Help from somebody - anybody!

cc976a · Dec 5, 2012

As you may have noticed from recent posts, I have a site that was ranking 2nd position on Google for a year for a semi popular keyword (5k exacts). The site also ranked - and still does rank - in second position on Yahoo and Bing.

Now since the last Google algo change the site dropped from 2nd to second from bottom!! That's right, there are 68 Google pages for this keyword, and I am now second from bottom. Position 689 :shock:

Thinking that there must be a manual penalty here somewhere (as the site is popular and deserved its place of 2nd, great unique content, good social prominence, some links from legitamite places etc....) I contact Google through Webmaster Tools and put in a reconsideration case, explaining my situation.

Surprisingly quite a quick response (3 days) but they have said this is not their doing, and not the result of a manual penalty

I don't know if this is good news or bad news, but how does a site drop from 2nd to 689th, with no manual penalty and with so much crap ranking above it (porn, viagra links all sorts of shite)?? It's also not an EMD, so no 'bonus' that's suddenly disappeared.

How on earth do I fix this - and is the not having a manual penalty, but falling so bad, a good thing and solveable?

I'm at a loss and looking for some advice or suggestions from your kind sirs and madams.....

peter_w · Dec 5, 2012

Send me a pm and will take a look.

Blossom · Dec 6, 2012

The first thing I would consider is: what have you changed recently?

bermuda · Dec 6, 2012

If it has been only one day, so don't worry because it could be a temporary issue. Sometimes when data centers of Google are updated with listings of sites, such things could happen. I would worry if that remains rather fixed for say a week or so. Maybe tomorrow it will return back to the top status once again. Major changes in web structure can be one reason, another factor could be when the majority of links pointing to a web page suddenly disappear, especially if they all were from one website.

cc976a · Dec 6, 2012

Blossom said:
The first thing I would consider is: what have you changed recently?

Frustratingly nothing

Site dropped on 27th September (like many did) but hadn't updated much for 15 days prior

It's got to be linked to the Panda update but a drop if this severity with no manual penalty ????

cc976a · Dec 6, 2012

bermuda said:
If it has been only one day, so don't worry because it could be a temporary issue. Sometimes when data centers of Google are updated with listings of sites, such things could happen. I would worry if that remains rather fixed for say a week or so. Maybe tomorrow it will return back to the top status once again. Major changes in web structure can be one reason, another factor could be when the majority of links pointing to a web page suddenly disappear, especially if they all were from one website.

It's been 2 and a half months I'm afraid to say - no change in site structure, no change in linkback profile

peter_w · Dec 6, 2012

You've got two versions of your homepage which won't be helping (index.php is different to just to root). You link to index.php in the footer and on the logo, yet if you type in the url without www. you get redirected to just the root (not index.php). And there's no canonical tag on the homepage either to say which one you actually want Google to give the weight to.

I'd also be looking to add more content to the homepage and ideally higher up in the source code (the only content you've got is right at the bottom of the source). Change the H1 tag so it isn't your primary keyword also.

I think what's probably happened is something that's fairly common recently... over optimisation. You don't really have enough links either, and what you do have is mostly keyword heavy. Throw in some more "click here" and whatnot.

cc976a · Dec 6, 2012

Many thanks Peter - appreciate your time to take a lookout at this.

Was never very technical with index and root redirects, but what you say makes sense. Will take a look.

You're right about the links, but many actual chose that anchor text but again going to see what I can do here too

Cheers!

jj1 · Dec 18, 2012

I had a similar thing about a year ago with a new website which I had over-optimised - too many keywords in alt text, file/folder names etc. A new site fell from page 1 to page 50.

I removed these additional keywords and within a month or so it rose again and is now position 2/3.

I am always now very careful about overopimisation.

As said above, over-optimisation of links and anchor text can also cause problems.

cc976a · Dec 18, 2012

I probably did over-SEO a bit on alt tags and H tags - I wouldn't have said excessively - but G thinks differently.

I have already started toning down the keywords....

......fingers crossed!!

Murray · Dec 18, 2012

If you want to PM me your site and some background information on the drop I will take a look.

I'm a moderator on a popular SEO forum so I've seen my fair share of hit sites and case studies so hopefully will be able to give you some idea of what I think is wrong, fixing things on the other hand can often be a little more tricky.