Sudden drop in ranking for keyword. Might i have a penalty?
-
I redesigned two websites last year www.studiowest.com and www.tracsd.com and didn't suffer any drop in rankings.
About a month ago we redesigned again but this time merged the two sites into one, www.studiowest.com. All was well and we were #1 ranked for "recording studio san diego" UNTIL today. (Suddenly we are off the front page at #12. We are still in the 3 pack from my view.)
I'm trying to figure out what happened. We did 301 redirects. Could I have been penalized? I'm trying to work on my Google Business pages, there were too many, maybe that affected it?
What's the best way to check if I'm penalized or otherwise figure out what happened?
-
Thank you again! I think it's a great idea—I actually wanted a paragraph on top but others wanted to try it this way first, they thought a really clean page would be most friendly, but maybe we're so used to knowing what the place is about that we forgot others need some orientation with text!
I've been researching the sudden drop in rankings and I don't think we did any of the things that could cause it. I'm hoping it's the Google flux thing and will go away. Guess we'll see.
In any case I am very grateful that you commented, was VERY helpful.
Amy
-
You're very welcome Amy.
Here's Moz's guide on title tags:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag
It's recommended to put some keywords first, but you want to be sure not to keyword stuff. So, in your case, an example of a decent title tag might be "Recording Studio in San Diego - Studio West".
Google likes to see content above the fold. What I mean by "above the fold" is the area of the screen that is visible without scrolling down. I do find that when I go to your site, I can easily tell what your site is about by reading the above the fold content. The phrase, "San Diego's Premier Studio and Music Production School" is good and makes sense. (A lot of sites have almost no good above the fold content.)
I'm betting though, that you might see more traction if you put a paragraph of text below your slider that explains more about what your business offers. That text will give Google more to index and searchers something to read.
-
Hi Marie,
Thank you for your quick answer! I won't panic just yet. No manual penalties.
Regarding your other suggestions:
-
Every page except the home page has a keyword before the brand for the title. But you're saying it's important to have more on title tag the home page, not just the brand? I can do that for sure.
-
What do you mean by "very little text above the fold?" I suppose you mean on the home page there isn't enough text on top of the page?
Thank you!
Amy
-
-
Hi. To check if you have a manual action, go to Google Search Console --> Search Traffic --> Manual actions.
With that said, I see studiowest.com at #3 local and on page 2 for "recording studio san diego". There has been a lot of turbulence in the SERPS and I've seen a number of clients that have disappeared for a day or two and then suddenly reappeared (often higher than they first were.)
I had a quick look though and I think there are a number of changes you could make to help if things don't work themselves out. Your titletag is your brand name - you should have a few keywords in there, preferably at the start of the title tag. You also have very little text above the fold for readers and search engines to read.
Those are good things to change regardless, but I wouldn't make too many big changes without waiting for a few days to see what Google does.
Best of luck!
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
-
Unsolved Did Moz Bar change to have no Keyword capabilities?
I'm trying to use it during SEO training over here and the KW button goes to a "Get Page Optimization Score with MozBar Premium - Try Free", with a link that takes you to: https://hsinfo.moz.com/mozpro/mozbar/lander?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=Brand | NA&utm_adgroup=Brand - MozBar&utm_term=mozbar&gclid=CjwKCAjwxOCRBhA8EiwA0X8hi4Tx1YaOVwzWZaCGmzmYdBO4JEON8YlRMw52stp2AyfEBbH4uWDnARoCum0QAvD_BwE? Didn't this used to accept keywords and allow keyword checking? My training materials have the KW button behaving like this: [1] Do Keyword Research in MozBar.
Moz Bar | | EricaJorgensen
1. Click the icon with KW and a magnifying glass.
2. Enter a term related to your subject. For example, "cyber security".
There is a section telling you the keyword score, the relevancy to your page, and giving you optimizations that you can make to the page regarding this term.... Thus, I feel sure KW had useful and free features and not a button for a trial and paid Moz Bar Premium account. What is the pricing for this feature now? Or am I missing something? Thanks,
Tracy!0 -
Explain me how you use keyword explorer for SEO
Hello, Can you explain me how you use keyword explorer for SEO because I watched many video and after watching them everything is a little confusing... From my understanding, you have you main keyword let's say "Normandy bike tours". Based on that keyword you decide to cover TOPICS. Let's say I decide to cover D-Day landings, Omaha beach and and Caen on my page about" Normandy bike tours" ( I could cover more or others I imagine but now let's say those TOPICS are the ones I have decided to cover. From that point on what I understand is that I need to cover each of those TOPICS and the way to cover each of them is to type each of those words separately in the keyword explorer and look for words that the keyword explorer gives mes that it considers to be "semantically related" to each of those TOPICS. Then, if I choose the corrects one google will understand the different TOPIC and that should boost my ranking. Is it the whole idea ? PS : How many do you look at to find semantically related words ? 10, 20 or more ? Thank you,
Moz Bar | | seoanalytics1 -
Keyword Explorer - root domain (NEW): Domains outside US & Canada - no or no meaningful results
Basically I really like and would love to use the new root domain feature in the Keyword Explorer in my daily work. I usually deal with small to medium sized sites in Switzerland. Looking these up unfortunately it either gives me back nonsense (i.e. keywords that merely have nothing to do with the site; sites are very well keyword optimized) or no data ("There are no results for your search") at all. Is this going to change in the future (...honestly) or its simply due to the fact that MOZ focuses primarily on US & Canada and maybe huge sites in Europe? Thanks for your input. Cheers, Cesare
Moz Bar | | Cesare.Marchetti0 -
Is Moz going to provide mobile ranking tools?
With the mobilegeddon update quickly approaching us on April 21, I wanted to know if Moz is going to provide any insight into mobile rankings vs. desktop rankings? Are there any other tools we can use to benchmark and gain insight into this kind of data?
Moz Bar | | jgrammer2 -
Keyword Difficulty Report - Any way to have it send weekly?
I need the SERP data found in the Keyword Difficulty research tool each week for a search phrase. We are not tracking any specific URL - just really need the SERPS page 1 for the term weekly. Is there a way to have this report sent to use each week automatically? We have RSS feeds for the search but the end result is not visually appealing. If not this, does anyone know of any service that could provide this? Thanks
Moz Bar | | S2RSolutions0 -
On the Keyword Difficulty tool what do the green boxes and ticks mean?
Hi, I'm trying to figure out what the significance of the colors are in the Keyword Difficulty tool. When I do a search some of the boxes are light green, some dark green and some of them have ticks - any ideas? Thanks, Matt
Moz Bar | | MattNW0 -
Keyword Difficulty Report - Google Engine selected, however system is return Bing results
Is there happening for anybody else?? We run a Keyword difficulty report and select Google Australia, however in the results it is showing the values for Bing search volume ... instead of Google 1083.jpg
Moz Bar | | L10Group1