Massive 40-50 page drop for primary keyphrase, no apparent reason, + map listing weirdness
-
Hi. I manage the site http://physiowinnipeg.com, which has had some interesting yo-yo effects lately, culminating in a 40-50 page drop as of last Friday.
The phrase in question: physiotherapy winnipeg
Background:
-
The site has ranked on the first page for this keyphrase since about May
-
There was the occasional blip where the homepage would disappear from rankings altogether for a day or two, and then return back to its regular listing
- This would coincide with a sudden increase in organic places listings (our site would hit the top of the local map listings, but the homepage would vanish)
- Other pages would still appear for the target phrase, just not the homepage
- About a month ago, the organic places listing settled, and the homepage permanently vanished
- Other pages still ranked high, and we commanded many of the listings on the first 10 pages of Google, first page included
- The homepage would still appear for some other searches
- We had been affected by the Google Places --> Google+ Local transition, so I was of the opinion that we needed to wait it out a bit to see if it, like the other issues related to the transition, would work itself out
-
This time around, it worked itself out again, just today -- but we are now ranked slightly lower on the first page and our Google local listing has disappeared (again)
-
Our other pages are still (currently) absent from the first few pages, for this keyphrase
-
The main differences I noticed here, aside from the much longer timeframe of our drop, was that other pages disappeared as well, and that the homepage was actually found, between page 38 and 50, depending on the day
According to SEO Moz and other tools, the site is doing pretty much everything right. I should note, however, that there is a service we use for educational content called Patientsites that loads in the subdomain http://education.physiowinnipeg.com -- and this site has pulled many warnings in SEO Moz (around 10,000, actually, mostly long URL related), as well as a few errors. I'm not sure if this is a part of the problem, but I am considering having the content of the subdomain blocked via robots.txt and Webmaster Tools.
Has anyone else experienced anything similar, or have any insight? This weirdness has gone on too long.
Thanks!
Bobby
-
-
I found Marie's comments very interesting. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be my problem.
I agree with Marie's advice not to do anything to respond to a perceived penalty. Doesn't look like your site is "penalized" but the swings are extreme.
-
Thanks Marie. I appreciate the response and the advice. That was my initial thought, as well, when it first started happening -- it seems to be getting worse though. Hence my concern. Have you hear of anyone else having a similar issue with the map and site listing never being on at the same time?
-
I've seen a number of sites recently that seem to drop out of the search rankings and then reappear (often at a higher position). I think Google is testing some things.
I did 3 searches on G.ca for your search term. The first time you were at the top of page 2, but there were only 3 organic listings and then map listings on page 1. The second time I didn't see you and the third time you were on page one just under the maps listings.
Google's definitely up to something. Don't go doing anything rash right now. This is unlikely to be because of a penalty.
-
Thanks, JustDucky. I suppose it could be an adjustment of those values, but as above, wouldn't you think the exact phrase would be affected -- and would that explain the map listing and page listing only having one active at a time?
-
Thanks for the suggestion, Elias.
I considered the EMD update, but I doubt it's the cause. That wouldn't explain the flip flopping of the organic map and site results, which I am pretty sure pre-dates that update. Also, we have always (and still do) come in at number 1 for the search term "physio winnipeg" -- if it were the EMD update, I would have expected that search to be affected as well.
-
My EMD site dropped from 12 (on last Saturday's MOZ report) to 41 (last night) to 32 a few minute ago for the EMD keyword. The site has also been affected by Panda (April & again recently) but, as Elia's response suggests, G is probably adjusting the EMD values.
-
Hi Bobby,
Have you looked at this http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-emd-algo-update-early-data
You could be experiencing the affect of the Exact Match Domain algorithm update.
Elias
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
-
Pages blocked by robots
**yazılım sürecinde yapılan bir yanlışlıktı.** Sorunu hızlı bir şekilde nasıl çözebilirim? bana yardım et. ```[XTRjH](https://imgur.com/a/XTRjH)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mihoreis0 -
Splitting down pages
Hello everyone, I have a page on my directory for example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamBayPublishing
https://ose.directory/topics/breathing-apparatus The title on this page is small yet a bit unspecific:
Breathing Apparatus Companies, Suppliers and Manufacturers On webmaster tools these terms hold different values for each category so "topic name companies" sometimes has a lot more searches than "topic name suppliers". I was thinking if I could split the page into the following into three separate pages would that be better: https://ose.directory/topics/breathing-apparatus (main - Title: Breathing Apparatus)
https://ose.directory/topics/breathing-apparatus/companies (Title: Breathing Apparatus Companies)
https://ose.directory/topics/breathing-apparatus/manufacturers (Title: Breathing Apparatus Manufacturers)
https://ose.directory/topics/breathing-apparatus/suppliers (Title: Breathing Apparatus Suppliers) Two Questions: Would this be more beneficial from an SEO perspective? Would google penalise me for doing this, if so is there a way to do it properly. PS. The list of companies may be the same but the page content ever so slightly different. I know this would not effect my users much because the terms I am using all mean pretty much the same thing. The companies do all three.0 -
On 1 of our sites we have our Company name in the H1 on our other site we have the page title in our H1 - does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1, H2 and Page Tile
We have 2 sites that have been set up slightly differently. On 1 site we have the Company name in the H1 and the product name in the page title and H2. On the other site we have the Product name in the H1 and no H2. Does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1 and H2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CostumeD0 -
I have 2 keywords I want to target, should I make one page for both keywords or two separate pages?
My team sells sailboats and pontoon boats all over the country. So while they are both boats, the target market is two different types of people... I want to make a landing page for each state so if someone types in "Pontoon Boats for sale in Michigan" or "Pontoon boats for sale in Tennessee," my website will come up. But I also want to come up if someone is searching for sailboats for sale in Michigan or Tennessee (or any other state for that matter). So my question is, should I make 1 page for each state that targets both pontoon boats and sailboats (total of 50 landing pages), or should I make two pages for each state, one targeting pontoon boats and the other sailboats (total of 100 landing pages). My team has seen success targeting each state individually for a single keyword, but have not had a situation like this come up yet.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanMaster0 -
Category Pages up - Product Pages down... what would help?
Hi I mentioned yesterday how one of our sites was losing rank on product pages. What steps do you take to improve the SERPS of product pages, in this case home/category/product is the tree. There isn't really any internal linking, except one link from the category page to each product, would setting up a host of internal links perhaps "similar products" linking them together be a place to start? How can I improve my ranking of these more deeply internal pages? Not just internal links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xoffie0 -
Landing Page - Home Page redesign SEO factor question - Serious concern.
Hi Folks, I'm considering making a big change to our website and really need some expert advise. Will we lose ranking if we do what I propose? Our site www.meninkilts.com, needs to split users/clients by "Commercial" and "Residential" so we can message/market completely differently to each client. We are considering doing this structure: Landing Page | | Commercial Homepage Residential Homepage Right now we rank well, for our keywords like "Window Cleaning cityname" but are worried that adding a landing page, and splitting our site to two homepages will effect seo (ie: a landing page would only have two buttons: one for commercial and one for residential). What would be the best way to handle this. Looking forward to your insights! Cheers Brent
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MenInKilts0 -
No equivalent page to re-direct to for highly trafficked pages, what should we do?
We have several old pages on our site that we want to get rid of, but we don't want to 404 them since they have decent traffic numbers. Would it be fine to set up a 301 re-direct from all of these pages to our home page? I know the best option is to find an equivalent page to re-direct to, but there isn't a great equivalent.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Should the sitemap include just menu pages or all pages site wide?
I have a Drupal site that utilizes Solr, with 10 menu pages and about 4,000 pages of content. Redoing a few things and we'll need to revamp the sitemap. Typically I'd jam all pages into a single sitemap and that's it, but post-Panda, should I do anything different?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EricPacifico0