Huge Ranking Drop - What could be the reason?

[issorc]

Hey guys,

tomorrow I noticed some strange ranking changes on one of my websites. The website was constantly climbing up the SERPS the last few weeks, until today.

As you can see, one of the keywords that was finally close to page one (position 11) dropped back to the mid of the third page.
The keyword that was hit the hardest is not on the screenshot, it dropped from position 8 to position 92.

Some other keywords had some drops like that in the last few weeks, but they all came back so I didn't care. Additionally that all were single keywords that dropped and not like today nearly the whole site.

What can be the reason for that drop? I would have thought that it might be caused by a penalty, but some of the keywords only dropped by a few positions or didn't dropped at all. All those keywords are targeted by one post, so what could've been happened?

I'll have a look at my search console account the next few days to see if anything pop ups there.

 

[MisterF]

What off page seo have you been doing ?

 

[issorc]

article submission, web2.0, forum posts, guest book posts, forum profiles and a few pbn links I bought from other people. Might be the case that they got slapped, but I did want to know if there are any other possibilities.

I just checked my link profile on majestic once again.

I got three keywords that 15%,12% and 11% of my link profile have as an anchor. Most likely this was way too much, I'll build more links the next few weeks avoiding those anchors. The keywords that dropped all contained this three keywords, so it was maybe an anchor issue. Because 2 keywords that don't contain that phrase didn't drop. We'll see.

 

[xjapan]

how many of the total backlinks?

 

[issorc]

how many of the total backlinks?

Around 600.

 

[xjapan]

Around 600.

thats too many imo, how long you have been building these links btw

 

[SkyrocketSEO]

tomorrow I noticed some strange ranking changes on one of my websites

So, you can see the future...? Lucky you

 

[issorc]

thats too many imo, how long you have been building these links btw

Over a timespan of three months.

So, you can see the future...? Lucky you

Well that's the reason I'm asking now. Want to prevent me from this happening.

Jk, seems like I'm was more tired than I thought.

 

[saketanand]

i will say wait for couple of days,coz sometimes it happens

 

[MikeyMikey13]

This is normal with p4, just drip some links and you should be okay.

I have 15 sites, and few weeks I have the same issue, then they come back.

EDIT: should be noted my sites don't come back from just waiting and magic brings them back.

I link build. Hard.

 

[issorc]

i will say wait for couple of days,coz sometimes it happens

This is normal with p4, just drip some links and you should be okay.

I have 15 sites, and few weeks I have the same issue, then they come back.

EDIT: should be noted my sites don't come back from just waiting and magic brings them back.

I link build. Hard.

Thanks for your responses. I will continue building links with less exact match anchors and see what happens.

 

[MikeyMikey13]

Thanks for your responses. I will continue building links with less exact match anchors and see what happens.

don't use any exact matches for the time being, I don't think i've used any exacts on low quality sites since p4.

 

[issorc]

don't use any exact matches for the time being, I don't think i've used any exacts on low quality sites since p4.

Do your sites rank good without any exact match links? don't you even use it on pbns and hq web 2.0 posts?

 

[MikeyMikey13]

Do your sites rank good without any exact match links? don't you even use it on pbns and hq web 2.0 posts?

I use them on the very best sites I have, usually tf35+ - anything below that is brand, URL or generic. Occasionally use LSI, but tbh that is very rare. Google isn't stupid. It doesn't need EM anchors anymore.

 

[issorc]

I use them on the very best sites I have, usually tf35+ - anything below that is brand, URL or generic. Occasionally use LSI, but tbh that is very rare. Google isn't stupid. It doesn't need EM anchors anymore.

Thanks mate, will continue to build links without any EM and then everything will hopefully get back to its normal state again.

 

[treasonerish]

How is your anchor distribution and link indexation?

 

[jacker818]

Google has been silently updating its algo & testing new things out for the past few months... My sites had a ridiculous amount of inconsistent dancing and they usually stabilized to their original or better rankings.

I wouldn't be worried much about this if you haven't been doing any crappy seo you should be fine.

Another thing you can also do is check the terms that have decreased in ranking because i have noticed since the last algo update google does hand out keyword penalties like water. Be very careful with your anchor keywords when link building keep everything extremely diverse!