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
-
Unnatural link Manual Penalty by Google
Hi, Our product Quiz Maker help users to create quizzes and can share, embed etc. We have a link in our embed code which was DoFollow and we've got many doFollow links from the websites on which our quizzes got shared but these links are too old like 2009, 2012 etc. After that, to complying with Google policies, we've changed the dofollow link to nofollow in embed code. Here are two scenarios: 1.) We've too many dofollow links which are too old and we don't have control over it as these are the natural links, given by our users before we changed the embed code link. 2.) Now, we are getting nofollow links from the widget as the embed code consists of nofollow link. Our embed code is editable and user can change it to dofollow or nofollow as per their requirement. Moreover, some people shared quizzes on their website (without using embed code) with dofollow link. But, now, google is taking manual action penalty against us. How we can resolve it as it seriously affects the overall performance of our website. Thanks
Link Building | | SameerBhatia2 -
Does adding a backlink in google plus comments work?
Hi guys, Can anybody tell me if adding a backlink in Google plus comments achieve anything?
Link Building | | Brover0 -
Can you duplicate on site Blog Posts to Google Plus
I have read from an authorative source that you can duplicate your blog posts on your google plus account without issues as google knows that this is your 'property'. is this correct and what would be the value in doing so? until we have need sign posting new blog posts with a link. Ash
Link Building | | AshShep10 -
Ranking drop Any help please
hi i got a website www.willowstairlifts.co.uk and I am doing seo for keyword Stairlifts , it was going all good i managed to get it from page 15 to page 4 but yesterday its start going backward it jumps back from position 31 to 61 , i have been very careful in doing on page and also with my link building. I have just a few directories , bookmarks and I am targeting guest post, and i have got few links from them. i cant find anything wrong and worried, as surely it can be a penalty, is it just google dance? as i am aware google is recently doing some updates which they are denying it. hope you guys can help me , many thanks
Link Building | | conversiontactics0 -
What do you do if you have been hit by recent Google updates but cannot remove the links?
We have a potential new client who did their own SEO about 6-7 years ago.They ranked really well for years then obviously recently got hit. Some of the links they have are shocking, directories, articles sites etc. They did not use links farms but the links do not look great at all. The problem is they do not have log ins to remove these links manually themselves. Asking for a reconsideration with Google will not get us anywhere due to more recent link building issues we are trying to resolve. They have sent removal requests at least 10 times to these sites but no response. Has anyone overcome these types of issues previously and can give any tips? This would be a good client for us so keen to see what I can do to get them on-board.
Link Building | | tempowebdesign0 -
Which is the best link building method after Google penguin update & why?
We are currently offering our client pre penguin these activities for link building: Local listing Directory submission bookmarking article submission blog comment guest post business review squidoo lens Forum posting infograhics My questions is which is the best link building method and is there any activity that is redundant now. thanks
Link Building | | conversiontactics0 -
Can changing our links page make our rankings drop through the floor?
Hi all, When I first started at my current job, most of the link building (aside from submitting to free directories left, right and centre) was replying to every spammy reciprocal email and adding them to our links page! Now we're all a bit wiser about such matters (thanks SEOMoz!), I want to get our links page turned into something actually useful. My plan was to get it neatly categorised, with recommendations, cut out unrelated links that would be useless to visitors and call it something like "Our Friends" I thought this might be useful for future link building efforts, but in its current state, it's a complete mess. However, I am worried about cutting out a lot of links if they have been reciprocal ones. Are the sort of sites that would be sending typical spammy link exchange emails for window installation in NY likely to notice our UK education site taking away their link six months later and take away ours? If they do, will losing links from these sites harm us? Perhaps more importantly, is my plan a terrible idea in the first place? Look forward to hearing from y'all!
Link Building | | TEFLScot0 -
Does the url text count as anchor text in google's algo?
I always try to strive for getting good anchortext in links that people link to my sites with, but sometimes they are not very web savvy, or just plain not willing to format the link the way i want it and we end up with links that use the URL as the anchortext. My question is, if i format a url such that it has keywords in it, and when someone makes a link like this: http://www.storwell.com/self-storage-toronto-bursary-application-form.php does google consider the words: storwell, self, storage, toronto, bursary, application & form as the anchor text?
Link Building | | adriandg0