So my server went down 2 nights in a row. My index page gets indexed everyday. It seems that the Googlebot tried to spider my page right when my server was down. Now my KW rank dropped almost 10,000. OUCH. Am I correct in assuming that it was because of my server being down, or just a coincidence.
Hi Interesting - your home page is listed for the search phrase - ranked around 375th. The named page and the index page are both cached by Google, so the server being down doesn't seem to be an issue on the face of it. It could be an issue in that Google may have lost your pages, now got them back again and so your pages need to slowly climb back up again. How about some basic SEO issues while I am at it: decide what pages you want to rank for certain phrases - you have two pages for the named phrase - and you are trying via sig links etc to have the non home page show. since the home page has the phrase, make sure it is properly seo'ed for that phrase - your meta description does not include the phrase twice, or even once in its entirety - "satellite beach florida real estate". The first instance of the phrase in its entirety is in the h2 tag - why not an h1 tag. You then do not have the phrase repeated in its entirety on the body of the page till quite a way down on the page. My rule is to try and repeat the phrase twice within 135 characters, or once, then use each of those words within the 135 characters - all in such a way that Google will show a proper snippet - with the best snippet, it becomes that much more relevant for Google rankings. refer to your home page as "/" not /index.htm - note the fact that both the index.htm and "/" have PR attached to them. Give your index page some more PR - your index page has PR3, your other pages PR4 - so focus some co-op links at your index page for say the "Satellite beach florida real estate" - and see what happens Hopefully, the fact that you are ranked so low is an anomoly that will right itself in a few days/weeks, then the better SEO of your pages will allow you to rank higher/ or not need so much Co-op weight to get you back to the top. Having a look at your http://www.myfloridahomesforsale.com/satellite-beach-florida.htm page highlighted the same basic SEO issues. For my version of a SEO primer, have a look at my New Zealand Search Engine Marketing page - in the sandbox at the moment due to it being a new site, but those the breaks.
I'd imagine the reason it dropped is because a few of the links with that anchor text in them (or not even the same anchor text necessarily) going to the page timed out when google was spidering them.. Itll go back to normal when you have continued uptime.
I am about to start using Yahoo's merchant plan for e-commerce and I need to switch my site over to them for hosting. There will be a down-time of up to 48 hours. How long do you think I will be penalized by the search engines?
Thanks for the advice. I made the changes you suggested. Thanks for pointing them out. Weird thing is, that I have only exchanged links and pointed to my site directly, never using the "/index.htm". Don't know why that has PR. Anyhow, thanks again. EDIT. Whoops. My menu navigation is pointing to "/index.htm". Fixed. Sincerely, Kyle Hogan