Sudden decline in ranking
-
Hi SEO People,
Rankings for one of my search keywords has declined over the last two weeks from place 2-4 down to 13-15 on Google NZ. It had sat at the place 2-4 level for months.
Nothing has changed on any of the sites above/below ours, and nor have any changes been made to our site.
All our other, similar, keyword rankings have either stayed unchanged or improved.
Does anyone have any bright ideas?
-
Precisely! Sorry if my initial question was not clear (need to learn proper SEO speak).
I will attempt to get in contact with the site owner.
Thanks Marcus
-
Hey Chris
You have pretty much nailed it and you do have no access to that page however I would try one thing.
If you check that page it is still indexed in Google:
info:www.pressreleasesworld.com/team-building-auckland-how-to-choose-your-partner/
So, you could contact them and tell them that a page that clicked on in the Google results generated a page not found error on their site. If you can get this message to the right person they may well fix this.
Not to say you would not want to push on with other link building anyhow but... this could be the best of both worlds.
It does not always have to be technical.
Marcus
-
Hey Chris Just to clarify: do you mean that the this is the best (or was the best) link using anchor text from an external site and it now no longer exists? If that is the case, then you could contact the site owner and let them know that they have a 404 there and send them a cached version of the page so they can fix their issue. Alternatively, you likely need another good link to get back to where you were. Hope that helps. Marcus
-
In this case, you might want to consider setting up a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file. Here's a quick how-to guide.
Redirect it to a relevant page and it should pass on the strength that it had. This in turn could help the new page to rank for the term.
-
It's the Top Linking Page Using Anchor Text.
I would ASAP DIY but I have no access to the linking page (unless there is another way?) - http://www.pressreleasesworld.com/team-building-auckland-how-to-choose-your-partner/
-
If your top ranking page was returning a 404 error then yes, there's absolutely no doubt that this would effect its ranking.
The Googlebot would basically be hitting the page and being repeatedly told that there's nothing there and so would devalue its strength in the SERPs as a result (because what user wants to hit a 404 page?)
That's an ASAP-do-it-yesterday sort of fix!
-
Thanks Tom and Marcus for your insightful replies.
I did some further link analysis and found that the top linking page was now a 404 redirect. I presume that would be the main cause...?
-
Hey Chris
Without a link or the keyword it's hard to give anything other than very general advice and this could just be a natural flutter. The SERPS are so volatile that fluctuations happen almost daily so It may not be a cause for concern and it may come back to near where it was in a short matter of time.
If you wanted to dig further, the obvious thing to look into would be the links to your site and specifically any links that used this keyword.
- Do you have low quality links with this anchor text?
- Could links have been devaluated?
- Could low quality pages with links on have been hit by the last panda update?
It is likely nothing to worry about but if you have done some lowish quality link building around this phrase then it may warrant further investigation.
Hope that helps and happy to look a bit harder if you can drop in the keyword and a link.
Marcus
-
It's not a large enough of a drop for me to think that your site may have been effected by an update. Regardless, if you have webmaster tools set up (and if not, do so), my first step would be to check for any messages from Google.
After that, I'd analyse your own link-building campaign over the last month or two and maybe compare it against a few competitors and see if there are any differences and short comings. Open site explorer has recently had its index updated, so it can help in this case.
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
-
Spam links - which link is most damaging to my rankings.
I have just started using Open Site Explorer and discovered a lot of spam links to my website.
Technical SEO | | A.Ronny
(I have mostly ranked on page for many years one but in the last two weeks ranking have dropped to page two)
The links have Anchor Text such as Scam - Dishonest - Drugs. Most of the of the links are "nofollow".
Will links with "nofollow" affect my ranking and if so which of the links should i priorities to remove?
Do I look at Link Equity - Domain Authority - Page Authority or other criteria? Many thanks
Ronny0 -
Redirect to get better ranking
I have three pages of my website ranking for a keyword: landing page and two blogposts. They all rank on top of page 2 (positions 11-13).If I redirect these articles to the landing page, will it help to bring it up in rankings?
Technical SEO | | imoney0 -
Penguin 2.1 update, ranking dropped.
Hi, My website was hit by Google's new update like never before, first my ranking dropped back in May when Google rolled out with their second Penguin update, back then i was outsourcing my SEO since most of the time i was working on optimizing my local maps. As soon as noticed my traffic dropped i start doing SEO my self, I removed over optimized keywords on website ( title, meta description) then i analyzed my link profile and found that i had a lot of commercial anchor text linking from spammy websites, mostly blog comments. Its been over 4 months since I used Google's disavow tools in hoping that will help me get my raking back, but i still see these spammy links in my profile, 90% of them are nofollow anyways , so i'm not sure if disavow tool helped me at all. With this Penguin 2.1 update my website ended up on page 4-10 for 90% of my keywords http://screencast.com/t/3bcw8LUxpj Im not sure what would be the best way out this, should i buy a new domain and start fresh?Please let me know if you want to take a look on my link profile and give your opinion. Looking forward to your help!
Technical SEO | | mezozcorp0 -
Need advice badly domain rank loss
I have a main domain and a sub domain that both were doing very well and after looking at the Moz history its obvious that panda and penguin affected my site considerably. My keywords are holding rank but my search results and traffic are way down. My question is if I just take my subdomain (which is really my bread an butter shopping cart) and I consolidate my sub domain with my main domain would this help? I would basically make my main domain the shopping cart and make them one site. This should change the links to all the sites. The problem is I will lose the backlinks if I do not do a 301 but I do not want to bring bad links over and my keywords are holding rank. What to do?
Technical SEO | | megapixall0 -
Are multiple sites needed to rank one website?
My SEO guy for a mortgage website says that we should have 30 websites, with about 250 pages each on each site plus 50 blogs in order to even think of ranking for mortgage keywords. Is that correct?
Technical SEO | | simermeet0 -
Increase Search Ranking for CEO
Hi guys My company CEO is concerned that when her name is googled pictures of a glamour model appear in the image results area. The glamour model shares a second name with our CEO and this is why the model's images are appearing. I have been asked to rectify this situation. My CEO has a linked in page and twitter account which are underused but no personal page on our company website. I was thinking of buying the url for the CEO's name and optimizing a small site for her name with bio etc and links to twitter, lined in etc. Would this be the best strategy? Thanks Gavin
Technical SEO | | gavinr0 -
Malware ranking drops
Hi, One of our sites got hit with malware in November. We cleaned it up and sent a reconsideration request and no malware warnings are in WMT anymore. We still haven't seen an improvement in rankings even though people say it can take up to 90days? Organic traffic is down 40% and still dropping. Any advice? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Sayers0 -
Moving Site with #1 Ranking to New Domain
I want to move a site of mine that ranks #1 for many keywords to a new domain name. I have already redirected many smaller less important sites to the new domain, but have held off on my most popular site. If I redirect the entire site with a 301 redirect, what can I expect with my number one ranking, particular for coveted search terms..thanks for the input.
Technical SEO | | insync0