Ranking slipped to page 6 from page 1 over the weekend?
-
My site has been on page one for 2 phrases consistently from May onwards this year. The site has fewer than 100 backlinks and the link profile looks fairly even. On Friday we were on page 1, we even had a position 1, however now we are on page 6.
Do you think this is Penguin or some strange Google blip?
We have no webmaster tools messages at all.
Thanks for any help!
-
It's really hard to speak in generalities. If the site had <100 back-links, and some of those links were questionable or they were all targeted to a couple of phrases, then yes, a Penguin update could cause you trouble. The other option is that Google gave you some leeway out the gate and then re-evaluated your link profile and found it to be weak. Given that you ranked back in May, though, that seems unlikely (usually, that would happen in the first 30-60 days, in my experience).
A couple of things to check:
(1) Has anything about your indexed site change (such as duplicates of these pages)?
(2) Were there any technical or design changes to the site?
(3) Have you engaged in any recent link-building that could be questionable?
(4) Are you ranking for exact-match versions of the keywords (in quote)?
The more you can isolate the problem, the better. Penalty diagnosis is tricky.
-
I'd concur with Lesley Paone, that definitely coincides with Penguin 2.1 update. I haven't seen your link profile but you mentioned there's just 100 backlinks. It may be this was enough to rank you before, but not anymore. Just a thought.
-
Google always look for quality content, design for user not for search engine, try to rewrite
-
Hi I've sent you a private message as didn't want to reveal the URL over here
thanks
-
From what I understand, no. It is basically an web spam algorithm change. Manual actions are for the sites that get around the changes, but are still spammy. So they manually have to assess a penalty. At least from my understanding.
-
The rankings were fine on Friday afternoon UK time but first thing this morning (Monday) when I have checked they have moved significantly. Considering there are hardly any backlinks I'm shocked at the extreme slip in rankings. None of my other sites have had a problem.
-
I was just going to post a new question, but this is related so I thought I'd join in here. I have seen drops in keyword ranking also which I believe is Penguin 2.1. My question is this, can I rely on the manual action section of webmaster tools to tell me if the site has been hit?
-
It very well could of been because penguin 2.1 was released this weekend. What day did it happen on? https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/386231794883780609
-
Hi there.
Can you please write your website adress and keyword that you lost ranking so there is a possibility to check it ?
Frutiko Team
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
-
Ranking 1st for a keyword - but when 's' is added to the end we are ranking on the second page
Hi everyone - hope you are well. I can't get my head around why we are ranking 1st for a specific keyword, but then when 's' is added to the end of the keyword - we are ranking on the second page. What could be the cause of this? I thought that Google would class both of the keywords the same, in this case, let's say the keyword was 'button'. We would be ranking 1st for 'button', but 'buttons' we are ranking on the second page. Any ideas? - I appreciate every comment.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Multiple pages optimised for the same keywords but pages are functionally different and visually different
Hi MOZ community! We're wondering what the implications would be on organic ranking by having 2 pages, which have quite different functionality were optimised for the same keywords. So, for example, one of the pages in question is
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrueluxGroup
https://www.whichledlight.com/categories/led-spotlights
and the other page is
https://www.whichledlight.com/t/led-spotlights both of these pages are basically geared towards the keyword led spotlights the first link essentially shows the options for led spotlights, the different kind of fittings available, and the second link is a product search / results page for all products that are spotlights. We're wondering what the implications of this could be, as we are currently looking to improve the ranking for the site particularly for this keyword. Is this even safe to do? Especially since we're at the bottom of the hill of climbing the ranking ladder of this keyword. Give us a shout if you want any more detail on this to answer more easily 🙂0 -
Duplicate page title at bottom of page - ok, or bad?
Can I get you experts opinion? A few years ago, we customized our pages to repeat the page title at the bottom of the page. So the page title is in the breadcrumbs at the top, and then it's also at the bottom of the page under all the contents. Here is a sample page: bit.ly/1pYyrUl I attached a screen shot and highlighted the second occurence of the page title. Am worried that this might be keyword stuffing, or over optimizing? Thoughts or advice on this? Thank you so much! ron ZH8xQX6
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
How many links would you need to rank up in page rank?
White hat **** Can 20 website with page rank of 3 make your site rank higher?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spidersite0 -
What happen to ranking if a website go from 1 to 3 weeks Offline ?
I know sound crazy, but things like this can happen. A client have a legal problem whit his domain name and is posible to be offline for 1 week to 3 weeks. The website is in the travel Sector, and have some good rankings on GOO. I did´t find fresh information on Internet about what can happen to rankins in the case of going offline for a week. So... any of yours have been through an experience like this ? Thanks. Matias
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maty0 -
Are there any negative effects to using a 301 redirect from a page to another internal page?
For example, from http://www.dog.com/toys to http://www.dog.com/chew-toys. In my situation, the main purpose of the 301 redirect is to replace the page with a new internal page that has a better optimized URL. This will be executed across multiple pages (about 20). None of these pages hold any search rankings but do carry a decent amount of page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually0 -
NOINDEX listing pages: Page 2, Page 3... etc?
Would it be beneficial to NOINDEX category listing pages except for the first page. For example on this site: http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/101/fsx-missions/ Has lots of pages such as Page 2, Page 3, Page 4... etc: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aflyawaysimulation.com+fsx+missions Would there be any SEO benefit of NOINDEX on these pages? Of course, FOLLOW is default, so links would still be followed and juice applied. Your thoughts and suggestions are much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640 -
What causes internal pages to have a page rank of 0 if the home page is PR 5?
The home page PageRank is 5 but every single internal page is PR 0. Things I know I need to address each page has 300 links (Menu problem). Each article has 2-3 duplicates caused from the CMS working on this now. Has anyone else had this problem before? What things should I look out for to fix this issue. All internal linking is follow there is no page rank sculpting happening on the pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOBrent0