Erratic Rankings Earlier This Month - UK
-
Can anybody tell me what happened here?
http://5lx.co.uk/images/searchconsole2015-12-22 13.37.16.png
That is the ranking pattern of my UK site on Google UK for my main keyword.
It reached number 1 on 7 December but three or four days later, dropped like a stone.
It has been very erratic ever since, slumping as low as the mid-30s.
I checked the search console but there were no manual penalties. There is an update signalled on the chart but I can't find any info about it and anyway it seems to have happened after the drop began.
I barely touched the site between its top ranking and the slump and certainly didn't do anything to deserve that roller coaster (as far as I know).
Does anybody have any ideas?
Thanks
-
I've been watching some large sites, and I've seen some pretty crazy things around the 14-17th, with most sites seeing the biggest impact in ranking drops on the 16th. It was clearly an update, but I can't find reliable info on what exactly it was - probably because it affected a small niche of sites. Does your site receive a lot of traffic for local terms by chance? My working theory is another update to local search results. (Trying to show more companies that work in that area, possibly with more local packs.)
The reason I'm thinking local is because it was the biggest shift in rankings I've seen in a long long time, and tools like Mozcast didn't pick up a big change. There are so many possible combinations of local terms that it's nearly impossible to track even a small set of keyword + city terms.
Anyway, I've seen about the same as you - a big drop for some key local terms, followed by a slow and steady recovery. The results looked pretty bad when the update was first made, so maybe Google realized it wasn't a good update and has rolled some of it back.
Of course this is all just speculation. I'd love to hear what other types of terms people have seen ranking decreases on.
-
Thanks Moosa
There's no information about that update and it certainly hasn't shown up as Penguin or Panda in the monitoring services.
Technically, my site is fine. It's very fast. The front page loads in about 2 seconds, a lot faster than the competition and both Moz and SEMrush suggest the ranking page for that keyword is fine.
I did wait a few days and as you can see from the chart it keeps going up and down. There doesn't seem to be a 'normal' for it.
I am particularly confused about that initial drop. I still can't find a good reason for it.
Thanks
Neil
-
Obviously I cannot say exactly but If I would be at your place, I would dig into what kin d of update it was. If its penguin or Panda update then try to look in to your content and links and see if they are fine. Also work on building some good quality links as well.
Recently, my rankings tanked like anything (I have some site speed issues) so I thought this drop was because of that but today I looked in to rankings again and saw that the rankings are back to normal.
I am not sure but maybe you should wait for a day or two to see if it comes back to normal.
Just a thought!
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
-
Rank Loss Analysis Tool
I did a detailed analysis of the loss in rankings for about 100 pages on my site over the last 6 months. For few pages the SEO clicks have dropped by 40%. This is not due to algorithm penalty but one of the following reason Competitor with a higher DA created a similar article Existing Competitors get more backlinks Search volume itself is down - (Don't care) Loss in long tail traffic can you guys recommend a system to automatically track this and make a report? Also what would be corrective action in case of reason 1 and 4
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Janki990 -
Home page ranks for most keywords with no SEO
Hi Guys, The keyword I am trying to rank is on seperate page with its own Optimization in place. However the HOME page of website starts ranking for that keywords . The keyword is mentioned on Home page Just once in content description, that's all. What should be my ideal strategy. Deleting the Sub Page, will that improve the SEO of my home page and improve the Rank for that keyword ? Also I can see my Own YELP pages rank better than the actual website for few terms . Any way around this ? A Part from building links to page ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aus00071 -
Only homepage is ranking after site re-launch
We've been moving all our sites over to a new platform (Demandware) this year. In the process, they've all gotten updated designs (from the same template), on-page optimizations, etc. Since they're all on the same platform and are essentially copies from one template, any technical issues found have been fixed across all sites. The problem I'm seeing is there are a few sites that haven't really seen much/any recovery from the site launch, and these are sites that were done 4-5 months ago. There's one in particular that's especially concerning, since it's showing issues that none of the other sites seem to have. In my Moz reports, it looks like of all the keywords that are ranking, they're only ranking the https version of the homepage (and from what I'm seeing, the https version wasn't picked up and ranked until the beginning of October, which was also the time that WMT shows a huge drop in clicks and impressions). I've crawled the site (ScreamingFrog), done a site search in Google (all pages look to be indexed), etc. and I haven't come across any specific problems there that would suggest a technical issue. We're wondering if it might be a link authority problem, since this site had the most dramatic change in navigation. The navigation used to be product based (Boots, Shoes, etc.) and is now broken up by gender. I've noticed that a few other pages that are ranking are dual gender pages that also existed on the old site, whereas all of these new categories aren't ranking at all and I'm not seeing this happen with any of our other sites. I've gone down a bunch of different paths trying to figure this out, but I haven't come up with any concrete answers as to why this is happening and how to fix it. Any thoughts as to what else I can look into or try for this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WWWSEO0 -
Ranking Suggestions
Hi There, I am currently working on this site: completesteamclean.ca to rank as high as possible for "carpet cleaning windsor" on Google.ca and I can't seem to make any head way against the other websites ranking. I've optimized the page, created social media accounts for activity, even invested in Google Adwords and Facebook ads to try to boost my presence. Does anyone have any suggestions on any tactics/revisions I can make that may help boost my site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Product Page rankings - How to boost?
Hi folks I am responsible for an e-commerce website. Our website is doing very well but I believe that our product pages should be ranking more highly than they currently are. When taking over my current role, it became clear that a number of changes would need to be made to try and boost the under performing product pages. Amongst other things I therefore implemented the following: New Product content - we have placed a massive focus on reworking all product content so that it is unique and offers value to the reader. The new content includes videos, images and text that is all keyword rich but (I hope) not seen as overly spammy. Duplicate content - the CMS was creating multiple versions of the same page - I addressed this by implementing 301 redirects and adding canonical links. This ensures there is now only 1 version of the page Parameters - I instructed Google to not index certain URLs containing specific parameters Internal links - I have tried to improve the number of links to the products from relevant key category pages My question is, although some of the changes have only been in place for a month, what else can I do to ensure that the product pages rank as highly as possible. As an e-commerce website with so many products it is very difficult to link to these product pages directly, so any tips or suggestions would be welcome! Here's an example of a product page link : http://www.directheatingsupplies.co.uk/pid_37440/100180/Worcester-Greenstar-29CDi-Classic-Gas-Combi-Boiler-7738100216-29-Cdi.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DHS_SH0 -
Author rank
Can anyone tellme how to know my author rank. Is better to gain authority on my author rank +dariopropdental And if it is better to gain authority as author or as page +propdental And if a do a new post on my web every day should i place every link to the post on my profile and my page. Doenst it look spammy. Should all post have a link from my profile.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Ranking History Reports
I like that every week I can go into my campaign and see how I did. If I want to keep tabs (reports) every week and continuous record keeping how would I do that? For example, I want to see how we did last month on a particular keyword, should I set up to run a report every week for that keyword and have it emailed to me. Is that the only way to do that or does Moz keep previous history somewhere else? Thanks. PS Another website I help out on recently had a huge jump in pageviews this month. I don't track them in SEOMOZ currently is there anyway to figure out where that traffic is coming from? I am guessing perhaps they moved up in Google. Is there a way to see previous history? i.e. they are 33 last month for a certain keyword?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenhornet770 -
Google Places in the UK, No Postcard
I've been trying to register a business on Google Places now for a few months. As part of the verification process, Google send a postcard to your business address so that you can enter the pin online and verify your address. They also say that it takes up to 3 weeks, however this is now the 3rd time I've requested a pin and none have turned up so far. The latest one was requested well over 3 weeks ago. Has anyone else had problems getting a local results postcard? It's driving me nuts!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterAlexLeigh0