Sudden drop in ranking for keyword. Might i have a penalty?
-
I redesigned two websites last year www.studiowest.com and www.tracsd.com and didn't suffer any drop in rankings.
About a month ago we redesigned again but this time merged the two sites into one, www.studiowest.com. All was well and we were #1 ranked for "recording studio san diego" UNTIL today. (Suddenly we are off the front page at #12. We are still in the 3 pack from my view.)
I'm trying to figure out what happened. We did 301 redirects. Could I have been penalized? I'm trying to work on my Google Business pages, there were too many, maybe that affected it?
What's the best way to check if I'm penalized or otherwise figure out what happened?
-
Thank you again! I think it's a great idea—I actually wanted a paragraph on top but others wanted to try it this way first, they thought a really clean page would be most friendly, but maybe we're so used to knowing what the place is about that we forgot others need some orientation with text!
I've been researching the sudden drop in rankings and I don't think we did any of the things that could cause it. I'm hoping it's the Google flux thing and will go away. Guess we'll see.
In any case I am very grateful that you commented, was VERY helpful.
Amy
-
You're very welcome Amy.
Here's Moz's guide on title tags:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag
It's recommended to put some keywords first, but you want to be sure not to keyword stuff. So, in your case, an example of a decent title tag might be "Recording Studio in San Diego - Studio West".
Google likes to see content above the fold. What I mean by "above the fold" is the area of the screen that is visible without scrolling down. I do find that when I go to your site, I can easily tell what your site is about by reading the above the fold content. The phrase, "San Diego's Premier Studio and Music Production School" is good and makes sense. (A lot of sites have almost no good above the fold content.)
I'm betting though, that you might see more traction if you put a paragraph of text below your slider that explains more about what your business offers. That text will give Google more to index and searchers something to read.
-
Hi Marie,
Thank you for your quick answer! I won't panic just yet. No manual penalties.
Regarding your other suggestions:
-
Every page except the home page has a keyword before the brand for the title. But you're saying it's important to have more on title tag the home page, not just the brand? I can do that for sure.
-
What do you mean by "very little text above the fold?" I suppose you mean on the home page there isn't enough text on top of the page?
Thank you!
Amy
-
-
Hi. To check if you have a manual action, go to Google Search Console --> Search Traffic --> Manual actions.
With that said, I see studiowest.com at #3 local and on page 2 for "recording studio san diego". There has been a lot of turbulence in the SERPS and I've seen a number of clients that have disappeared for a day or two and then suddenly reappeared (often higher than they first were.)
I had a quick look though and I think there are a number of changes you could make to help if things don't work themselves out. Your titletag is your brand name - you should have a few keywords in there, preferably at the start of the title tag. You also have very little text above the fold for readers and search engines to read.
Those are good things to change regardless, but I wouldn't make too many big changes without waiting for a few days to see what Google does.
Best of luck!
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
-
Accuracy of Moz Keyword Tool
I understand that no search tool is entirely accurate, but I'm seriously beginning to doubt the accuracy of the Moz keyword tool search volumes for keywords. For example: I entered "largest police departments" and it says 0-10 per month in the US, despite the fact that that term is directly responsible for 200 hits per day. Many alterations of that keyword come up with 0-10 or not determined. This is not a small error -- and it repeats over and over for other search terms that I have already ranked for in the US. It's gigantically inaccurate in a massive scale.
Moz Bar | | Luke_Proctor0 -
Download of current keyword rankings WITHOUT historical data
Hi there, I would like to download the current keyword rankings within a campaign without the historical data i.e. I need only ONE row for each keyword. I read an earlier post that suggested setting the data parameters within the last update period but I can't do this on my MOZ interface - whatever I set the dates to, I still get multiple rows for each keyword. I guess there must be a way to do what I need but I can't see it! Please advise. Many thanks
Moz Bar | | colinking1 -
Can Moz Keyword Explorer help target keywords for Google Images results?
I'm wondering if I can use Keyword Explorer (or maybe another tool?) to target keywords for image rankings. I'd like to play around with optimizing images so that they appear in search results and thus provide traffic - but wasn't sure the best way to track that kind of progress. My ultimate goal is to analyze the difficulty of ranking for a certain keyword via Google images. (I do know to optimize alt tag/title tag/place in relevant article etc, but wanted to know if I could research the difficulty). Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!
Moz Bar | | naturalsociety0 -
Has Google officially dropped the mobile-friendly label?
I noticed in my keyword ranking reports that the heading "Google en-US Mobile Friendly" indicates false for all tracked keywords... Is this information still helpful in the reports? _Cindy
Moz Bar | | cceebar0 -
Rankings > Landing Page > Only UK?
Hello Is it possible to use the landing Page reports for sites in Norway .no? If we define a search engine in UK, maybe it will mess up all the other data we are collecting? Regards
Moz Bar | | moggiew
Mogens Stoltz Wennersten0 -
Keyword Difficulty Search Engine Selection
I'm using the Keyword Difficulty tool. The results generated are Bing search engine results, even though I have selected Google for the search engine. I cannot get this feature to work, and I've tried it in both Chrome and Firefox. What's going on here...??
Moz Bar | | AcroPilot1 -
On the on page optimization page, I found out that there are 2 contributing factors which are opposite to each other. "No More Than One H1 Tag" and "Appropriate Keyword Usage in H1 Tag"
"No More Than One H1 Tag" and "Appropriate Keyword Usage in H1 Tag" If you fulfill one condition, the other one is not completed. If you consider Article heading as H1 then Moz do not detect keyword in the heading.
Moz Bar | | MoeezLodhi0 -
Moz keyword search took
I don't understand how moz keyword search tool works and how to interpret serp analysis. Is there any tutorial on how to use it?
Moz Bar | | zsyed0