Site Review: Title change brings #1 rank

[Mikki]

Hello All:

Love the forum - first time posting.

Any advice, insight, criticism would be most appreciated.

Can't seem to get ranked for our main KWP but end up at #1 for another term by adding one word to the title. :confused:

Wondering if we're being penalized. Thus far, this site flies in the face of just about everything that's been discussed about the way G currently ranks sites.

A bit of history:
Main KWP is "gift baskets." Held top 5 position on G and across other SE's for several years. Survived Florida.

Currently #30 for this term: highly competitive.

Only our site lost it's ranking during a major shift 1/04 and continues to drop. None of the other sites moved. All other's PR increased, ours dropped. Despite gaining many new backlinks of PR 6 & 7.

I've done everything I can think of with my limited knowledge:
Converting the site from NOF to Dreamweaver with .css
Added optimized content pages (gained some top 10 for other KWP's :) ).
Changed titles, meta tags, etc.
Added more backlinks w/main KWP
Added a site map
Increased internal linking
Increased use of KW's in file / path / names and anchor text
Sites been online for 8 years - very well established in all major directories

Here's the most interesting and completely baffling thing (at least to me)
Recent title change on home page adding the word "personal" gained a #1 ranking for the term "personal gift baskets."

Phrase is in one other spot toward the bottom of the page as "personalized" but no where else in body text. It was also added to the KW tag and meta tag.

Recently changed the KWD for the main KWP (lowered it) and fell off G completely, put the original text back up and shot back up to #27.

Why would the site jump to #1 for "personal gift baskets" when there are no backlinks using that KWP as anchor and no content to support it?

The site is full of on theme content for the KWP "gift baskets" yet every effort to increase position fails.

As far as penalties go - the only thing I can think of is that the site has duplicate content in that, certain products are listed across several categories using the same text and filename / path.

Could this possibly be the root of all the trouble?

Thanks so much for taking the time to read and review.
Mekalena
www.cesta.net

[t2dman]

Your situation is shared by many.

Theories - Google sandbox - new sites not being listed, but yours is quite old.

Try the ole trick of adding -erfga to your search not just once, but multiple times. One of my sites gets to serp 1 with it 8 times. Just another filter that google should remove when it gets around to it. How many more months do we have to wait and go broke - how many more hours do we need to spend trying to rework sites!

A query - why use a sig with no keywords in it? Apart from "Cesta".

[Dirkjan]

Perhaps thats the trick.

You are getting new backlinks.

Thats good but tricky: Because the backlinks is not the whole thing, its just being part of the ranking.

When you get more backlinks with different descriptions (like here on the forum) it might decrease the value of the others. So if all the others had a relevant description, and all the new PR6 and PR7s do not, then you might lower on the relevant ones.

You can start by changing ur description in the signature of this forums. Its not much but every bit may help!

[SEbasic]

Try the ole trick of adding -erfga to your search not just once, but multiple times. One of my sites gets to serp 1 with it 8 times. Just another filter that google should remove when it gets around to it. How many more months do we have to wait and go broke - how many more hours do we need to spend trying to rework sites!That stopped working for me months ago...

RE your site, Backlinks. Get more of them... I know it is a pain, but it's really the only way to do it.

[nadlay]

A query - why use a sig with no keywords in it? Apart from "Cesta".

Because Mikki has only one post, and you can't have a signature displayed on your messages until you have 10 posts.

What you are seeing above is a signature with the message area of Mikki's post.

[Nitin M]

I think it probably just comes down to backlinks. Your competitors and others in the space have likely been aggressive about getting new links and now you have to play catch up.

When you get more backlinks with different descriptions (like here on the forum) it might decrease the value of the others. So if all the others had a relevant description, and all the new PR6 and PR7s do not, then you might lower on the relevant ones.
Personally, I don't subscribe to this theory. I have many sites where I target multiple KWPs for the homepage and have never seen a negative affect.

[ian_ok]

You say:

Added optimized content pages (gained some top 10 for other KWP's )

What is an optimized content page?

Also what is KWP's

Ian

[t2dman]

What is an optimized content page?
A page optimized for Google - the normal rules:

Keywords in title - using the 63 characters shown on the snippet
keywords repeated twice in meta description in a proper sentence
Keywords in the first paragraph of the page repeated minimum twice in 135 characters, and then repeated around the page
Keywords in h1 tag
Everything is important, but title seems to be the one that can make a difference. If you have multiple phrases targeted for a page, and can't fit them all in the title and meta description etc, sometimes just adding another page with a particular targeted phrase in it, can get that alternate phrase higher on Google. ie I couldn't get one page to the top of Google for "Search engine optimize VBulletin (http://forum.time2dine.co.nz/showthread.php?t=98)" as well as "Search engine optimizing VBulletin (http://forum.time2dine.co.nz/showthread.php?t=1440)", so I created another page/thread and got to the top.

Interesting, each thread has multiple pages with the same title, metadescription, firstwords of page. The latest page is of course always linked to from the home index page. Therefore, the latest page is the one showing for the search phrase. So when looking at your whole website, you have to be careful that you have the most PR and link text value pointing at the pages you want to show for a certain term. Too many pages with similar optimization can show up pages you don't want.

Also what is KWP's
Key word positions

[quadcity]

>Held top 5 position on G... Currently #30
I was #1 on my (noncompetitive) main KWP until Sept 23, when I dropped to #44. I dropped out of the top 100 in late Oct. Has anyone gone through this and figured how to return to the first page? Is the answer more and better backlinks/anchor text?

[t2dman]

There are so many reasons why you could drop out. One of the more common recent reasons is people linking to you via 302 temporary redirects. Link counters attached to sites can do this ie theirsite.com/counter.php?yoursite.com with the counter.php having a 302 redirect. Google then says that your page has the url theirsite.com/counter.php?yoursite.com, and that yoursite.com is a duplicate, therefore drops your site.

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://website.com");

Without the first, the redirect is a 302 temp redirect.

Do a search for something that is unique to your site, and see if another url comes up with the content of it.

[Such Great Heights]

Q: Also what is KWP's

A: Key word positions
I think KWP's in this case means:
Key word Phrases

[ResaleBroker]

Good point t2dman.

If you want to check for a 302 on a URL like theirsite.com/counter.php?yoursite.com you can check it here: http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/servercheck.cgi

[t2dman]

Hi Jeffrey - and guess where I found my latest 302 - the excellant links manager program I use - reciprocalmanager (http://reciprocalmanager.com/swres/t2dman.html) - (affiliate link - its a great product!).

I happened to do a search for one of my pages today, and saw an old interest/index.php?65 url. Its been dead for months, yet a Google cache of this month. The redirect to the new page was a 302 redirect with just the one liner header.


You have to be so careful when you use other peoples code!!!

VBulletin actually has lots of 302's - all to internal url's so it only plays around with how the forum is ranked on Google. I have hacked them to 301's for my vb forums.

[ResaleBroker]

Dang! That's the same program I'm using. :eek:

I'll send you a PM.

[t2dman]

Doesn't effect you Jeffrey - you are using a more recent version.

[ian_ok]

Good point t2dman.

If you want to check for a 302 on a URL like theirsite.com/counter.php?yoursite.com you can check it here: http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/servercheck.cgi

I'm finding out so much you have to look out for, when exchanging links.

Anyhow on the above do you enter the page where your link is or the home page of the site to verify if a 302 is going on?

Ian

[ResaleBroker]

You enter the URL of the link pointing TO you.

[t2dman]

Anyhow on the above do you enter the page where your link is or the home page of the site to verify if a 302 is going on?

IanNeither:

- on xyz.com if the script goes to xyz.com/redirect.php?yoursite.com, then to yoursite.com test the xyz.com/redirect.php?yoursite.com

But its not actually so straightforward:

enter a digitalpoint forum url that you know redirects to another address
ie http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=3939

There is nothing on the serverheaderchecker that says that there is a redirect there, despite there being what I know to be a 302 temp redirect from that url to http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=54271#post54271

Does anyone know of a headerchecker that would show for example, that the digitalpoint link above actually used a redirect, and of what sort?

[ian_ok]

I've ran a check on one link from a site linking to me...it shows....

Status: HTTP/1.1 302 Object moved

I presume I get them to remove my link ASAP, if I'm correct.

Ian

[t2dman]

I've ran a check on one link from a site linking to me...it shows....

Status: HTTP/1.1 302 Object moved

I presume I get them to remove my link ASAP, if I'm correct.

Ian
Is their links page cached by Google? Is your link cached on the page? Is there a robots exclusion either on the page or on the robots.txt file? See what page is being cached with the redirect url ie cache:url - is it your site with their URL?

The web can be a friendly place. Show them this thread, see if they will change it to a 301. Does all the people with links there a favour.

Otherwise, yes, get it off there asap - it may be what is stopping you being listed for a certain search term.

[ResaleBroker]

... it may be what is stopping you being listed for a certain search term.Just for clarification, the page affected by the 302 would be dropped and with it the term he was targeting, right?

[ian_ok]

The web can be a friendly place.

I've not gone in with all gun's blazing...as I was thinking. But sent them an email explaining what a 302 is and it's effect....lets see what they say.

Am I right in saying you can have 302's for legitimate use, but it can still cause problems?

Or is just a problem if some keywords in my page appear on SE with a link to their page?

Ian

EXTRA NEWS JUST IN.....

RESULT.....They responded within a few minutes.

Remove the code from my link and the other 200 links on that page.

Thanks a lot.

Ian

[ResaleBroker]

T2DMan,
I asked this question in the Link Blackmail (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=4710) thread but didn't get a response so let me run it by you.

What if you were in the #1 position and you saw one of your competitors start to climb, couldn't you set up a link using a 302 redirect to their home page in hopes of Google dropping them on the basis of duplicate content?

[ian_ok]

Hmmm....

Well after spending a while this morning reading through various websites....1 thread with over 200 posts, I read google finally dumped a 302 site and re-cached the 'original' site from a previous date when no 302 working on it, so it then regained some google status...all be it very slow.

Bit like holding a gun to your head with only one bullet in and taking a shot.....Too risky Jeff I'd say....but of course it could be some sort term gain....Google take months to act on these reports and that was probably only because several of the threads mentioned courts etc.....

Ian

[ResaleBroker]

...I read google finally dumped a 302 site and re-cached the 'original' site from a previous date when no 302 working on it, so it then regained some google status...all be it very slow.

...Google take months to act on these reports and that was probably only because several of the threads mentioned courts etc.....
If a competitor could slow you down even for a few months, IMO that is a cause for concern.

[ian_ok]

True.....I have read they (Google) are suppose to be doing something about it...but then they are probably doing lots of other things and this doesn't rank high on their list.

After all what one person (programmer) can stop people doing another can do a work around for it....it's life and we do as best we can.

I'm not at a stage of people slowing me down yet...more like I don't have enough hours in a day to do what I want, this is my slow down effect.....plus my wife saying take a break from the pc....

Ian

[grandmac]

Is there a place where you don't have to have a subscription in order to do a test for the redirect problem?

[t2dman]

I use the following tool
http://www.webconfs.com/http-header-check.php

[acisco261]

Google can be Soooo complicated!