Keyword rich domains sliding fast
-
I decided not to worry too much about the statements from google indicating that they were going to consider key word rich domains as a negative for ranking since any of the sites I work on that have them are totally relevant to the content on the sites.
However, since recent Google algorithm updates I see these domains have suddenly slid from top 3 positions to page 4 or beyond in Google SERP's. Nothing has changed on these sites in the intervening time and no change is evident in Bing or Yahoo SERP's.
Is it just my imagination, or are others seeing the same thing for keyword rich domains? and has anyone yet determined the best way to deal with this problem?
-
Thanks for your responses Alan.
Since these are client sites, it is our policy to seek permission before sharing information about site status. I will do this and provide some examples once permission has been obtained.
-
I'm totally with Alan, that drop in the "weight" of the domains containing keywords is not already affecting at all I think, at least outside G.com. After all Mr Cutts has only said that they were probably going to adjust it, but I believe we have to wait until that changes.
-
Sha,
I know of several small sites that had no drop due to the Panda update. Something else must be going on, but without seeing the sites, no way to offer any additional insight.
-
Just to Echo Alans findings. I have found that exact match domains are ranking better than ever at this point in time. For competetive industries they are still at number one. An example can be found if you google "seo belfast". Most of the results are due to domains.
-
Well none of those things would appear to be an issue. However, all of them are small sites created for very small businesses.and so have only 5 or 7 pages (with a good amount of information on the pages). Perhaps the overall size of the site is a factor.
Have you noticed any bias against smaller sites in your research?
-
Having done comprehensive audits on a number of domains that were hammered by the Panda/Google update, I would say that the domain match factor is either not a factor yet at all (most likely) or had very little to do with the problem you're seeing. Without seeing the domain I can't offer specific insight, however I'm consistently seeing a number of factors.
- Very poor on site information architecture
- Very confused topical focus
- Very thin unique content.
- Too many ads compared to unique content
- Very weak / poor inbound link profiles (usually skewed to over-use of limited focus keyword anchor text).
If your site has any one of the above issues, that alone could be the primary cause.
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
-
Should I target low competition related keywords to rank my main keyword?
Hi everyone, I created a product review based blog about finding the best outdoor basketball but it's MOZ keyword difficulty is increasing drastically. I'm finding it difficult to rank. Is it a good practice to target low competition related keywords to rank the main keyword?
Algorithm Updates | | rosie16
Please advise, Thank you!1 -
Keyword cannibalization or linking structure?
Hi all, Recently I got an answer from this community about "why our login page is ranking but not my homepage for primary keyword"? Possibilities are keyword cannibalization or linking structure. In our case, our homepage is not ranking for "primary keyword" but ranking for other keywords. If it is linking structure, what might be wrong? Like do we need to unlink login page from many internal links? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
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 -
We have a terrible, severe loss in our Keywords rankings this week, can you please help us what would happen in only 7 days ?
On the date 3rd of October we had almost 55 Keywords up and 44 almost down, Today after 7 days there is a severe drop 90 keyword is down, 7 only are up, and that's one website. My other website had 57 words up and 175 down. Our strategy in building backlinks: Directory submissions, article submissions and some blog commenting, we keep into consideration to choose only websites with high page rank (Page Rank 2 and higher). Also we had an updated on one of our websites since 1st of June a new URL structure, content, new pages and sitemap. Both websites has tons of keywords that we worked on increasing its rank and some we haven't touch them and its ranks was decreased. Does the new Google "hummingbird" have something to do with that? is there anything wrong with our strategy? Please provide us with your feedback ASAP.
Algorithm Updates | | ali8810 -
How much does domain age play a part today?
My specific reason for asking this is due to the need to consolidate two of my client's websites into one main umbrella. The two websites now are duplicating content between each other. They are essentially the same business with two locations. The goal is to have one website to build authority on, reduce management/maintenance time and eliminate the duplicate content issues. In doing so, we will need to use a completely different domain name for branding reasons. I'm concerned that this may hurt us due to it being a brand new domain name. With the current websites, one domain is 8 years old and the other 2 years old.
Algorithm Updates | | HiddenPeak0 -
Page rank of 2 with zero SEO and a 2 month old domain?
Hello, I helped work on a website for a friend. We used wordpress, a theme from elegant themes and wrote the content over 4 days. Zero back links, no seo, etc. Well, a little on page optimization and that's about it. Oh, we did ONE back link from a review site. The domain was brand new; never registered before. About a week after it started getting indexed, it jump from no page rank to a page rank of 1. About a week later, it jumped to a page rank of 2. Again, zero seo (aside from above stated). The site is: trade lines review dot com A page rank of 2 is nothing to write home about, but given the circumstances, how is this even possible? Thanks you!
Algorithm Updates | | Friedman0 -
Why am I getting different Google SERP result for same keywords?
Hi Mozzers, I have noticed recently that Google (.com.au) has been serving up different SERP results for the same keywords. For example, one of our main keywords is "Car Loan". One result will show our site as ranking #5 organically from 242,000,000 results. A refresh of this search will then result in our site not ranking at all from 133,000,000 results. We have been noticing this happen only in the last few days & more frustrating is that Google is throwing up the SERP from 133,000,000 results more frequently. Would anyone know why this is occurring? And what can we do, if anything, to ensure we are shown regardless of how many results Google calls from? Is it from recent algo update & will it settle down over time? Any help would be greatly appreciated. (Just to add - I'm not gogged in to Google when completing this test & regularly clear cookies etc so I don't believe its a personalised search issue)
Algorithm Updates | | 360Finance0 -
Another Domain ranking instead of my Domain
Hi My Domain name is Replicahause.net, 2 weeks ago my server had an outage for 3 days and my rankings dissappeared in google entirely, however i also noticed that when i typed in my domain name "replicahause" or "replicahause.net" , i would see abhishekyadav.com appearing on #1 in google which does a 301 into Replicahause.net I was able to convince the owner of Abhishekyadav to remove the 301 but my site Replicahause.net's Rankings still does not appear to have come back to google, is there something i'm missing here ? We were ranked #1 to #10 for at least 40 keywords, they've just seemed to dissappeard after the server downtime we had and the 301 from AbhishekYadav.com Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | jansimon0