Sudden Ranking Drop
-
One of my clients websites : http://www.renta-vw.co.za experienced a sudden ranking drop on 24/08/2012 for 2 of the Keyword terms :
The 2 terms are :
cheap car hire cape town
cheap car rental cape town.
The site ranked top 3 in Googel.de, Google.com, .co.uk, .nl
I'm not sure if it is just a 'Google Dance' or something else at play? I checked Webmaster tools and did not see any messages from Google...
This is causing a big loss of revenue for my client and after doing extensive analysis, I'm not the wiser as to what the issue is?
Please assit.
Thanks,
Marnus
-
Good advise, Thanks agian.
-
Is this a recent incremental Penguin Update?
Penguin update happened around April 2012...
if I build more backlinks with anchor text other than my keywords it should help?
Yes.. Build quality links (your brand/URL) from relavent authoritative sites (Link to sites in which your site can benefit the users).
What is the best startegy to build these links ( Social Bookarking, Blogs etc ) as I need it indexed quickly.
I would build a blog on your site and write articles that can benefit specific niche related people. I would find niche related people and build a relationship with them (by adding value), offer them to contribute on my blog and then ask them to share it.
Do you think Google will tell me if I'm penalised if I contact them?
I would not contact Google because they did not send you anything. However I would invest my time in some quality work that can benefit users..
Conclusion:
Give the people what they want and Google will give you to the people.
-
Hi Donnie,
Thanks so much for the reply. Is this a recent incremental Penguin Update?
So if I build more backlinks with anchor text other than my keywords it should help?
What is the best startegy to build these links ( Social Bookarking, Blogs etc ) as I need it indexed quickly.
Do you think Google will tell me if I'm penalised if I contact them?
Thanks again,
Marnus
-
Many people who were affected by the penguin update did not receive letters in GWT (Google webmaster tools)
The anchor linking profile for http://www.renta-vw.co.za:
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?site=www.renta-vw.co.za%2F
Your back linking profile is based on mostly exact keyword phrases, In fact I only found one back link here that is branded or pointing at your URL. This does not look natural, a natural linking profile has more branded keywords/ URL links then exact anchored links.
| cheap car rental cape town | 53 | 78 |
| cheap car hire cape town | 42 | 71 |
| long term car rental cape town | 38 | 60 |
| renta vw | 2 | 3 |For this to look natural "ranta vw" should be first on this list...
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
-
Rankings have fallen suddenly - I need a plan of attack.
I started my business a few years ago. Only recently (6 month) I started to get some good traffic and sales. At first I was ranking pretty well 3-5 for my main keywords and business began to pick up. After Penguin I was hit hard and I'm placing 10-17'ish. My Google local/places has disappeared too. I haven't received any contact from Google about unnatural links (but I'm not sure where that would appear? Email? Web Master Tools? Horses head on my pillow?). I've read so many different things online about what I 'could' do. I'm not sure where to start. I've checked and I know we've created lots of questionable back links. Using the Open Site Explorer lots of the backlinks don't have terrible DA but some do. I guess I was hoping someone would give me a checklist or priority list of things to do. It's just me so I need to use my time as best I can. What should I be doing first? Should I be trying to: Remove my bad backlinks? Spend my time making quality backlinks. On-page issues that I can't see? Telling google i'm sorry via web master tools. Changing to new domain (eek) I'm very time poor and hoped the seoMoz community might save me from wasting my time. www.bringyourownlaptop.com.au Keywords: indesign training, web design courses & photoshop courses Thank you in advance. Dan
Technical SEO | | danlovesadobe0 -
Google Trusted Ranking effect?
We are looking into getting the google Trusted badge. We meet the requirements and now just deciding if it is worth the time to do it now or later. Has anyone noticed a difference in your organic rankings or PLAs with it. What about conversion rates? Any input would be great!
Technical SEO | | DoRM0 -
Killing Page Rank flow
Another SEO has told a friend to nofollow certain internal links i.e. to their own website. There are no hard feelings but this sounds like nonsense to me. Firstly, I'm sure Matt Cutts said that the link juice will not be redistributed amongst the other links (can't find the post - does anyone have the URL or confirmation?). Secondly (and this is obvious) those pages which have links to other pages in the website will have no link juice to pass back, resulting in a lower "total sum" and the inability for that PR to flow back. In short it seems silly. Any thoughts would be interesting to hear.
Technical SEO | | IPROdigital0 -
Domains redirect influence search rankings
Hi seomoz, I'm currently optimizing a website which is www.photobookworldwide.com and the ranking is on 2nd page, but looking at the result this morning, instead of showing photobookworldwide.com, it show other result which is www.photobooklaos.com on 2nd page for the keyword photobooks. Our web developer using virtual domain, and redirected photobooklaos.com to photobookworldwide.com. Any solution for this? need you guys to help me on this. Cheers Gerald
Technical SEO | | greathokage0 -
Page rank and ranking down
Hi I blog at Technostarry. Some 3 months back during page rank update, my page rank went down from 3 to 2. I don't know the reason behind this. And now, my traffic and ranking is also down. I am not involved in any bad SEO practices, I don't copy paste and I write original content. I am too confused as why and what has happened with my site. If someone could analyze my blog and look at my weak points then that would be great. I would like to get any suggestions to get back my ranking and also page rank back. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | technotech0 -
Drop down navigation and link juice
Hi! We are desperately needing to overhaul our site navigation setup, and we have so many categories that we think our site could really benefit from a drop down navigation similar to what these sites have: http://www.paychex.com/ http://www.bmc.com/ We've held off doing this type of navigation in the past because we were only seeing people use flash to create it and we knew that it wouldn't be good for link juice. But these two sites are using HTML and CSS - which seems like a much better style and good for SEO. Do you agree? We want to make the switch but are worried about losing linking power by nesting our navigation in 's and CSS styling.
Technical SEO | | sciway0 -
A keyword suddenly dropping 25 positions in Gooogle
Hello, One of my clients have a new website (just 3 months old) and for some keywords it's already working quite well (some of them already on first page for organic search results in Google). But suddenly one of the keywords (just one) dropped 25 positions from one day to another, while the rest of them are ok and even getting better. What may be happening here? The only thing I have done for this keyword different to the rest is that I have created a few internal links (just 7 o 😎 using the keyword. The site is big, with around 60 pages including a blog. I know that I'm not being very explicit with the information I'm providing... Thank you in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | | Juandbbam0 -
Ranking with a .nu TLD
Hi everyone, A few weeks ago i purchased a .nu TLD, it's a really nice domainname but i'm wondering if it's possible to rank with this domain in Google? I've heard several times that it doesn't matter for Google which TLD a site has, but i normally never see .nu's high in the SERP's, what are your opinions about this? Is it possible for me to get this site high in google with good links and quality content? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | iwebdevnl0