Half my ranks have gone missing
-
I have a site that was rankly very highly for gaming walkthrough phrases. I was ranking #3 for the phrase skyward sword walkthrough
Then it began to drop, despite me building more links (non spammy links) through guest blogs and emailing people requesting they just link to it from their site.
I went in and added more text to the page and it went up a few places but is now gone from the first 5-10 pages.
This has also happened to all of my walkthrough related ranks. My other ranks are still there but these accounted for a large portion of my traffic and is very odd.
My on-page grade is near if not perfect
Some insight would be nice
-
As of today, my page is now ranking 5th on page 1. It is just bouncing all over the place.
-
Can you tell what day the drop happened?
-
If that is the case, why would this page be penalized? Ive never bought links, the on-page isn't totally
spammy, backlink profile isn't all exact match and is a good mix of anchor text and image links. All of the links are legitimately created.
This page for instance was one of my highest viewed pages, has a low BR, high time on site, etc. So its tailored to what people want when searching for this phrase
If I am penalized then it is absolutely beyond me on why I would be.
-
I write it all. No messages of concern
-
Do you have any messages in your WMT?
If you look at your analytics traffic sorted by organic traffic can you tell what day the drop happened?
Is your content completely written by you or do you get it from another source?
-
yes unless you have a major penalty you will always showup for "domainname.com" in quotes in search.
search for your exact meta description in quotes and your site is supposed to show up at the top
-
Are you sure?
It shows up for
"skyward sword walkthrough" "legendzelda.net"
I will cut back on the phrase walkthrough, but I find it hard to believe that using it in the way I am would cause the page to be penalized. And my other walkthrough pages do not use it like that so it doesn't make sense either.
Is there anything else you can see on the page that would cause this?
-
that page is penalized. even for very specific searches it doesn't come up which means it has been ranking suppressed for the keyword phrase "skyward sword walkthrough"
If it has happened to your other walkthrough related pages look at the use of overusing "walkthrough" on your site anchor texts and on page density
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
-
How does this site rank no 1 for big terms with no optimisation?
Hi, A client recently asked me abut a site that appears to have popped up out of nowhere and is ranking for big terms within their industry: http://bit.ly/11jcpky I have looked at the site for a particular term: Cheap Beds I was using unpersonalised search on google.co.uk with location set to London. The site currently ranks no 1 for that term and other similar terms. The question is how? SEO Moz reports no backlinks (they must have blocked?) Ahrefs and Majestic report report some backlinks but not many and no anchor text with the term in. The Page title and meta do not contain the term nor does the page seem to contain the term anywhere. The domain does have some age though has no keyword match in the URL. I'm a little stumped to how they are achieving these results. Any Ideas Anyone?
Algorithm Updates | | JeusuDigital0 -
18 years later, Page Rank 6 Drops to 0, All +1s disappear, Scrapers outrank us
18 years ago I put up our first website at http://oz.vc/6 Traffic grew and our forums reached hundreds of thousands of posts, our website had a page rank of 6 and our forums and other content areas ranked 5-6, the others usually 4-6. Panda 2.2 came along and whacked it. No measures recommended by SEO experts and the Matt Cutts videos even made a dent, including some pretty severe measures that were supposed to make a difference. Bing and Yahoo traffic both grew since Panda 2.2 and only Google kept dropping every few updates without recovery. Several few weeks ago Google provides the ultimate whack. It seems every page other than the home page has either a PR of 0 or not generating any PR at all. Every +1 disappeared off of the site. Now three pages have +1 back and the entire guide section (hundreds of articles) are still missing all +1s. I discovered two scrapers, one of which was copying all of our forum posts and ranking a PR 2 for it (while we have a zero. They were taken down but I still can't imagine how this result could happen. I am going to have an RSS feed aggregator taken down that is ranking a 2 and knows we can't prevent them from taking our Wordress feeds and storing them (we use them for areas on the site.) How can Google provide us with a zero page rank and give obvious scrapers page rank? What should have been years worth of awesome rich added content and new features was wasted chasing Google ghosts. I've had two SEO people look at the site and none could point to any major issue that would explain what we've seen, especially the latest page rank death penalty. We haven't sold paid links. We have received no warnings from Google (nor should we have.) The large "thin" area you may see in a directory were removed entirely from Google (and made no difference and a drop in Google doing the "right" thing!) Most think we have been stuck for a very long time in the rare Google glitch. Would be interested in your insights.
Algorithm Updates | | seoagnostic0 -
Sudden Page Rank Drop for Weight Loss Camp
My site BalanceME.com has been performing really well and continually climbs more and more but in the last 7 days we have had a drop this last week. We went from #2 for weight loss camp to #6, and even further on other terms. It is mid May and I cannot find any other explanation for the sudden drop. I am hoping someone could give me some sort if idea what could possibly be the answer. Recently we have had two press releases go out, target for keywords, and also installed images that navigate to new pages on the site. There have been few additions to the site, and nothing can explain the drop. Other companies in our group have not had issues with recent drops, and we use the same practices with the other organizations. Thank you for your time
Algorithm Updates | | FVdBeuken0 -
What would you recommend i do to improve my rankings?
I am looking for some advice as to what I need to do to improve my rankings? website: www.funktiongolf.co.uk Thanks Ben
Algorithm Updates | | funktiongolf0 -
Merging Multiple Domains into a Single Domain and Its Effect on Ranking
My client had multiple top-level-domains. Each one represented an insurance program within a specific vertical. For all the sites at these alternate domains, there was a 30/70 mix of duplicate vs. original content. Some of the alternate domains ranked very well for their target keyphrase groups, where others were absent in results pages. We advised the client to merge multiple domains into their existing main domain, for usability and SEO reasons. We recently ran the merger. Here was our process: On the main domain, transfer the content such that it matches 1-for-1 content on the various alternate domains Setup Google Webmaster tools on the main domain Push the new content on the main domain live and submit a corresponding sitemap to Google Establish 301 redirects on the alternate domains, such that each alternate domain URL points to its respective page on the main domain We did this 12 days ago, and pages (previously on the alternate domains) that had ranked well on Google have now plummeted or are entirely non-existent. Did we do the right thing by merging multiple top-level domains into a single domain? Is this initial dip in rankings normal? How soon should we expect to see it return to its normal rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | PinckneyHugoGroup0 -
Our Rankings are being very inconsistent! Some days we are on the front page, some days we are not in the top 50\. This happens on a weekly and sometimes daily basis... Any thoughts on why this is happening? This newbie appreciates any feedback.
We seem to be having major issues with our rankings. When I came into the company, the company was in the middle of cleaning up some of their past SEO efforts that had caused some issues with some of the latest Google updates. We were able to get the site back up to par, and some of our rankings were improved back to the first page, but then they disappeared. They will head back to the first page and then disappear again on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. Does anyone have any idea on why it will be doing this so inconsistently and so often? This newbie appreciates any feedback!!!!!
Algorithm Updates | | PCMV0 -
Google.uk rankings plummet, .com improves. What to do?
Hey Guys, Seems so much has changed with international SEO I'm not sure what to do with our site. We have a huge site with many country level landing pages that perform very well on google.com searches (IE; keyword + Jamaica) etc. We are not using a .co.uk version of our site and now our rankings have plummeted in the UK. Should we just make a .co.uk with similar (or the exact same content) or is there some newer strategy to follow?
Algorithm Updates | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Ranking Tracking Tool Not Accurate?
Is google still updating the algo on a daily basis or for the most part are you other mozzers seeing your rankings stick? I ask because the rank tracking software I use locally on my laptop shows me inaccurate rankings, as well as the SEOMOZ tool (which was just updates yesterday). I am not sure why this is happening, but as of yesterday I lost four page one rankings, which I didn't deserve anyway, and was apparently a fluke until they did the PR update. So I dont mind, but I am curious if they are still tweaking on a daily basis or if its safe to continue link building. I dont want them to make another change and have it affect my rankings in a negative way.
Algorithm Updates | | getbigyadig0