A Sudden Drop in Keyword Ranking but why?
-
Hi,
I wondered if anyone has ever experienced anything like this before, one of our customers has a website JDB Events (http://www.jdb-events.com/). When he first came to us he was using Fast Hosts and he was experiencing down time pretty much every day in periods of up to an hour.
The first step before carrying out any SEO was to place the website on our VPS so that the downtime issue was resolved. It did resolve the issue and the speed of the website was also increased.
My next issue was to address the length of the Title on the home page because it was 157 characters, I usually keep these to 70 characters.
This is the old Meta Title:
JDB Events Limited - Event, Production & AV Hire Specialists | The West Midlands Dance Floor Hire, LED Furniture, DJ, Disco Hire & Event Services Specialists
Here is the my new Meta Title:
JDB Events | LED Furniture Hire for Parties and Corporate Events
I have attached a screenshot of the drop that I have experienced, would anyone recommend that it's ok to keep the title longer so that I can cram more search terms into it, I use Woo Rank as a bench mark and this recommends shortening the title but I would be interested in hearing anyone's views.
Other steps that I have taken:
- Shortened the home page description
- WWW Resolve
- Added Robots.txt
- Crawled all of the pages for 404 errors etc
The next step I'm thinking of taking is replacing the amended meta title and description for the old one and monitoring that, other than that I can't see why I have taken such a hit.
Thanks
-
Thanks for the response, I have taken your suggestion into account and swapped the position of the brand and the keywords.
I'll let you know how I get on.
Thanks
Chris
-
Hi Donna,
Thanks for the response, I have checked Google Webmaster and there are no errors. The link metrics are the same as when I started the project.
Regards
-
most recent best practices say title length should be around 56 chars...fyi....
have you checked your own length? it's 64 chars...AND you make the newbie mistake of putting brand before keywords....
I'd change that to be this (55 chars!)
"LED Furniture Hire for Parties & Corporate Events | JDB"
-
I was referring to your meta keywords, not the title/descriptions
For keywords like that, I would look at what changed with the results. Does it show local results now or does it show more images which could've pushed you down.
That's a big drop so it could be because the title got changed. You might've ranked there mainly because of your title tag (even without links) so you might want to try to incorporate that into the title again or do a completely separate page for it.
-
chrissmithps,
This might also be link or algorithm update related. Have you taken a look at your inbound links and link metrics recently? It appears as though the site has very few. Did it previously have more? Do you have any warnings in Google Webmaster tools?
-
Thanks for your reply Dennis, I thought my title and description had less spam than the previous but I will defiantly look into changing these.
One of the search terms "starlit dance floor hire" has dropped 44 places on Google and usually I wouldn't be as concerned but since starting the SEO they have been receiving half of the enquiries than when I started. It may just be a coincidence or the time of year.
I will go back to the drawing board with the title and description.
Thanks Again.
-
The title will not have that big of an impact to drop your rankings. I go with 65 chars, but 70 is fine. Your meta keywords area is spammed to death though lol so you might want to minimize that. Is the drop huge though? It's hard to say how you can get a big drop with tweaks like that.
-
Thanks for taking the time to reply, I changed it around 3 weeks ago. I will leave it a few more days and re-think my Strategy.
Regards
-
Hi
I always believe page title's should be written with the user in mind. When they are on google SERP you would like them to click through and find a page which matches both the page title and meta description that they have seen. The idea of "cramming" more keywords into a title would not be something i would be looking to ever do.
As Moz says "The title element of a web page is meant to be an accurate and concise description of a page's content"
Stick to this and you shouldnt go far wrong. When did you change the title? You may just require a bit of patience for Google rankings
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
-
Diganosing Traffic Drop
With Spring Break and seasonality in play right now I'm curious about techniques for separating/diagnosing temporary drops in interest due to user behavior in a category from other things like drop in ranking or similar. How quickly can you tell these apart? Analytics will be delayed a few days for instance, other tools take time to update. What should we be looking for and when to say "ok, this too shall pass" as opposed to "did we make a bad site update" or something similar. Any tips?
Search Behavior | | GLStephenJ0 -
Image ranking in Google but not in Bing and Yahoo search results
Hello, I have one image from my blog post which is ranking well (ranking in first page for all related keywords) in Google web search as well as image search. Getting pretty good visits from the image result itself for past few days. But this image doesn't appear/rank anywhere in Bing and Yahoo search results. Can anyone tell any specific reason for the same? Any methods to follow? Any solution? Please guide me.
Search Behavior | | zco_seo0 -
Google PageRank and google keyword ranks
Hi, I manage around 13 Clients for SEO and this last two weeks i have been having problems with google keyword ranking some of my clients went down almost 40 positions for some keywords other 15 other stayed the same and some just went down 1 or 5 positions. Somebody know what is happening with google? is it shuffling around positions of people? Any advice or how you do your SEO I'm willing to work together and share experiences and tactics on SEO to people that also share with me in order to build more strategies on this amazing market. Thanks.
Search Behavior | | computernc0 -
GWMT - "Tag Site For Child Directed Treatment" Effect On Search / Rankings?
Hi All, We have a client who has been directed to tag their site for "Child Directed Treatment" in Webmaster tools to comply with AdExchange policies. The site is, generally speaking, directed at those between the ages of 13 and 16 along with their parents, but does NOT collect any data (No sign in, login, signups etc). You can find out more about the specific tag here (unfortunately not much more about it) https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/3221080?hl=en Our concern is that we have never heard of this specific tag, and our client is asking us to let them know if that this will have no effect on search traffic or ranking. I can't find much in the way of anyone who HAS implemented this tag and the effects it has had on their site. They are ad supported, receive millions of unique hits a month, and the majority of their traffic is from branded keywords. Would love to hear from anyone with ANY experience or thoughts on this process and what to be aware of. Your assistance is muchly appreciated.
Search Behavior | | SearchMarketers0 -
Noticed Bing UK and Yahoo UK are almost exactly the same ranking results?
I've run a few keyword ranking updates today and I've noticed that Bing UK and Yahoo UK results are almost exactly the same? This is unusual, the results for these two engines rarely tally with one another. Is anyone seeing the same?
Search Behavior | | MiroAsh0 -
Location specific keywords when your not in the location
Hi, I've been reading lots of great stuff on location optimisation and have picked up some new SEO knowledge on this area. Usually I target UK wide terms but this is a new beast for me. From what I have read if you was going after 'Ironing Services Essex' you would setup google places, include your address across your website and submit to local directories using the same uniformed address. BUT what happens if you live in a town 10 mins outside of Essex, your address doesn't contain Essex or Essex postcode on your website, the Google places pin is outside of the Essex area etc, well hopefully you get the idea. Basically Lets say your company is 10 mins from the area you want to rank for, it's easy for you to get into the location and do business but your address is different to the location you want to target because you live in a village 10 mins outside of the area (city) you want to target.
Search Behavior | | activitysuper0 -
Need to rank xxx.com to 2 locations
Hi, I have a voip service, currently my keywords are ranking good in US. But i would like to rank them for India too. As i am selling India based voip services. I have a single domain .COM and no country specific domain. Here what i am planning to do. I would change the setting in Google webmasters central to change the target country to USA. And then i will do on page seo to match keywords related to India. Is there anyother suggestions? please let me know.
Search Behavior | | Dexx220 -
My impression drop drastically in the past two days.
My impression drop drastically in the past two days. What could be the cause for it. My website is http://4pmdesign.com Thank you in advance.
Search Behavior | | 4pm0