Rankings for keyword variations dropped over weekend?
-
One of our clients has seen significant decreases over the weekend for a number of keyword variations. There have been no significant site changes, no crawl errors reported and our competitors don't seem to have been affected.
The decrease has coincided with the launch of a display campaign, but surely this is just coincidental?
Any thoughts would be appreciated...
-
Sit tight for a few days. If it still stays bad, compare your linking profile to competitors, maybe there is something shady in there (not accusing you of anything) that Google caught outside of a major update. They adjust their algorithm about 500 times a year according to a recent video, so chances are there are daily minor changes. Could be a fluke, too. We had rankings drop down from 5/6 to 10 for a week, and promptly bounce back up again without any interference.
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
-
Can I know which keywords lost their top rankings on google a year ago if the client didn't checked the keyword rankings in his website?
Hi, Can I know which keywords lost their top rankings on google a year ago if the client didn't checked the keyword rankings in his website? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
Organic keyword ranking drops across the board?
Howdy Moz, I have noticed a common anomaly across the majority of my client accounts (see attached image). Have lost thousands of organic keywords worldwide? (no loss in UK rankings though which are the ones that matter) Has there been an algo update? Seems strange. Thanks, Joshua nYP3i
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AscentGroup0 -
Something is killing my rankings
Hello, I'm in the process of re-doing the following two domains: www.musillawfirm.com and www.melbourneduilawfirm.com because something absolutely plummeted my rankings. Any specific thoughts on why the sited could have gone from top 10 to being virtually deleted? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | musillawfirm0 -
Homepage not ranking in Google AU, but ranking in Google UK?
Hey everyone, My homepage has not been ranking for it's primary keyword in Google Australia for many months now. Yesterday when I was using a UK Proxy and searching via Google UK I found my homepage/primary keyword ranked on page 8 in the UK. Now in Australia my website ranks on page 6 but it's for other pages on my website (and it always changes from different page to page). Previously my page was popping up at the bottom of page 1 and page 2. I've been trying many things and waiting weeks to see if it had any impact for over 4 months but I'm pretty lost for ideas now. Especially after what I saw yesterday in Google UK. I'd be very grateful if someone has had the same experience of suggestions and what I should try doing. I did a small audit on my page and because the site is focused on one product and features the primary keyword I took steps to try and fix the issue. I did the following: I noticed the developer had added H1 tags to many places on the homepage so I removed them all to make sure I wasn't getting an over optimization penalty. Cleaned up some of my links because I was not sure if this was the issue (I've never had a warning within Google webmaster tools) Changed the title tags/h tags on secondary pages not to feature the primary keyword as much Made some pages 'noindex' to try and see if this would take away the emphases on the secondary pages Resubmitted by XML sitemaps to Google Just recently claimed a local listings place in Google (still need to verify) and fixed up citations of my address/phone numbers etc (However it's not a local business - sells Australia wide) Added some new backlinks from AU sites (only a handful though) The only other option I can think of is to replace the name of the product on secondary pages to a different appreciation to make sure that the keyword isn't featured there. Some other notes on the site: When site do a 'site:url' search my homepage comes up at the top The site sometimes ranked for a secondary keyword on the front page in specific locations in Australia (but goes to a localised City page). I've noindexed these as a test to see if something with localisation is messing it around. I do have links from AU but I do have links from .com and wherever else. Any tips, advice, would be fantastic. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdaptDigital0 -
Author rank
Can anyone tellme how to know my author rank. Is better to gain authority on my author rank +dariopropdental And if it is better to gain authority as author or as page +propdental And if a do a new post on my web every day should i place every link to the post on my profile and my page. Doenst it look spammy. Should all post have a link from my profile.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Why is my ranking not improving???
Our site is about 4 months old now, although the domain is older. We are adding fresh new content, building good facebook/twitter/Goolge+ and undertaking good PR - but our ranking does not seem to be improving at all. Have I missed something obvious???? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jj34340 -
Dropped ranking - Penguin penalty or duplicate content issue?
Just this weekend a page that had been ranking well for a competitive term fell completely out of the rankings. There are two possible causes and I'm trying to figure out which it is, so I can take action. I found out that I had accidentally put a canonical on another page that was for the same page as the one that dropped out of the rankings. If there are two pages with the same canonical tag with different content, will google drop both of them from the index? The other possibility is that this is a result of the recent Penguin update. The page that dropped has a high amount of exact anchor text. As far as I can tell, there were no other pages with any penalties from the Penguin update. One last question: The page completely dropped from the search index. If this were a Penguin issue, would it have dropped out completely,or just been penalized with a drop in position? If this is a result of the conflicting canonical tags, should I just wait for it to reindex, or should I request a reconsideration of the page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gametv0 -
Keyword Significance
I am seeing some very interesting changes in our non-branded keywords, and am curious to know how keyword significance in Google Webmaster Tools plays into ranking of a site. Say for example we are a photography website selling photography supplies. At one point our most significant word was Canon, but now it is photography. Would that mean that we would start seeing a lot of non-branded keywords generating from Google like "camera strap", "camera lens hood", etc. This is really good for us, but curious to know if the only reason we are seeing this is the shift in our keyword significance. Any insight? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NaHoku0