Decline in ranking for a particular theme of keywords after Penguin 2.0
-
Hi everyone
Last month we found on of our clients rankings were seeing significant declines in ranking (like from 3 to 28). This occurred around the time of the Penguin 2.0 update.
After further investigation we found that only a collection of keywords were affected. If we were hit by the algorithm update we would expect to find all keywords declining.
We have not been manually penalized and other keyword themes are seeing moderate day to day ranking improvements.
I know that rankings jump from day to day but a sudden decline of around 20 places for a theme of keywords isn't what we would expect.
Thanks all.
-
I had the same experience on a few sites. Ranked #1 for over a year, dropped same day as penguin, but bounced back the next day.
-
I'd be tempted to hang fire a little while before "fixing" the problem, and give it a while longer to shake out.
We had something very similar around the time of Penguin 2 on one of our sites, and like you for only a selection of our keywords. Half of the dropped keywords have returned to roughly where they were. Of the other half most have increased, but are still down compared to pre-Penguin.
One keyword went from 3rd to not in top 50 and back to 4th this week.
Aside from burning a fair bit of time trying to figure out what was going on and if we'd been partially Penguined, I'm not sure I'm any the wiser! Nothing notable going on with key competitors, nothing news worthy or topical in the sector - just temporary obliteration of around a quarter of keywords.
-
Thanks everyone. They keywords have hovered around the drop zone for a while now.
The unusual thing here is that the set of keywords have the same sort of back link profile as the rest of the keywords. We recently inherited the SEO work for this site and the previous agency used PR sites religiously with exact anchor matching text. I'm surprised that the site hasn't been hit as hard with the penguin update.
The industry is highly niche and so I doubt it will be revolving around a news story or current trend. Nevertheless we have lined up a competitor analysis.
Apologies for the lack of detail, the keywords effected mainly revolve around 'Carpet Protection'.
So the question here is whether we should take the risk and try removing these PR links (perhaps with Google disavow) or not.
-
Without knowing the site and the keywords (why is everyone so protective over these, even within this community??), it's almost impossible to say.
3 to 28 is quite a jump, but if the terms revolve around a trending news story or a seasonal term then that's not unusual at all. I would be happy to look further if you want to provide more specifics.
-
Did you build backlinks from certain domain names for those keywords? May be Penguine 2.0 hit those sites who were providing you link juice and support such keywords.
Thanks
-
There's some other things to consider (which you may have already done.)
What other changes can you see in the SERPS for your affected keywords, in particular what's happened to your competitors. Are there new sites now competing in the SERPS?
By analysing the "SERP Landscape" after changes like this can (but not always) give you an insight as to whether it's just your site that's been affected, multiple sites or the entire SERP.
A 3 to 28 drop is pretty nasty. Has there been any movement since the drop or has the SERP remained stable?
-
Drop in a particular theme of keywords is not unusual. It is highly possible that the particular theme has more relevant content on other sites or you have probably done over linking with same anchor text for that theme of keywords.
We also saw the same trend happening for one of our clients, but we removed the links, improved the content, and the rank was back up.
-
What is your exact question?
It could be possible that you dropped ranking around the penguin 2.0 update. It doesn't necessarily have to do anything with penguin though. It could be that the user engagement around this area on your site has been less good because for example the information is out of date.
I could take a look at your site and see if i find anything which could have caused this if you give me the url and the set of keywords you have dropped ranking for.
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 Google recognises Brand name? And ignores attested keywords?
Hi community, Our company name got attested with our industry keyword over the years; which also primary keyword of our homepage and all of our industry competitors. Best example is... Moz turns to Moz SEO for fraction of the audience or users. Again this is an example. Now if Google thinks "Moz" is only the company name, does it ignores the word "seo" completely? Or Google gives negative score for employing "seo" after "Moz" across all pages? Does the "seo" word will be considered or ignored in this case? How Google recognises the company name? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Best place to employ "branded" related keywords to gain SEO benefits and rank for "non branded" keywords?
Hi all, I want to put this question straight with an example rather than confusing with a scenario. If there is company called "vertigo", a tiles manufacturer. There are many search queries with thousands of searches like "vertigo tiles life", "vertigo tiles for garden", "vertigo tiles dealers", "vertigo tiles for kitchen", etc....These kind of pages will eventually have tendency to rank for non-branded keywords like "tiles for garden", "tiles for kitchen", etc. So where to employ these kind of help/info pages? Main website or sub-domain? Is it Okay to have these pages on sub-domain and traffic getting diverted to sub domain? What if the same pages are on main website? Will main website have ranking improvement for non branded keywords because of employing the landing pages with related topics? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Keyword Stuffing - Where Do You Draw the Line?
I have a tax software website for which there a multiple pages that compete using different keywords. However, all pages but my home page have recently fallen out of the rankings completely and I really just don't know why. For instance, my page - http://www.1099pro.com/prod1099proEnt.asp - has the title keywords "1099 Efile Software | 1099 Software | 1099 Electronic Filing". When I run a Moz report on the keyword "1099 E-File Software" I get an "A" rating and it finds a total of 8 instances of the keyword. However, when I run a Moz report on the keyword "1099 Software" it finds a total of 26 instances of the keyword - still with an "A" rating. When I search the actual text/html there are only 6 instances of the keyword "1099 software" which leads me to believe that Moz/Google/Search Engines are ignoring the middle term in words like "1099 printing software" or "1099 e-filing software" and only picking up "1099 software". Is this supposed to be happening? Does anyone know why or how many terms can be ignored in that fashion? I used to have multiple landing pages in the top 3 results and now all of my other landing pages have completely fallen from the rankings even though I am not keyword stuffing and am providing unique & relevant content. If anyone has an idea as to why my rankings have dropped so drastically I would really appreciate it (I take no part in black-hat link building so that isn't the reason).
Algorithm Updates | | Stew2220 -
Ranking Drop After Switching Sites
I have a client who's rankings dropped after switching to out site. We know that rankings can drop a little after switching, but we are concerned that hers are still low. Any suggestions? As far as I can tell, the links to her site remained the same. Thanks Holly
Algorithm Updates | | hwade1 -
If the homepage is sandboxed for a keyword is the whole site sandboxed for that keyword?
If the homepage of a website has been sandboxed for certain keywords does this mean that the whole site is sandboxed for them keywords or just the homepage? If a new sub-page was created with quality unique content, would it be possible to get that sub-page ranked for the same keywords that have been sandboxed on the homepage? I have asked many other SEO professionals this same question and nobody really knows for sure. Do you?
Algorithm Updates | | Mark A Preston0 -
Hit hard by Penguin
We've been hit hard by the Penguin update. To start - we have never paid for a link or participated in any link scheme. Never. I'm sure you've heard that - but in this case it's true. Our site - www.annuity.com - has been in existence since 2004. Because of our name, we've always been ranked on page 1 of Google for the search term "annuity". Now we aren't even on page 50. We got the dreaded letter about links, but we've never bought, exchanged, paid, etc. or participated in any link scheme. We have not needed too. We are referenced by sites such as Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Bankrate.com, etc. Our content is original and our own. We've spent years writing it. Because of our sites name - Annuity.com - we get a lot of web spam. Looking at some of our inbound links - companies are linking to us because of our name (keyword - looks like a auto link generation or something like that) or our reputation. Any suggestions or advice on how to get our ranking back without becoming the Web Police? We don't buy, purchase, spam, or need links that are not earned by the quality of our content. I'm at a loss.
Algorithm Updates | | galis421 -
How can Chrome rankings vary wildly from Mozilla and IE8?
Our website (www.theideapeople.com) has generally ranked on page 4 on Google search for the phrase "charlotte web design" for the past year...regardless of which browser I used. Oh, and my browser location is always set to Charlotte, NC. I also have the Moz toolbar installed and logged-in. Today, I Googled the same keyword using Chrome and we were on page 1 in 4th position! The other browsers still showed us on page 4, as usual. Has anybody else noticed this wild variance with Chrome? Is Chrome learning that I work at The Idea People?!!
Algorithm Updates | | theideapeople0 -
Rankings in Bing/Yahoo lower than in Google
Other than a few keywords, my rankings are consistently lower in MSN/Bing/Yahoo than in Google. Any ideas or suggestions as to why?
Algorithm Updates | | NueMD0