1st > 11th (Wrong Page Ranking)

As we are all speculating Google has just launched a new update.

Here is my position (all examples are similar, but not my niche)

My homepage was ranking for

Petcare grooming tip
Petcare grooming tips
pet care grooming tip
pet care grooming tips

4 Very similar wods, 2 have a space, and 2 have an s on the end.

My home page was ranking #1, and has been for months for all 4 terms.

My homepage displays the top tips with affiliate links to those products. Then underneath is a blog feed, showing only posts from a category called 'pet care grooming tips'.

The category page shows snippets of each blog post marked in that category.

My site is currently ranking (Homepage) #1 for the terms:
petcare grooming tip
pet care grooming tip

However I have dropped to 8th for 'pet care grooming tips' and 11th for 'petcare grooming tips' - So both versions of my keyword with the 's' on the end are now ranking the category page, instead of the homepage. The category is also present on my main site nav with the anchor text 'pet care grooming tips'

The page is redunant, and I only have it so i can pull the full posts onto the homepage. I do not need this category page showing exceprts from posts.

What am i best off doing? Removing it from the nav and placing a 301 to the homepage, or leaving it as it is, and implementing a rel canonical tag, pointing to the homepage, but leaving the category still showing, and still in the nav?

remove your keywords babe.
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Are you masking your affiliate links?

tony_d said:

Are you masking your affiliate links?

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My rankings returned yesterday to 1 but ive woke up today to find all 4 terms either 2nd or 3rd.

I use a mixture of masked affiliate links using prettylink however i also use full affiliate links to. Maybe a 60-40 split

prab1996 said:

remove your keywords babe.
-=-

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Please explain in more detail ?

lolseo said:

Please explain in more detail ?

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He's saying you shouldn't post your keywords publically...

Can you share what your backlink sources are? No details on the actual sites, but just trying to get a feel for what types of strategies are getting hit.

meln said:

He's saying you shouldn't post your keywords publically...

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Haha, i said in the OP that those arent my real words, but are comparable , as in spacing and plural to my actual words.

DiggitySEO said:

Can you share what your backlink sources are? No details on the actual sites, but just trying to get a feel for what types of strategies are getting hit.

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Back links are a mixture of guest posts, some outreach was made to get links back to the site from other site owners, manually created web 2.0's and unique content (written by myself), youtube description and profile page links, regular sharing on twitter, facebook, g+ and 1 .edu domain. Also 1 domain redirect (it was a fresh domain that I built myself, so i know all of its history)

My 4 main money words were all ranking first, but now they are all ranking 2nd and 3rd. Not a massive drop, but a drop none the less.

One of my competitors, which is a site with very thin content USED to rank #1, maybe 6 months ago, but i outranked them and have been sitting at number 1 for ages. They are now back at #1 for 2 of the terms, with a 2nd competitor sitting at #1 for the other 2 terms.

As my homepage is now once again ranking for the words, albeit in 2nd and 3rd position as opposed to first, I believe my site is prety heavy on duplicate content due to the posts being shown on the homepage, and category page.

What is the best solution for this? Should I remove the category, and stop adding these thin posts, just updating the homepage when necessary or should i just noindex the category page?

OR should i do a redirect or rel canonical tag from the category to the homepage?

Any advice please guys?

very thaaaaank you

mshakel20101 said:

very thaaaaank you

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Sorry i dont understand this ?

I PMed you last night to help you out but no response.

Hard to give advice without looking at the site but you certainly do not want to link it in the thread.

I dont think anyone would give out their site on BHW