Trying to pinpoint why 1 keyword moved down 100 positions in 2 weeks. Help me speculate?
-
Hi there,
One of my client's sites, a very large and successful ecommerce website with great SEO performance, has seen a significant drop in rankings in the past 2 weeks. The rankings have begun to somewhat stabilize today, except one particular keyword with a search volume of 74k has gone from 1 to 100.
Here is what has taken place in 2 weeks, sitewide:
- I revised and improved upon title tags and meta descriptions to make them more user-friendly and contain more optimized terms. Following all of Google's best practices, as always. Google still appears to be indexing these changes (has anyone seen an initial drop in rankings while this takes place?)
- The site has seen a very significant increase in 404 errors due to one feature of the site breaking. We got a message about it in Webmaster Tools, and this appears to coincide with when overall rankings dropped. The development team is working quickly to get this resolved.
- As of today, I am seeing the highest page-load time than any other day in 2015.
With regard to the particular page/keyword in question:
- The keyword is no longer "exact match" at the beginning of the title tag, but rather broken up throughout the title tag so the whole title sounds better for users. **Have you found that this type of change is sufficient for a keyword rank to move down ~100 positions?? **(Either way, I have asked the client to revise the title to start with the exact match keyword, once again.)
- Google has indexed the page 2 days ago, but is still displaying the old title tag in search results.
- I have not found any instances of internal or external links to this page being removed.
With all this information, does anyone see anything that seems like it could have reasonably caused such a huge tank in rankings? Is this a blip in time? Is there anything I am not considering? Should I just be patient?
-
Interesting - hopefully it's all fixed, but definitely let us know if it changes again.
-
Hi Dan,
Thanks for your additional thoughts.
So turns out I just checked again today and my client is back at position 6.
I guess Google was just "re-calibrating?"
Very strange...
-
Hello
Can you pinpoint a specific date the site dropped in ranking? Maybe check for a drop in Google organic traffic in analytics or a loss of impressions etc in Search Console. Or a date the ranking shifted? That's usually the best way to rule out an algo update. I think 11/19/2015 was the date of this last one.
-
Hi Dan,
Thanks for your help.
I have a hard time believing it's the result of any of these algorithm updates because this is a very high-quality site with fantastic content. The keyword I am focusing on is a head term in the medical industry with very high volume. We were #1 several weeks ago. The ranking page offers about 750 words of excellent content structured sort of like Wikipedia or Web MD, with helpful internal links and medical sources listed on the bottom.
I did have the client make one or two revisions and update the date associated to the article, as it was 2011, and now it's 2015.
I'm still concerned because today it looks like the page fell even deeper in the index.
Any thoughts?
-
Hello
I don't think any of those factors with the information provided could have had such an impact on the site. Especially not some simple title tag adjustments. It's possible that would happen over time as Google processes the new user signals, but probably not so quickly.
What type of keyword was it? What industry is the eCommerce site in?
Not sure if this came on your radar, but there was an unconfirmed Google update a few weeks ago:
- https://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-no-21225.html
- http://www.hmtweb.com/marketing-blog/unconfirmed-google-algorithm-updates-2015/
If the changes you see match about November 19th, I'd check out Glenn's suggestions at the bottom of that second article. The site could have been caught in a content quality update.
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
-
Keyword Stuffing because of the product names
Hi Moz community, Since I have many products in most of my pages which have the targeted keyword in the product name I get the "Keyword Stuffing" error. Is it really considered as "Keyword Stuffing" by Google? In addition to the products, I have some texts containing the targeted keyword for the page and this makes the number of keywords used in a page even higher. Thank you for your answers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onurcan-ikiz0 -
Confused with rankings for keywords that are not on the actual page?
Hey Guys, So I went to search a keyword, my competitor came up, when I looked for that keyword on their page i didn't see it at all, and the page is content thin, how is it they are ranking for the keyword at all? Bit confused at how this works. So having the keyword in your content is not necessary a ranking factor? Please advise and sorry if this question is really amateur, I'm sure based on this search there is more to it then that.... could you other ranking factors as to why they rank for a keyword that is not in their content? Does the whole exact keyword have to be in the content to rank? Thanks all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
Cannot Increase Ranking For a Keyword Phrase
I've been working on the keyword phrase, "Niceville Assisted Living" for the website: http://nicevilleassistedliving.com and my increase in rankings has pretty much stalled. When I first started working on this website, a lot of the content was duplicated (which we took care of by plugging in unique content), there were locations listed on the homepage that were throwing my rankings off, I've created blog posts each week (we've even tried posting one post every day for a week), added the Facebook feed to the homepage, corrected errors in the theme, and I'm trying to get a resources page built. I know content is a very, very large part of SEO.. but it seems like the content I am plugging in isn't helping. There aren't any errors in Webmaster Tools and my keyword density is fairly close to the website ranking #1. I think my biggest problem is backlinks. Other websites have quite a few whereas the website I'm working on doesn't have any (I'm working on that, but the number I have doesn't compare to the websites ranking in the top three). I'm stumped as to what to do next. Does anyone have suggestions to improve the ranking for this keyword phrase?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReviveMedia0 -
Help with htaccess
I just setup a WP install in a subfolder: domain.com/development/ However, there is an existing htaccess file in the root which contains the following: RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z_0-9-]+)$ /index.php?page=$1 [QSA]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SCW
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z_0-9-]+)/$ /index.php?page=$1 [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z_0-9-]+)/([a-z]+)$ /index.php?page=$1&comp=$2 [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z_0-9-]+)/([a-z]+)/$ /index.php?page=$1&comp=$2 [QSA] I need to leave the rules as-is due to the nature of CMS (not WP) under the root domain. Is it possible to include an exception or condition which allows URL requests containing /development/ to resolve to that folder? I tried to add: RewriteRule ^development/([A-Za-z_0-9-]+)$ /development/index.php?page=$1 [QSA] but this seems to send it in a loop back to the root. Thanks!!!0 -
Need help in Title tags
Hi I have word press site and it has 24 pages and the main keywords is Stairlifts there are various kind and type of stairlifts and all the 24 page has the title tag stairslifts , i have tried to make each unique but i cannot avoid using the keyword stairslift. Will that have a negative impact if my main keyword is stairlifts. My target page for stairlifts is the home page. Any suggestions please Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversiontactics0 -
Pages and Keyword Structures, what do you think?
Hi, So I think the best way to do this would be to layout a fictitious example so here it is. Lets say you offer plumbing and painting services and want to start targeting 3 more locations near by. 'Plumber +Location' and 'Painter +Location' both get the exact same search so are equal. I would personally create a new page called '/plumber-and-painter-location/' Then have the title tag contain both keywords 'Plumber and Painter +Location'. BUT... maybe it would be better to have a page for each as this would then be more relevant SEO wise and the customer looking for a painter wouldn't be presented with non-relevant plumbing content. But this does mean now instead of 3 pages you need 6. And if you bolted on another services such as Plastering instead of the 3 pages you need 9. Basically If you offered Plumbing, Painting & Plastering in 3 different locations how would you structure it? Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
Keyword as domain- worth buying it?
Hi, I just noticed that a top keyword for our industry is available as a domain, but for around $2,500.00 USD. For example, www.chicagoplumber.com. If we already have a pretty well established online identity as, let's say, www.chicagopipes.com, would it be worth buying the new domain and making it our primary? Thanks for your feedback! -Will
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WillWatrous0 -
Have completed keyword analysis and on page optimization. What else can I do to help improve SERP ranking besides adding authoritative links?
Looking for concrete ways to continue to improve SERP results. thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340