Site Review: Title change brings #1 rank

Discussion in 'SEO' started by Mikki, Apr 22, 2004.

  1. #1
    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
     
    Mikki, Apr 22, 2004 IP
  2. t2dman

    t2dman Peon

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    #2
    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".
     
    t2dman, May 7, 2004 IP
  3. Dirkjan

    Dirkjan The Dutch SEO Guy

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    #3
    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!
     
    Dirkjan, Sep 28, 2004 IP
  4. SEbasic

    SEbasic Peon

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    #4
    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.
     
    SEbasic, Sep 28, 2004 IP
  5. nadlay

    nadlay Guest

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    #5
    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.
     
    nadlay, Sep 28, 2004 IP
  6. Nitin M

    Nitin M White/Gray/Black Hat

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    #6
    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.

    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.
     
    Nitin M, Sep 28, 2004 IP
  7. ian_ok

    ian_ok Peon

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    #7
    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
     
    ian_ok, Nov 11, 2004 IP
  8. t2dman

    t2dman Peon

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    #8
    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" as well as "Search engine optimizing VBulletin", 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.

    Key word positions
     
    t2dman, Nov 11, 2004 IP
  9. quadcity

    quadcity Peon

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    #9
    >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?
     
    quadcity, Nov 13, 2004 IP
  10. t2dman

    t2dman Peon

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    #10
    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.
     
    t2dman, Nov 13, 2004 IP
  11. Such Great Heights

    Such Great Heights Peon

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    #11
    I think KWP's in this case means:
    Key word Phrases
     
    Such Great Heights, Nov 13, 2004 IP
  12. ResaleBroker

    ResaleBroker Active Member

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    #12
    ResaleBroker, Nov 13, 2004 IP
  13. t2dman

    t2dman Peon

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    #13
    Hi Jeffrey - and guess where I found my latest 302 - the excellant links manager program I use - reciprocalmanager - (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.
     
    t2dman, Nov 13, 2004 IP
  14. ResaleBroker

    ResaleBroker Active Member

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    #14
    Dang! That's the same program I'm using. :eek:

    I'll send you a PM.
     
    ResaleBroker, Nov 13, 2004 IP
  15. t2dman

    t2dman Peon

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    #15
    Doesn't effect you Jeffrey - you are using a more recent version.
     
    t2dman, Nov 13, 2004 IP
  16. ian_ok

    ian_ok Peon

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    #16
    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
     
    ian_ok, Nov 14, 2004 IP
  17. ResaleBroker

    ResaleBroker Active Member

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    #17
    You enter the URL of the link pointing TO you.
     
    ResaleBroker, Nov 14, 2004 IP
  18. t2dman

    t2dman Peon

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    #18
    Neither:

    - 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?
     
    t2dman, Nov 14, 2004 IP
  19. ian_ok

    ian_ok Peon

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    #19
    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
     
    ian_ok, Nov 14, 2004 IP
  20. t2dman

    t2dman Peon

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    #20
    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.
     
    t2dman, Nov 14, 2004 IP