My google rankings went down
-
I've been working with a company to get some incoming links since April 2011. We are targeting only 2 keywords. For one keyword I was ranked number 1 until a couple of weeks ago. In fact, most of my rankings went down including those keywords that the company was not working on. They are writing 5 articles per month and posting them to their proprietary network. Could those backlinks could harmed my rankings?
-
Movement from position 1 to position 4 is not that unusual. I imagine this has caused a subastatntial drop in traffic as the CTR tends to drop sharply after position 3, but I wouldn't consider this a dramatic drop in rankings caused by problems with your backlinks. It is possible that some backlinks might be devalued by Google which has caused a small drop,
More likely this is caused by a Panda update. Panda wasn't a one time update, and this Search Engine Watch article suggests an update around the time of your drop (http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2080631/Google-Quietly-Launches-Panda-Update-Version-2.2). This probably means that Google sees your content as a little weaker than your competitors.
Based on this, I don't think you need to make any major changes. Try to get some more good content up on your site. And I'm not sure how active you are in the social realm, but more social engagement (I suspect Google is a big fan of +1's) could help.
I'm not sure if your on-page efforts are also limited to two keywords, but if so, I'd consider expanding that a bit. Diversification will make your traffic and revenue less susceptible to fluxuations like this. Moving into the social media will also give you another way to produce traffic that isn't reliant on SEO, while usually increasing the efforts of your SEO.
-
Do you know when was the last panda update?. It was feb 24 2011?
-
If it were me, I would shift the spend from linkbuilding to an SEO firm that will not only provide a good SEO audit, but is willing to provide some education as well.
I'd also focus on putting together a few really great pieces of content related to your niche. While researching for this sort of content, make note of other good sites and blogs that your site aligns with, so you can engage with them. Hopefully, through this engagement, they might find the content you've created helpful to their users/readers and link to your site. This is a pretty conservative approach that doesn't yield quick results, but I tend to be in favor of building for the long term.
There are a lot of ways you can start to generate more natural links to your site. I'd recommend doing some research on SEOmoz because my philosophy isn't the only way to go. You've got to figure out what works for your situation.
-
Hi Theo,
I am sorry I did not provided more info. This is my first time here. I answered below each question, in caps.
• Were there any (shady) links build?
HONESTLY, I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT DOES MEAN.• How did the company perform for these keywords in the past?
WHEN THE LINK BUILDER COMPANY STARTED WORKING ON 2 KEYWORDS, THEY GRADUALLY INCREASED THEIR RANKINGS WHILE THE OTHERS REMAINS WITH THE SAME RATING. SUDDENLY, 2 WEEKS AGO ALL KEYWORDS (THE ONE THEY WERE WORKING ON AND THE OTHERS) WENT DOWN, FROM POSITION 1 TO 4.• Were these keywords over-optimized (for example using loads of exact match anchor texts)?.
NO, THE ARTICLES SEEM NATURAL.• Could there have been any impact of a Panda Google update?.
NO. THE SUDDEN DROP STARTED ON JULY 12, APROX.• Did any on-page changes take effect that might have caused these rankings to shift?.
I DID NOTHING ON THE PAGES. THE ONLY THING WE DID IS UPGRADE OUR SHOPPING CART RELEASE. IT WAS AROUND THAT DATE. HOWEVER, I AM ALSO ON THE SHOPPING CART FORUM AND NOBODY EXPERIMENTS ANY DROP BY UPDATING THEIR SHOPPING CART ENGINE.thanks,
-
Hi Joe,
I did not received any notice from Google Webmaster Tool indicating unnatural linking detected. The company is only working on proving me links. They give me every month the list of the articles they wrote and the links, that's it. How can I avoid this sort of unnatural linkbuilding?. The only thing I did today is find out what are the page and domain authority of the links they are providing me. What that company told me is that they only build links and there is nothing wrong they can do to make my rankings decrease. And what they pointed out is that my rankings went down on the keywords they were working on and also in others. Since I am not expert, I trusted them. What else I can do?
-
Yes, the links could be hurting your rankings, but as Theo points out, a number of things could be causing your rankings to drop. Have you received any notices in Google Webmaster Tools about possible unnatural linking detected? Do you handle your own SEO or have a consultant? Are you relying on the company doing linkbuilding for you to provide you with your SEO analysis? Linkbuilding can sometimes be harmful to the health of your website, so it's a good idea to have someone knowledgeable about SEO to keep an eye on the incoming links you're getting to make sure they're good quality. Or you can avoid this sort of unnatural linkbuilding altogether. Depends on the level of risk you're willing to accept.
-
Pretty much anything is possible based on the data you've provided us at this moment..
- Were there any (shady) links build?
- How did the company perform for these keywords in the past?
- Were these keywords over-optimized (for example using loads of exact match anchor texts)?
- Could there have been any impact of a Panda Google update?
- Did any on-page changes take effect that might have caused these rankings to shift?
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
-
Blacklist IP on Barracuda hurt your Rankings?
Hey Everyone, I was wondering, I ran a website IP address on http://mxtoolbox.com/ and the website was on the blacklist on only one place that is on BARRACUDA. **Also the website other than that the site is clean. ** Domain clean by Google Safe Browsing: Domain clean by Norton Safe Web: Domain clean on Phish tank: Domain clean on the Opera browser: Domain clean by SiteAdvisor: Domain clean by the Sucuri Malware Labs blacklist: Domain clean on Yandex (via Sophos): Domain clean by ESET: So I have 2 questions. The site in question is a Classifieds Ad Website
Link Building | | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT
1. Does your ranking get affected if you are associated with a website who is linked to you and is on the blacklist for spam only on Barracuda?
**2. If a website has a bad rating on WOT or WEBUTATION. Does that also hurt your ranking? ** Your help is appreciated. Thanks.0 -
Best way to boost ranking for most important keyword?
Hello! I have a blog that is doing really well. Low bounce rate, search queries going up pretty fast, more organic traffic than my first blog. I shot up to spot 5 for my main keyword which was a thrill. But I have dropped back down. According to Google Webmasters I was at spot 11, then 12, and today 13. I worked on doing a lot of internal linking to the page that was ranking at # 5. It is a category page although I'd like my homepage to rank high for that same keyword one day. My site is less than 2 months old and I know it takes time but I am seeing so many signs of great potential. I am looking for ANY advice on how to boost my rankings for this one particular keyword. Thanks! 😃
Link Building | | dealblogger0 -
Google Link-building Update....
Hey, Guys How long does it take for Google to recognize your link-building efforts with authority websites and affect the SERPS?
Link Building | | AubbiefromAubenRealty0 -
To know effect on our Website rank in Google Search results
Ours is Property Advertising Company. And we have agents and consultants working from other areas in providing property for advertising in our website. So we collect all the data (5000 data nearly) and upload in one stretch directly to our database. I would like to know whether this process will affect our ranking in google search results because when we upload 5000 data, the links in our website also increases.
Link Building | | Rajesh.Chandran0 -
When does Google Webmaster update your links to site??
Hi everyone We removed a load of links from a site over 2 months ago but they still show in Google webmaster tools. I understand Google will not be reading this links as they were removed so long ago. However I just was interested when Google might update these as not showing as linking to us anymore. I like to try and keep things tidy and its a bit frustrating it would be good to be 100% sure what Google is counting at any given time. Cheers James
Link Building | | tempowebdesign0 -
How Google handles with paid directories?
Are paid directories held to the same standards as paid links? Is it going to get penalized my website if I submit website to paid directory?
Link Building | | joeko0 -
Rankings on Google compared to Bing &Yahoo
Does anyone have any information about the differences between the search engines, im ranking #1 on google but only about 3rd or 4th on bing and yahoo. Cheers
Link Building | | eirianprice
EP0 -
When is Google going to sort their act out?
I work with a couple of clients in the finance and debt area. I've been doing loads of work examining the link profiles of the commercial sites at the top of the rankings and 70% of the links I am seeing are low value directories and sites obviously built for links with multiple outgoing links to completely unrelated sources! When I examine the other links their isn't enough value in them to outweigh what looks to me like very obvious and spammy low quality link building. Why can't Google see what I'm seeing - it's so obvious? I know there are multiple factors at play but links like these should offer no value or get a site penalised (isn't that what Google tell us) but these sites still seem to be ranking because of them rather than despite them!
Link Building | | SearchEngineRescue0