$100 to who discovers why our rankings drop
-
I'm offering $100 to the SEO that pinpoints why our rankings dropped. Here's details:
Some very good people have this site:
nlpca(dot)com
and it has dropped for many of it's keywords, including the keywords
"NLP"
"NLP Training"
and many other keywords.
We dropped from 19th to 42nd for the term "NLP".
Here's what I'm doing about it:
(1) making sure all of the keywords (on all pages) in the titles reflect what's in the content, and that the keywords show up exactly in the content 3 times or more.
(2) making sure all of the keywords (on all pages) in the URLs reflect what's in the content, and that the keywords show up exactly in the content 3 times or more.
(3) We're redoing the home page as (1) above.
(4) We're fixing the 404s
(5) We're shortening the titles that are too long, and we're thinking of reducing the home page keyword count to 3 keyword phrases, although 4 keywords work in all of our other sites that have the keywords showing up at least 3 times in the content.
If it is something else, and you pinpoint it, and if because of you, we rise back up to around 19th (more or less) again then we'll give you $100 payable via paypal as a thank you.
I'm going to leave this question 'unanswered' until this is resolved.
-
Sorry, but not remembering 100% what I was thinking at the time of writing the response since it was a week ago, but trying to reread through what was written, I believe I was talking about how the SERP may have been manually rated. While some of the SERPS are ranked via the algorithms google has developed, I've heard and read that there are a number of them that are affected and rated manually by humans. If there was any human interaction by one of their manual raters, they may have deemed your site less "relevant" for the search.
Have you ever seen the "Give us feedback" link at the bottom of the SERPs? Let's say somebody decides your website and the other 2 competitors are not what they were looking for when it came to the search "nlp" or "nlp training. Well, they could complain and potentially be reviewed by the manual raters or whomever responds to the complaints and drop you. Since it was before the most recent panda change, I was speculating that this could of been a cause.
-
It might be true, but when the drops occur or when the SERP is manually rated and changed in terms of the makeup, it could be because whatever's triggering it could have been finally re-evaluated at the time you dropped.<<
Could you expain this, SeattleOrganicSEO. That might be what happened. It looks like there was an algorithm change that effected us and at least 2 other strong competitors and shifted us all down
-
It might be true, but when the drops occur or when the SERP is manually rated and changed in terms of the makeup, it could be because whatever's triggering it could have been finally re-evaluated at the time you dropped.
However, I don't know if I know all the different pieces you do. Even with the above description of the issues, I think there's a lot more going on potentially that as "outsiders", we can't help with as much. Even when we know everything, we still might be clueless. Sorry, but I haven't had this problem with a client before. I know it will sound cocky, but we've only had the opposite problem (well not a problem) that the rankings go up. I call it a problem because sometimes a ranking improvement doesn't always translate into traffic (or qualified traffic for that matter). Sorry, going off on a tangent...
-
SeattleOrganicSEO,
That's worth looking at, but I'm pretty sure it's not only competition. We tumbled form 19th to 42nd in just a few days for the term "nlp". We'd been on the second page for many years.
-
I don't see it being the larger problem.
Have you considered that your competitors have jumped up their SEO efforts? Have you been paying attention to their backlinks and seeing if they've been doing a bit of link building on the keywords you're targeting? It's a lot of work, but if you know the 2 specific SERPs you're targeting, perhaps you can pay attention to what they're doing. Some SEO software out there make it a bit easier to keep track of...
-
I also just realized that we have articles on our website that are elsewhere on the web. Always with permission, but could this be a problem?
-
If this occurred around Nov/Dec, then it might not be the Panda changes. I just though since you posted recently that maybe the recent Panda change (3.2) could of been a possibility.
-
In that article, SeattleOrganicSEO, one of the comments is
Surviving Panda 3.2 - I will target the right keyword and provide superb content.
This drop in rank was occurring around November or December (Panda 3.1?) when I was trying to target several keywords per page and then later adding content to match.
I thought Panda was for scraping and duplicate content problems, do I need to worry about appropriateness of keywords? Do I need to only target keywords that the page is very obviously already optimized for? If it's not code errors, could this be why we've had a ranking drop?
-
I also am a big believer of clean code, crawalability in general.
but i used the bing SEOtolkit, that sees the site just how bing sees, it, I only found one invalid code error, and one page with too much css. I think the w3 validator picks up a lot of issues that are a bit picky.
but I also believe one open tag, can mean huge amounts of content are not read as visisble content.
This is even more concerneing now we have Microsodata, one error can mean your whose scema is useless.
i dont like to have any css or js in my HTML, I like to look at my souce code and be able to read my content easlsy.
This is one of the reasons i dont like CMS.
-
When did it happen? Any chance it happened around the 18th?
http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-3-2-update-confirmed-109321
-
Those errors are just for the homepage, albeit, there may be much less (once a tag is left open, it tends to really confuse the validator). I'd clean up the whole site for good measure; I'm a big fan of SEO PowerSuite's on-page tools when doing this sort of thing.
The line breaks don't all need to be totally replaced, the big gaps at the top just seemed a bit excessive. That particular recommendation is just based in my own superstitions, and those of others, but is based on this: the first 1/3 rule comes into play so much in SEO (weighting content placed high on a page, early in a tag, etc.); condensing the header section to a more sane level seems sensible. Some SEO auditers, such as WebCEO, will also yell at you if your TITLE tag doesn't immediately follow HEAD, for what I'd expect to be a similar thought; although again, not as scientific of a claim to my knowledge as valid code (which absolutely matters).
-
It's been a while since I did code validation, remind me - is that 79 errors just for the home page?
And will the line breaks confuse crawlers?
And remind me what the cleanest thing to replace the line breaks with are.
-
Not necessarily your one path to salvation (and keep your money on this if it does help gain some ground), but I'd personally start with cleaning up the source:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fnlpca.com%2F&charset=(detect+automatically)&
doctype=Inline&group=0&user-agent=W3C_Validator%2F1.279 validation errors could definitely confuse crawlers about how things are organized, and imply usability issues. I'd also do something about the extreme # of unnecessary line breaks. I recently pushed a legal niche site up from page 5 to page 1 on a very competitive, short-tail phrase with not a lot more than cleaning up ugly code.
-
One think i noticed is your linking structure, this would I assume been like it is all along and would not be the reason of the drop. But your menu is on every page (I am assuming), meaning that all pages are linked by all pages. This pattern leads to all pages sharing teh rank, but what you want is your landing pages to have most of the page rank.
you should link to as many pages as you can from the home page, but only link to the home page and landing pages from every other page (where posible of cause). this will shift the PR to those pages. See link for a simple explaination.
http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/a-simple-explanation-of-pagerank
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
-
When rel canonical tag used, which page does Google considers for ranking and indexing? A/B test scenario!
Hi Moz community, We have redesigned our website and launched for A/B testing using canonical tags from old website to new website pages, so there will be no duplicate content issues and new website will be shown to the half of the website visitors successfully to calculate the metrics. However I wonder how actually Google considers it? Which pages Google will crawl and index to consider for ranking? Please share your views on this for better optimisation. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Which one is better for ranking?
Hello community My question is most of the domains on the first page has non-WWW URL thereby If I consider High domain authoritative sites including https://moz.com/ and https://ahrefs.com/ : the site URL is without www on the contrary, when I take Google it has https://www.google.co.in/ It just confused me, could anyone solve my issue that which one is better for SEO?
Web Design | | Tabassum0 -
Old site to new WordPress site - Client concerned about Yahoo Ranking
Hello, Back Story I have a client (law firm) who has a large .html website. He has been doing his own SEO for years and it shows. I think the only reason he reached out to a professional is because he got a huge penalty from Google last fall and fell very far down in rankings. Although, he still retains a #1 spot in Yahoo for his site for the keyword phrase he wants. I have been creating a new WordPress theme for the client and creating all new pages and updating the formatting/SEO. From the beginning I have told the client that when we delete the old site and install a new WordPress site (same domain name, but different page hierarchy) he will take a bump in the search engines until all the 301 redirects get sorted out. I told him I can't guarantee any time frame of how long the dip in SEO will last. Some sites bounce right back while others take longer. Last week, during a discussion, he tells me that if he loses his #1 ranking on Yahoo for any length of time he thinks he will go out of business. Needless to say I was a little taken back. When it comes to SEO I use best practice techniques, do my research, stay on top of trends but I never guarantee rankings when moving to a new site. I'm thinking of ways I can help elevate any type of huge SEO drop off and help the client. Here is what I was thinking of suggesting to the client and I would love some feedback. Main Question He has another domain he isn't doing anything with. It's pretty much his domain name with pc added. I was thinking about using that domain to create a simple 1-2 page WordPress website with brand new content (no duplicate content) aimed at attracting his keyword phrase. I would do as much SEO as I could with a 1-2 page site and give it a month or so to see if this smaller site can get into the top #10 in Yahoo, or higher. Then, when we move the site he will still have a website on the first page of Yahoo for his keyword phrase. I hope I explained it clearly 🙂 I would be open to any suggestions anyone may have. Thanks
Web Design | | Bill_K0 -
Website Drops Some Traffic after Redesign. What's Happening?
What it is NOT: No Link was broken. I have used Moz, Screaming Frog, Excel, etc - there are not broken links. We have not added spammy links. We kept the same amount of links and content on the homepage - with an exception of 1 or 2. All the pages remained canonical. Our blog uses rel=prev rel=next, and each page is canonicalized to itself. We do not index duplicated content. Our tags are content="noindex,follow" We are using the Genesis Framework (we were not before.) Load time is quicker - we now have a dedicated server. Webmaster tools has not reported any crawl report problems. What we did that should have improved our rankings and traffic: Implemented schema.org Responsive design Our bounce rate is down - Average visit length is up. Any ideas?
Web Design | | Thriveworks-Counseling0 -
Could our drop in organic rankings have been caused by improper mobile site set-up?
Site: 12 year old financial service 'information' site with lead gen business model. Historically has held top 10 positions for top keywords and phrases. Background: The organic traffic from Google has fallen to 50% of what it was over the past 4 months compared to the same months last year. While several potential factors could be responsible/contributing (not limited to my pro-active removal of a dozen old emat links that may be perceived as unnatural despite no warning), this drop coincides with the same period the 'mobile site' was launched. Because I admittedly know the least about this potential cause, I am turning to the forum for assistance. Because the site is ~200 pages and contains many 'custom' pages with financial tables, forms, data pulled from 3rd parties, custom/different layouts we opted for creating a mobile site of only the top 12 most popular pages/topics just to have a mobile presence (instead of re-coding the entire site to make it responsive utilizing a mobile css). -These mobile pages were set up in an "m." subdomain. -We used bi-directional tagging placing a rel=canonical tag on the mobile page, and a rel=alternate tag on the desktop page. This created a loop between the pages, as advised by Google. -Some mobile pages used content from a sub page, not the primary desktop page for a particular topic. This may have broken the bi-directional 'loop', meaning the rel=canonical on the mobile page would point to a subpage, where the rel=alternate would point to the primary desktop page, even though the content did not come from that page, necessarily. The primary desktop page is the one that ranks for related keywords. In these cases, the "loop" would be broken. Is this a cause for concern? Could the authority held by the desktop page not be transferred to the mobile version, or the mobile page 'pull away' or disperse the strength of the desktop page if that 'loop' was not connected? Could not setting up the bi-directional tags correctly cause a drop in the organic rankings? -Our developer verified the site is set up according to Google's guidelines for identifying device screen size and serving appropriate version of page. -Are there any tools or utilities that I can use to identify issues, and/or verify everything is configured correctly? -Are we missing anything important in the set-up/configuration? -Could the use of a brand new subdomain 'm.' in and of itself be causing issues? -Have I identified any negative seo practices or pitfalls? Am I missing or overlooking something? While i would have preferred maintaining a single, responsive, site with mobile css, it was not realistic given the various layouts, and owner's desire to only offer the top pages in mobile format. The mobile site may have nothing to do with the organic drop, but I'd like to rule it out if so, and I have so many questions. If anyone could address my concerns, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Greg
Web Design | | seagreen0 -
Drastic rankings drop
SOS SEOMozzers hello all. I woke up this morning to find out our rankings for two main keywords: 1. internet marketing firm
Web Design | | vijayvasu
2. marketing firm dropped from being #8 on google to not being invthe top 50. last week we upgraded the site to HTML5 . We checked the on page via pro tools and everthing seemed fine. We checked Google analytics ( traffic was beginning to fall) and we checked webmaster tools - ( there were not critical issues etc) So now i am bewildered as to what possible happened to wipe us of the search. Please can you help - the site is www.gunshotdigital.com0 -
Sudden dramatic drops in SERPs along with no snippet and no cached page?
We are a very stable, time tested domain (over 15 yrs old) with thousands of stable, time tested inbound links. We are a large catalog/e commerce business and our web team has over a decade's experience with coding, seo etc. We do not engage in link exchanges, buying links etc and adhere strictly to best white hat seo practices. Our SERPs have generally been very stable for years and years. We continually update content, leverage user generated content etc, and stay abreast of important algorithm and policy changes on Google's end. On Wednesday Jan 18th, we noticed dramatic, disturbing changes to our SERPs. Our formerly very stable positions for thousands of core keywords dropped. In addition, there is no snippet in the SERPs and no cached page for these results. Webmaster tools shows our sitemap most recently successfully downloaded by Google on Jan 14th. Over the weekend and monday the 16th, our cloud hosted site experienced some downtime here and there. I suspect that the sudden issues we are seeing are being caused by one of three possibilities: 1. Google came to crawl when the site was unavailable.
Web Design | | jamestown
However, there are no messages in the account or crawl issues otherwise noted to indicate this. 2. There is a malicious link spam or other attack on our site. 3. The last week of December 2011, we went live with Schema.org rich tagging on product level pages. The testing tool validates all but the breadcrumb, which it says is not supported by Schema. Could Google be hating our Schema.org microtagging and penalizing us? I sort of doubt bc category/subcategory pages that have no such tags are among those suffering. Whats odd is that ever since we went live with Schema.org, Google has started preferring very thin content pages like video pages and articles over our product pages. This never happened in the past. the site is: www.jamestowndistributors.com Any help or ideas are greatly, greatly appreciated. Thank You DMG0 -
Does on page links have an effect on SERP rankings with PANDA
I have been doing some competitive analysis basing my company on others and have noticed a pattern. Very high ranking sites seem to have limited the internal and external on page links on their subdomains to under 100. my site has a lot of links but all are relevant and lead to unique content. I am interested to know if anyone else has noticed this pattern in changes in the SERP results. bIs google now penalizing pages with to many on site nav links? And if a full site restructure is needed to allow google to index and rank these pages or if a it is a non issue and does not need to be addressed. Panda confuses me!!!!! HELP!
Web Design | | Brother220