Decline in ranking for a particular theme of keywords after Penguin 2.0
-
Hi everyone
Last month we found on of our clients rankings were seeing significant declines in ranking (like from 3 to 28). This occurred around the time of the Penguin 2.0 update.
After further investigation we found that only a collection of keywords were affected. If we were hit by the algorithm update we would expect to find all keywords declining.
We have not been manually penalized and other keyword themes are seeing moderate day to day ranking improvements.
I know that rankings jump from day to day but a sudden decline of around 20 places for a theme of keywords isn't what we would expect.
Thanks all.
-
I had the same experience on a few sites. Ranked #1 for over a year, dropped same day as penguin, but bounced back the next day.
-
I'd be tempted to hang fire a little while before "fixing" the problem, and give it a while longer to shake out.
We had something very similar around the time of Penguin 2 on one of our sites, and like you for only a selection of our keywords. Half of the dropped keywords have returned to roughly where they were. Of the other half most have increased, but are still down compared to pre-Penguin.
One keyword went from 3rd to not in top 50 and back to 4th this week.
Aside from burning a fair bit of time trying to figure out what was going on and if we'd been partially Penguined, I'm not sure I'm any the wiser! Nothing notable going on with key competitors, nothing news worthy or topical in the sector - just temporary obliteration of around a quarter of keywords.
-
Thanks everyone. They keywords have hovered around the drop zone for a while now.
The unusual thing here is that the set of keywords have the same sort of back link profile as the rest of the keywords. We recently inherited the SEO work for this site and the previous agency used PR sites religiously with exact anchor matching text. I'm surprised that the site hasn't been hit as hard with the penguin update.
The industry is highly niche and so I doubt it will be revolving around a news story or current trend. Nevertheless we have lined up a competitor analysis.
Apologies for the lack of detail, the keywords effected mainly revolve around 'Carpet Protection'.
So the question here is whether we should take the risk and try removing these PR links (perhaps with Google disavow) or not.
-
Without knowing the site and the keywords (why is everyone so protective over these, even within this community??), it's almost impossible to say.
3 to 28 is quite a jump, but if the terms revolve around a trending news story or a seasonal term then that's not unusual at all. I would be happy to look further if you want to provide more specifics.
-
Did you build backlinks from certain domain names for those keywords? May be Penguine 2.0 hit those sites who were providing you link juice and support such keywords.
Thanks
-
There's some other things to consider (which you may have already done.)
What other changes can you see in the SERPS for your affected keywords, in particular what's happened to your competitors. Are there new sites now competing in the SERPS?
By analysing the "SERP Landscape" after changes like this can (but not always) give you an insight as to whether it's just your site that's been affected, multiple sites or the entire SERP.
A 3 to 28 drop is pretty nasty. Has there been any movement since the drop or has the SERP remained stable?
-
Drop in a particular theme of keywords is not unusual. It is highly possible that the particular theme has more relevant content on other sites or you have probably done over linking with same anchor text for that theme of keywords.
We also saw the same trend happening for one of our clients, but we removed the links, improved the content, and the rank was back up.
-
What is your exact question?
It could be possible that you dropped ranking around the penguin 2.0 update. It doesn't necessarily have to do anything with penguin though. It could be that the user engagement around this area on your site has been less good because for example the information is out of date.
I could take a look at your site and see if i find anything which could have caused this if you give me the url and the set of keywords you have dropped ranking for.
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
-
Huge difference in browser and search console rankings: Any latest updates?
Hi, We know that it's common to see some ranking difference in browser and GSC for a keyword. But I can see there is a huge difference from last 3 months. We position at 15 to 20th position when we search in browser (different IPs without signing in to any Google account; where as the rank in GSC varies between 35 around. I wonder if anything changed in the way Google reports and does anybody face the same issue? Is there anything we can do about this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Added a few paragraphs with header tags targeting a keyword and dropped immediately!
Hi all, Our website homepage doesn't contain much content associated with our primary keyword or product, it's mostly explaining our features. So we tried adding a section at bottom of the homepage which explains the about our services like "what is seo" and "how seo helps business". We are trying to rank for this primary keyword like "seo" with generic content and we dropped immediately after this deployment. Any suggestions on this why and how to proceed? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
What do you think of SearchMetrics' claim that there are no longer universal ranking factors?
I agree that Google's machine learning/AI means that Google is using a more dynamic set of factors to match searcher intent to content, but this claim feels like an overstatement: Let’s be quite clear: Except for important technical standards, there are no longer any specifc factors
Algorithm Updates | | AdamThompson
or benchmark values that are universally valid for all online marketers and SEOs. Instead, there
are different ranking factors for every single industry, or even every single search query. And these
now change continuously. Keyword-relevant content, backlinks, etc. still seem to be ranking factors across pretty much all queries/industries. For example, I can't think of a single industry where it would be a good idea to try to rank for [keyword] without including [keyword] in the visible text of the page. Also, websites that rank without any backlinks are incredibly rare (unheard of for competitive terms). Doubtless some factors change (eg Google may favor webpages with images for a query like "best hairstyle for men" but not for another query), but other factors still seem to apply to all queries (or at least 95%+). Thoughts?0 -
Can setting up a Domain Forward lead to sudden drop in Rankings?
Hi there, Our website www.porcelainsuperstore.co.uk has been ranking on pages 1 and 2 of Google for the past 12 - 18 months for a number of our key search terms. There has been the odd fluctuation but nothing major. On Wednesday of this week (2 days ago), we purchased the domain www.porcelainsuperstore.com and without thinking I enabled Domain Forwarding on this domain to go to www.porcelainsuperstore.co.uk
Algorithm Updates | | piazza
Today our rankings have shown quite dramatic drops, e.g Wood effect tiles position 1 to position 3 Metro tiles position 9 to position 12 Quartz tiles position 4 to position 9 Floor tiles position 14 to position 25 Can anyone advise on this? Do you think the domain forward could have created this sudden drop?
I have now disabled the domain forwarding but am worried that this might be irreversible in Googles eyes? I have now disabled the domain forward - I assume this is the right thing to do?
Any help much appreciated. Thanks Ben0 -
Ranking drops over weekend
Hi all, Has anyone noticed any ranking changes over the weekend? I've noticed an almost uniform drop of a few positions across almost all of my chosen phrases. Nothing major has occurred on our site, no messages in webmaster tools. An analysis of our competitors positions (which we track the top 10) doesn't reveal any clues. Cheers Aran
Algorithm Updates | | Aran_Smithson1 -
If the homepage is sandboxed for a keyword is the whole site sandboxed for that keyword?
If the homepage of a website has been sandboxed for certain keywords does this mean that the whole site is sandboxed for them keywords or just the homepage? If a new sub-page was created with quality unique content, would it be possible to get that sub-page ranked for the same keywords that have been sandboxed on the homepage? I have asked many other SEO professionals this same question and nobody really knows for sure. Do you?
Algorithm Updates | | Mark A Preston0 -
Ranking #1 for decent traffic keywords, but not receiving any traffic?
A site I work on is ranked number 1 for a few keywords. To see how much a keyword is searched per month I rely on Google Adwords Keyword tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). Using this tool I see that the keyword receives 880 local monthly searches and another keyword they rank #1 for receives 1300 local monthly searches. To me these keywords are not the biggest as far as traffic but they are not small by any means. Now here is the issue. Like mentioned above, the site nmber 1 for multiple keywords. They have been ranked number 1 for these keywords for months. Looking in analytics the other day I notice that on a month to month basis both of these keywords are getting 1, or 2 visits. This past month (October) one of the keywords did not receive ANY visits, and that is being ranked #1 for a 1300 monthly searched keyword. It just doesn’t make sense. I would imagine getting at least 100 or so visits a month from these search terms. Could someone please help me understand this a little bit better?
Algorithm Updates | | WhiteHat120 -
What is the difference between Bing and Google ranking factors ?
I know basic SEO factors and i understand On Page SEO title/meta/content optimzation and Off Page backlinking factors. Yet we see different ranking on both SEs so I want to know what are those? Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | NiceGuy1