I have a website that has 4 or 5 major pages all of which rank in top 20 for their respective money phrases on Google. On 17th January 2013 a couple of these pages went up a position or two, a couple stayed the same but one page went from 15th to 250th!!! My theories: 1) I've heard Google possibly had an algorithm update on 17th Jan so possibly it has affected this one page but strange as all other pages on same site have the same on and off page SEO tactics and they have improved or stayed the same. 2) This page has slowly accumulated 200+ links from a single domain. All of these links come from a forum I post on (not for SEO or link building purposes) from a "my homepage" link which is revealed when a user hovers on my username. The highest amount of links from one domain to this page other than this is 7. Maybe I have tipped over a "percentage of links from one domain" threshold but still seems like a drastic and sudden drop. 3) Something else I can't think of but everything comes back to "why this one page?" The only (obvious) difference is multiple links from one domain thing. Any help/ideas appreciated. Jenny
You're correct regarding the algorithm update, so that could have certainly played a part. I believe it affected around 1.5% of all English searches. WebDev
Google could simply devalue all the links from the same domain. It wouldn't make sense to penalize you for it, unless it was spammy.
It's a UK site so this update possibly did affect it but still can't see why it was just one page that dropped? Maybe a combination of my theories 1 and 2? Would anyone think that having a large number of links from one domain is an issue? It does seem to be the only difference I can find between this page and the others on my site.
I was thinking about the possibility of Google devaluing this domain but it is the top forum for its subject and has little to no spam on it. Maybe they've just decided to devalue it as it is a forum even though it is a quality one?
It would seem unnatural if all of your backlinks pointed to your home page especially if they all have the same anchor text. Try getting links to other pages and mix up the anchor text.
This is a profile link - i.e. my profile asked for my homepage, I put in a link thinking it would only be on my profile page but every single post I have ever made displays it. This therefore means hundreds of same page and same anchor text links. My only options are to change the page it links to or remove altogether. Was debating about changing the link to a low level page that isn't ranking for much and see if this does anything to either the newly linked page or the one that just bombed. Good idea?
Just to add confusion, the page which bombed has gone from 250ish to 170ish within a week. Now I'm thinking shall I leave it as it is? Is it possible that this one single page could have had a severe blip on Google and is now just slowly heading back up to where it was before?