Ranking drop Feb 2013?
-
I'm trying to get to the bottom of why Directholidays.co.uk suffered a drop in rankings for the term "cheap holidays" in February 2013.
Im looking at this recently and as an outsider so I haven't got access to Webmaster tools and I haven't been tracking rankings/link profiling.
They moved from 2nd to 10th temporarily and then recovered at 7th the new 10th!
I've looked at keywords improved/declined on, keywords lost/gained, traffic, traffic price but im failing to see exactly what I can use to show whether Panda #24 (officially 22nd of January) had a significant effect.
Can anyone shed any light on this? It would be massively appreciated!
-
No worries re: parrotting. If you look here in the Q&A and on things like Disqus, you'll find me repeating myself pretty often.
Travel sites like yours can be really difficult. There are so many of them, most have virtually the same content, and it seems that most are extremely committed to link spam (and are often still succeeding with it).
My gut instinct would be to try to come up with some really useful travel planning guides as a linkable asset like a PDF or maybe video. Some general guides for specific parts of the world (things like "How Not to Offend People in _____"), and maybe some for more specific locations. Then the tricky part is promoting that content in a non-spammy way so it will get shared, Liked, linked to, etc.
That's a lot of work, but if Google ever drops the hammer on the travel site niche which is competitive and pretty spammy, you will have a better chance of survival.
-
Thanks Nick,
I was trying to assess the "SEO landscape" at the time, but i'll hopefully cover that by discussing the progression towards a deeper, more naturally distributed valued content based SEO strategy.
I'm still keen to identify if there are any obvious factors besides general algorithm updates competitor growth that resulted in the observed ranking changes.
It would give me a better idea of how to plan an effective strategy on re-gaining the #2 ranking.
Thanks in advance and apologies for sounding like a parrot!
-
Not every ranking change is due to a named algorithm update.
I want everyone who uses the Q/A to have to repeat this 10 times before they are able to post a question. Well said
-
I am not sure how knowing whether or not one particular piece of Google's algorithm found a problem with the site is going to help, but since Panda is generally going after copied or thin/weak content, I think it is safe to say that a lack of unique and "quality" content is to blame. All those links using the anchor text "cheap holidays" are also a potential problem, though not specifically a panda thing.
If I understood correctly, the site dropped from #2 to #10 and back to 7. Still on page one, so count your blessings. With a relatively small drop like that, it is probably just the Google algorithm in general or external factors like lost or devalued incoming links, rather than a specific filter against the site. Not every ranking change is due to a named algorithm update.
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
-
Backlinks to internal pages help website to rank better or vice versa?
Hi Moz community, We have our backlinks mostly pointed to our homepage. We are trying to rank better and not having minimum number of backlinks to our internal pages is one of the things I worry about. Backlinks to homepage alone help in ranking internal pages or backlinks to internal pages help in ranking homepage? Or both required? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Added a few paragraphs with header tags targeting a keyword and dropped immediately!
Hi all, Our website homepage doesn't contain much content associated with our primary keyword or product, it's mostly explaining our features. So we tried adding a section at bottom of the homepage which explains the about our services like "what is seo" and "how seo helps business". We are trying to rank for this primary keyword like "seo" with generic content and we dropped immediately after this deployment. Any suggestions on this why and how to proceed? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Bad Grammar's Effect on Rankings
Mozzers, I have a client who's brand style guide dictates that they write in all lowercase letters. Do you think this will hurt rankings? Nails
Algorithm Updates | | matt.nails1 -
Would having links on wikipedia help search engine rankings?
I am wondering that having a listing on Wikipedia would help search engine rankings in general? I know all of the Wikipedia links are no-follow links but I think it'd still help to rank higher on search engines. What are your thoughts?
Algorithm Updates | | ahmetkul1 -
Question: About Google's personalization of search results and its impact on monitoring ranking results
Given Google's personalization of search results for anyone who's logged into a Google property, how realistic and how actually meaningful/worthwhile is it to monitor one's ranking results for any keyword term these days?
Algorithm Updates | | RandallScrubs0 -
Who else is noticing a shift in deeper pages ranking?
Without mentioning names, we're noticing a shift in many of our clients ranking pages. Previously many of them held page 1 positions with their home page. We've been building brand only anchor text to these pages for some time now and there's a noticeable change in visibility to the domain as a whole displayed in GWT and there's an uplift in organic traffic too. It just happens that some of our clients already had pages in the root directory that were very optimised for the clients' head terms, but all of a sudden, these sub pages with very few inbound links have started ranking in the place of the home pages. I've attached a screenshot of the landing page organic traffic. The pages in question have been there for at least 8-10 months. These inner pages would not normally have been able to hold their ground in this position and I'm concerned that this is a temporary change. I can see this going one of two ways; (i) home page beings to out rank sub page as before, (i) sub page loses ranking ability and home page rank does not come back. My questions to the community are therefore; **Has anyone else noticed this shift in ranking behaviour? ** What are everyone's thoughts on this? - Will it remain this way? From this query I can easily ask another wider question; Good advice across the internet says we should be building strong brand links and citations to our clients' domains. Typically brand links go to the homepage, which should provide the homepage and (to a lesser extent the domain) with a ranking/traffic/visibility uplift. However, as I'm noticing other pages now picking up ranking boosts as a result of this; **Should we still be trying to gain links to these more commercial landing pages? ** How are others building high quality links to pages full of commercial copy? I hope this can spark a little bit of a debate. I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts. Thanks yPOEjVA.png
Algorithm Updates | | tomcraig860 -
Puzzled by recent SERP results - what ranking factors cause this?
Hi mozzers, I have been using moz tools for a long while now for assessing SEO metrics with great success, but since recent Google algorithm updates I am seeing more and more SERPS that just simply don't make sense to me what so ever. The most startling recently was an assessment of one of the keywords my own site competes for "Link Building Services" The current No 1 position in Google.co.uk is held by http://www.napalit.org/ I invite all you seo experts out there to take a look at this site, look at it metrics in OSE compared with the "lower" competition and explain to me why it is No1. I would really like to know what ranking factors this site has that makes it "higher quality" and offer "better value" than the competition. I thought I understood what Google was trying to do with recent updates - get rid of non-value adding spammers and improve the quality of the search results. But now I am becoming more sceptical. Are they just making it impossible for us to make a difference by following good SEO practices so we all resort to paying for Adwords? I hope you guys out there can help me with this one and restore my faith. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | websearchseo0 -
Local search ranking tips needed
Hi there, I've been working on my clients website for a while now. About a month ago I created him a local business listing in Google. I was wondering if there are any new tips to get his business up the rankings in local search? I've researched and only really found information relevant to the old way Google displayed local search.
Algorithm Updates | | SeoSheikh0