Have I suffered a keyword specific penalty?
-
Hi all,
We've been working on improving our ranking for a specific keyword for the past couple of months. Progress has been steady if not spectacular (it's a very competitive keyword). Last week we obtained (not bought!) a site wide link from a partner (nothing fishy, they are business partners in the same industry) as well as a link each from a relevant resource site and a directory with good PA/DA. The anchor text used on the new links is keyword rich.
This week our rankings have fallen dramatically from page 2 to page 39 for our targeted page although other pages on our site still rank well for this keyword. The targeted page is still indexed by Google.
Could Google just be reassessing our ranking for this page and it will return to its previous rank or is it likely it has received a keyword specific penalty?
Thanks in advance.
-
Thanks for letting us know, and that's great to hear!
-
Hi Keri,
We took all of the above on board and decided to redesign the page completely adding more content to the page and decreasing the number of links. Our rank improved almost immediately so a great result!
Thanks to all who helped out.
-
Now that it has been a few weeks, how have things settled out? Can you give us an update, and is there anything we can do to help?
-
I'm 100% confident that nothing breaks Google's guidelines. The only thing I can think of is that our anchor text is overly optimised. That's my worry.
Thanks again,
Brendan.
-
Sorry, I responded before reading the end. I would suggest that if you really believe that page has been penalized individually, you submit to Google for reconsideration. You do this through WMT and simply login to the account and on the left side mid way down will be the link to reconsideration requests. Click and follow directions. Caveat:
Don't do this until you have read and understood the guidelines and are sure your site complies. It is likely this is all due to the on page changes and not due to Google. You do not want to have them look closely at your site and then decide something is wrong, potentially costing you a real penalty.
Best
-
Thanks Robert,
You've managed to calm my nerves somewhat!
Now I'm off to take a look for those Chinese Gambling Sex Enhancer sites you speak of!
Thanks again,
Brendan.
-
I still don't believe there is an issue. First, there are 1) a sitewide link from a business partner, 2) a relevant resource link and 3) a directory link.
If you had 100 links to the page in the last two weeks from Chinese Gambling Sex Enhancers, etc. well, maybe it would be an issue. But based on what you described I do not see it.
-
Hi Robert,
Thanks for your reply. The reason I asked about the penalty is because the new links used keyword rich anchor text. Couldn't this be the proverbial straw that triggered the Google penalty? Obviously I take this in to consideration when link building and mix it up as much as possible but the vast majority of links to this page are internal and as such use 100% keyword matching anchor text.
For your info, the site is very well established in the market however we have made a lot of changes to the target page recently (URL, page title, alt text etc). I know there can be no categoric answer to this but you seem confident that I shouldn't panic and just sit tight. Could you tell me why you think I haven't been penalised? Are there any methods of testing for keyword specific penalisation?
Thanks again,
-
Brendan,
I would say a week will not tell the story. With changes like you describe here, not to mention even simple changes in the content and on page SEO, we often see wild swings in rankings initially. Think about the times you have seen a site that is brand new all of a sudden show up on page one ahead of quality well established sites and then fade into obscurity over days or weeks.
We likely see this more often as we deal with a lot of emerging issue type sites where in the early stages (3-6months) there is not as much on the web as there is with maturity of the issue. Once the later adopters begin to arrive en masse, we see a lot of the "bumpy" rankings.
With changes we make to pages, we usually do not panic at negative rankings movement until at least 3 to 4 weeks have passed. (We do however suffer from nausea quite a bit during that time frame
It is funny that with positive changes we tend to be a little more accepting..... Must be human nature...
Best
-
This has happened with us too a few times, usually we bounce right back if not higher in the listings a week or so later.
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
-
I just want to ask Moz DA help anymore in Rank keywords
Hello Folks, i want to ask i have website related to kullu manali tour package and digital marketing institute, where tour package website DA is 2 and digital marketing institute DA is 26, my institute website rank on almost 1st page on most of keywords where travel website still doing struggle after much good links. please suggest me i need to boost my website DA.
Link Building | | ashux526g0 -
Long Tail Keywords
I am starting to try to gain traffic for long tail keywords. Does someone have a simple plan as to how to do this? I add them to blog posts naturally? OK but there are hundreds and hundreds so this will take alot of blogs?
Link Building | | Feily0 -
Reason of Keywords ranking up & down?
8 Keywords are increase in the last crawl report of my campaign but in next crawl report my keywords ranking badly down, only two keywords show in top in 50 rank and remaining 6 keywords are not in top 50 rank now.I want to know reason how its happened and what kind of activities done wrong by me?
Link Building | | renukishor1 -
Google notice of unnatural links - no penalty
my site just received this warning on 3/18. I haven't seen any rankings drop or anything... i don't know why i got this as i really don't build links in a frowned upon way. Anyone know if you get penalized for this, and if so, how long after you get the message does the penalty kick in, and what is the penalty.... Also, if i gave you guys my domain name do you think you'd be able to tell which links would cause this message? thanks
Link Building | | Prime850 -
Low Traffic, All Branded Keywords
I have a client that is strong locally - and the majority of the (converting) traffic that she gets is through branded keywords. Her traffic is at about ~200 visits a month. She is ranking for some non-branded keywords, but is in a highly competitive niche - gift baskets - and isn't converting for non-branded keywords. The domain authority of the website is at 27, with the homepage authority at 39. Because she is already strong locally I don't necessarily see the need to build local citations for her. What strategies would you suggest to help increase the traffic and conversion of her website? It isn't a new website - the domain was purchased in 2002. I'm just at a loss here in terms of what we can do as an SEO company to help her build an audience - we have already been writing guest posts for publication for her, and she doesn't have the budget for high-cost directories that would really help her authority. We haven't really ventured into conversion rate optimization or multivariate testing - but I feel like what needs to happen right now is the boosting of her traffic overall. What say you all?
Link Building | | MountainMedia0 -
So I ran into a site that was not ranking 4 days ago and has over 2 million links to it on some keywords. My guess is this is a link bomb, but the issue is this is pushing one of my sites down. Does anyone know a good way to over come a bomb like this?
So I ran http://www.riogrande.com/ into this site not that long ago and wanted to see if any other SEO's have an opinion on it. I've seen a Google bomb before, but the amount of links going into this URL is insane. The thing is how does one over come a Google Bomb? Do you just wait to see what Google does or do you just hope to rank under that URL? I should also note that it appears that all the keywords to it are relevant to the sites content. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks
Link Building | | kateG12980 -
How to target keywords on a new site?
I have a site I launched a few months back, and the niche isn't all that competitive. After a bit of work the domain is now sitting near the bottom of page 2 on google but it's number 2 in yahoo search. I have been manually building the links but they are all targeted to just one keyword, and mainly have the same link text. Will this look suspicious to google, and should I be spreading my anchor text over different keywords? Or is the reason Im ranking so well in yahoo be because they are just picking up more backlinks? 23 from yahoo but only 9 from google.
Link Building | | timscullin1 -
Natural Anchor Text distribution for brand = main keyword
Dear folks, I will start link building for my all new site www.buy-hosting.net and would greatly appreciate your opinion about some questions: 1.) How many links would you in my place seed per day? I plan to start with directory links and sincere, useful contributions in blogs and forums, with my URL in the signiture. 2.) Natural anchor text distribution:
Link Building | | ie4mac
My brand Buy-Hosting.net ist the same as my main targeted keywords "Buy Hosting". However, I also want to have a natural looking link profile, so I would seed links like "Click here" or "Windows Hosting" or "Webhosting" as well. How would you distribute die Anchor Text Precentage ?
E.g. (60% Buy Hosting - 10% Windows Hosting - 10% Click here - 10% Joomla Hosting - 10% Hosting Reviews)? Does that make sense or is that already spammy? 3.) How many No-Follow links would you seed (in %)?
4.) How many links (in %) would you seed to subpages, instead of the main page? Are there larger margins for Keywords, that eqal the Domain/Brand Name, without being conted as spam? Is there a good article about the natural distribution of anchor texts? Your input is greatly appreciated and thoroughly considered.
Thank you and kind regards0