversity of search results in terms of different domains returned."
I think you're only a few minutes north of me - if you ever want to talk SEO, let me know.
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
-
[Very Urgent] More 100 "/search/adult-site-keywords" Crawl errors under Search Console
I just opened my G Search Console and was shocked to see more than 150 Not Found errors under Crawl errors. Mine is a Wordpress site (it's consistently updated too): Here's how they show up: Example 1: URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword/page2.html/feed/rss2 Linked From: http://an-adult-image-hosting.com/search/adult-site-keyword/page2.html Example 2 (this surprised me the most when I looked at the linked from data): URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html/page/3/ Linked From: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html/page/2/ (this is showing as if it's from our own site) http://a-spammy-adult-site.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html Example 3: URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-3.html Linked From: http://an-adult-image-hosting.com/search/adult-site-keyword-3.html How do I address this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rmehta10 -
.Com version of my site is ranking better than .co.uk for my UK Website for branded search. 301 redirect mess
Dear Mozzers, I have an issue with my UK Website (short url is - http://goo.gl/dJ7IgD ) whereby when I type my company name in to google.co.uk search the .com version returns in Search as opposed to the .co.uk and from looking at open site explorer the page rank of the .com is higher than the .co.uk ?. Infact I cant even see the .co.uk homepage version but other pages from my site. The .com version is also 301'd to the .co.uk. From looking at Open Site Explorer, I have noticed that we have more links pointing to .com as opposed to .co.uk. Alot of these are from our own separate microsites which we closed down last year and I have noticed the IT company who closed them down for some reason 301'd them to the .com version of our site as opposed to the .co.uk but If I look in http://httpstatus.io/ (http status checker tool) to check one of these mircosites it shows - 301 - 302 - 200 status codes which to me looks wrong ?. I am wondering what it should read ... e.g should it just be a 301 to a 200 status code ?. My Website short url is - http://goo.gl/dJ7IgD and an example of some of 10 microsites we closed down last year which seems to be redirected to .com is http://goo.gl/BkcIjy and http://goo.gl/kogJ02 As these were redirected almost a year ago - it is okay if I now get them redirected to the .co.uk version of my site or what should I do ? They currently redirect to the home page but given that each of the microsites are based on an individual category of my main site , would it be better to 301 them to the relevant category on my site. My only concern is that , may cause to much internal linking and therefore I wont have enough links on my homepage ? How would you suggest I go about building up my .co.uk authority so it ranks betters than the .com- I am guessing this is obviously affecting my rankings and I am losing link juice with all this. Any advice greatly appreciated . thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Can't understand our Ranking; DA, PA and On Page all better than Competiton; Ranking no where
Our rankings are up and down but our domain is clean, DA and PA good
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexSTUDIO18
and there is really in depth content which is all original. We are at a bit of a loss; The site is
http://www.fightstorepro.com I can use the phrase "Boxing Gloves" as an example
http://www.fightstorepro.com/gear/gloves/boxing-gloves.html PA 26 , DA29
Good original content; Video content, On page grade A
Not ranking in top 50 places?? The competitor in Pos4 is not matching our placing Anyone shed any light on this?0 -
Why does this site rank above us?
We own www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk and over the last 8 months have built some decent guest post, charity and customer links but still we seem to be beaten on good words such as banners, banner, vinyl banner, pvc banner etc by this website www-signfirm.com we just cannot figure out how this is happening and would be very grateful if someone with great wisdom could give us an in-site into why this is happening and we would be very grateful..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Not ranking on Bing but is on Google?
Hi What are the main differences between Bing and Google in terms of ranking sites? My site is ranking well in Google but in Bing it is very low down and does not deliver much traffic. In Bing webmaster tools there are no warning messages and I had sent in a sitemap back in 2011 and 77 pages are listed, but I had not submitted a URL could this be why my pages are not ranking highly? Or does anybody have a checklist on what a site should offer to get ranking on Bing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ocelot0 -
Hi my site dropped from page rank 4 to 0,
I have done everything the correct way and my site shouldnt break any guidelines can someone tell me where i can contact google and oppose this please? also can someone tell me if links play a part in this> of if this is something to do with the penguin update and my site has been wrongly effected? my url is below http://www.diamondwaste.co.uk/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tommyboy70 -
Home Page Rankings Drop
Hi all we have being working with a small local client in the last few weeks getting good rankings using onsite op, and business listings we have been getting good ranking ie top 15 then today we drop right out the top 50, after completing manual checks i see the keywords as all related | glasgow catering | Not in Top 50 | down > 42 | |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Will_Craig
| catering glasgow | Not in Top 50 | down > 41 | |
| glasgow caterers | Not in Top 50 | down > 39 | |
| caterers in glasgow | Not in Top 50 | down > 37 | |
| caterers glasgow | Not in Top 50 | down > 32 | Also when completing manual checks on the above keywords, the home page is not ranking what so ever, infact its missing i went 300 results deep and cant find it, other inner pages rank but not the home. The only other recent change is that we now have a listing under the Google maps section of the homepage on page 1 any advice www.georgieporgies.co.uk0 -
Deep Page is Ranking for Main Keyword, But I Want the Home Page to Rank
A deep page is ranking for a competitive and essential keyword, I'd like the home page to rank. The main reasons are probably: This specific page is optimized for just that keyword. Contains keyword in URL I've optimized the home page for this keyword as much as possible without sacrificing the integrity of the home page and the other keywords I need to maintain. My main question is: If I use a 301 redirect on this deep page to the home page, am I risking my current ranking, or will my home page replace it on the SERPs? Thanks so much in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClarityVentures0