Hi Guys, I need some advice/thoughts on the following. For the past 12 months i have had a web site that ranks on page 1 of google in a competitive industry. I had ranked on page one for maybe 3 of the top keywords in the industry with my site never really being out of the top 5 for any keyword in the industry. I had a pr7 and then it dropped to pr 6 on the last update. My home page always ranked really well and ranked on page 1 for 2 top keywords and top of page 2 for the other key word. My site was titled like ... <title>kewword1, keyword2 and blah keyword 3 blah blah blah blah ....</title> About a week ago my site dropped for keyword 2 and 3 from page 1 to page 3/4 ??? I didn't change anything on my site ... inbound links stayed about the same - give or take one or two. None of my other competition have moved ... they all sit around the top of page 1. ANyone notice any change in the way google are ranking sites? I have always had a very heavy keyword % on my pages ... i know people say go for 5-8% but it seemed to work so i didn't change. I have always thought that SE (google, yahoo) love content so i have always tried to write atleast 500 words on each page but i have noticed that alot of my competition have very little content on there pages? but still rank high?? The pr for the sites im in competition are no better then mine ... infact im being out ranked by a site on pr4 (im pr6) and they have no more then 100 words on there page??? suggestions/comments/confused???
Yes something major is going on and seems to be hurting a lot of sites. I've had someone suggest to me its just a Google bug. Not sure if its a bug or a shift on how they are judging inbound links but its causing a major change.
I'm seeing the same here. Some of the sites I've seen tanked is just unbelievable to be honest. Thankfully my sites are still doing good (touch wood).
Yeah i agree and normally i wouldn't worry too much but now its been a few weeks. As cormac said ... i think it could be down to one of the following. - way google are rating back links. - algo has updated and now onpage content doesn't hold the same weight as in the past ? I see so many competitiors with NO content but still rank really well ??? It took me about 12 months to get into google and rank well but in the past few months a site has appeared with NO real content , pr3 and NO internet history?
It's always nice to rank on a "big" keyword but long tail stuff can be so much more valueable and far less transient. If possible, ensure you have deep links to your site and try to get very, very targetted, on theme links to your inside pages. That way, if there is some flux on the main keyword(s) you still get traffic on your less competitive terms. We rank #3 on a term that has over 100m competing pages - we get 5x the traffic from long tail terms than we do the main keywords.
yes i am also experiencing the same..lots of ups and downs........ hope fully the good days will return back for me.
Like a Yo Yo but my CJ products sell best in fall before Christmas, so I am not going to panic...YET. About August if things don't turn around I will freak. In the mean time focus on quality one way backlinks from relevant sites. Those will probably always be a good bet. I would be careful no to over optimize the on page content, and consider the LSI value of the content more so than just stuffing a ton of keywords on a page.