Can anyone with SEO expertise help? Have I done something wrong? (SERPS dropped..BAD)

Hi,

Can someone help me? Please? (Mods please forgive me if this is in the wrong place)

I have been doing various SEO on my site www.canvasking.co.uk (Article submission, Link building and a few blog posts) as well as on page optimization. My site was climbing up the rankings steadily until today, when all of my positions in Google, for all of my keywords dropped severely.

I am used to seeing the rank go up and down slightly, but all keywords on Google have gone down between 20-50 places today, yet on Bing I am in position 10 for "Photo to canvas" ...Have I done something wrong?

One of my keywords "Photo onto canvas" was at 24th position and now suddenly it is at 93.
Another of my keywords "Photo to canvas" was at 51st position and now suddenly it is at 78.
One of my keywords "Photo onto canvas" was at 52nd position and now suddenly it is at 77.

About my site

• My domain is 6 years old and my website is 2 years old.
• I started SEO on my site 2 months ago. (Before then I was using my website for existing customers only and was on page 24 on Google.)
• I have 140 links according to Yahoo, 37 links according to Google webmaster tools and only 1 link when I do a site: www.canvasking.co.uk search.

What I've done in the last 2 months (in order)

• I added some reciprocal links (before I knew what I was doing, but didn't seem to do any damage)
• I had my site submitted to directories.
• I had an article written, spun and submitted to article directories.
• I posted a few posts in relevant blogs/forums.
• I made the mistake of joining "Traffic bug" before reading any reviews, and once I had read reviews I cancelled my account. (Only 5 links added by Traffic bug" (SERPS did continue to rise after this though)
• Added some articles to my website (That I made myself and tested the keyword density, copyscape etc)

I have not acquired any links for a month...Could this be the only reason for the drop or have I done something wrong?

Any help that you could give me guys would be gratefully received. I just want to know if I'm on or off the right track and whether I've made a mistake or not.

Thanks in advance,

Darren.

 

You haven't done anything wrong. It happens even to established sites. It's mainly called "the google dance". The serps change heavily and if you don't panic and keep building your links, you will regain position and may even rank higher than you already did.

Also, some forum/blog links disappear over time due to various reasons. So I would suggest to keep building backlinks the old way. Directories, articles etc. Contact websites in your niche for a link. Some bloggers may even post about you if your site and service is attractive; for their readers. Ask them to include a post about your site. Do hubpages, squidoo lense and other web 2.0 properties.

These should help you out.

 

Thanks Whitehat,

Really appreciate the advice. I was a bit worried.

I'm just setting up another article run and am halfway through making a Squidoo, so I'll add a Hubpage to my list of things to do and see how it works out.

Thanks again!

 

Darren

I normally find that the google dance is a good thing. Sometimes a find one of my domains will even disappear from the listings for a couple hours but when it returns it will be much higher up.
It has to do with google re-indexing and shuffling. So Don't worry to much.

You say you were number 24th after 6 years? Maybe it is time to call in the professionals.
Hardly anyone goes to 2nd page... and you can just forget 3rd page

 

Hi Kris,

Thanks for your help.

No, I have had the site for 2 years,the domain is 6 years old. It was on page 24 because I had a market stall that I ran my business from. Customers took my cards and flyers and ordered online. I never did any SEO. Didn't know much about it!

I started SEO on 15/02 and have moved up around 200 places for even my most in demand keywords "Canvas prints". For the term "Canvas prints" my site has risen from 224th to 80th so far and for "Photo to canvas" it was up to page 4.

Thought that wasn't bad going in 2 months seeing as I don't have many links! Should it be going up faster?

I got to 24th after 2 months of on page SEO and the limited link buiding campaigns mentioned above.

Thanks Kris. I'll hope for the best!

 

WOW I thought you meant 24th not page 24
When you're that far down and you do any SEO you'll see a major jump.
Its the last part that is the hardest. Getting from page 3 to 2 and then 2 to 1. and eventual position 1.

To get in the top 10 you have to kick someone out.

Sounds like you're doing ok. Remember that traffic isn't everything. Conversion optimization is just as important and having word of mouth business sometimes provides much better traffic

 

Do you change 1 caracter in first page title ???? - in such cases this is happend..

 

Google search result shuffles there is nothing to worry about it. If you have proper back link and solid work behind you. Ranking will come up again. if you have just started to come up in ranking then there will be more shuffle to you listing as google will keep changing your position and it takes time to get stable on top ranking.

 

Google spiders are also called Google bot. The bot are of two types freshbot and deepbot the task of the freshbot is to find new contents on the site so it will crawl to your site several times a day. The deepbot is responsible for deep crawling it's main purpose is to find out complete content and picture of your site, navigation system and all inbound and outbound links. So if you can see any changes in your page rank then it means deepbot is active.

 

Thanks guys.

But is it really normal to drop so much? I have dropped 78 places for one search term and one search term that was on the 3rd page has gone out of the top 200! I did change some h1 tags, but I have now changed them all back.

@ Employwise - The rankings have been down for 2 days. Would this be a deepbot?

Is there a rough timescale for them to return to the higher position again?

I've just ordered some articles, so I will see how that goes.

 

usually its not more then a day.
I am having the same issue with one highly competitive keyword that I've been after.
Its been a few days but I'm confident that it'll bounce back as the page is still indexed

 

Pictures do not get crawled UNLESS they have alt text. The bots, spiders or crawlers are blind, and they only crawl text. On that same note, the Google spiders have a system of analyzing the content, and each item, section or part in a website is given a specific value. Alt text (descriptions placed on images in order to be crawled) have the lowest value. Hence, I would dare say it is one of the reasons why Darren is having difficulties. Canvases are for painting and I can almost guarantee the site has LOTS of images. My suggestion is to continue to ADD quality content!!!

There are no established parameters as to what is and is not normal in SERPs action or movements. I believe it is a pretty individualized experience. Each site and business experiences their own Google Dance depending on the amount of SEO work that has been performed on page and off.

As for the articles. That is a great idea. Article marketing, if done right, is probably the best form of Off page SEO.

 

no worries, it will be back...surely you didn't do anything bad that could help your site, just make sure you build quality links everyday.

 

continue your SEO efforts and you will get back to top ranks again.

all the best

 

Google, like every other search engine, depends on their customers knowing that they deliver authoritative reliable results 24 hours of the day, seven days a week, updates pose a serious issue. They can not shut down for maintenance and they cannot afford to go offline for even one minute. Hence, we had the Dance. Every search engine goes through it, some more or less often than Google.

These major Google index update occured on average every 36 days or 10 times per year.

 

My guess is that it has something to do with the linkbuilding. if you had a pretty consistent number of links coming in each month and then that dropped then it could be due to that. Another thing is if you have been using a certain opp page seo tactic and google devalued that then it could affect your whole site.

 

Significant change of h1 tags can temporarily harm serps - especially if rest of site changes as Google could then think it's a new site. It's best to slowly change over time imo.

When link building make sure your really mix up anchor text - otherwise that could get a penalty.

The only other thing to check out is whether your site links to any other sites that have been penalised by google? If so your reciprocal links could damage you.

 

I think it's most likely just part of the process when you're building links, but Google also constantly tweaks it's algorithm. Basically, some changes in SERPS are caused by their changes, not your own. It's hard to remember sometimes, but important. Some things in SEO are out of your hands.

 

Thanks for all your help guys.

@ ContentArticleWriter Re:

A lot of my other item pages still rank number 1 for their keywords and they have no ALT text. The pages that I am trying to rank for which have dropped are the "Photo to canvas" pages, which I added ALT text to a while ago. These pages do have plenty of text though.

@ Excel 8 Re:

I did run an automated ranking check and it came up "No results at this time" for Google. Which I hadn't seen before. This made me worry that I had been penalized by Google.


@ JJ1 Re:

My site was made using Volusion software. I changed the H1 tag that is is the template, but I have now changed it back.


If anyone has time to take a quick look at the source code of my homepage (by clicking on the "Photo to canvas" link in my sig) to see if they can see any issues that may have caused this, I would really appreciate it.

If it is Google, great....I just want to be sure it's not my fault!

Thanks again guys.

 

I would avoid reciprocal linking as much as I could. Just a few and then try to figure out a way to getting linkbacks to my site (paid posts, paid links). One of my sites got penalized for doing this recyprocal linking and never got back on track.