Drop in SERP, can it be because of site performance?

Hi

Please forgive for posting a question about ranking, but this is a problem I'm struggeling with now. And help is welcome.

My site is 5 months old and is very good optimized for it's keywords. Instantposition.com gives it 39/40 points for how good it's optimized for its keywords, measuring server, url, keyword density, title, h1 tags etc...
Site experienced a drop in ranking about a month ago, but that was because I had used lot of banners on my site. These banners made my site heavy to load. and Google gave me a slap. Within 2 hours of removing those banners my site appeared again in top 100.. so that I take it for being a performance issue, but not this time - I've removed all the banners, are using no graphic.

3 days ago my site dropped out of top 100 in Google, actually it dropped from #40 to somewhere around #500.

I have 2 theories why this drop happend:
Google is giving my site a penalty because of bad performance. Webmaster tools reports:
"This is faster than 59% of sites". But I don't believe in this theory, as why do I get a google slap because of bad performance when my site is as fast as the site ranked #1 for the keyword? I've used Page Speed to measure the speed of the front page of my site and competitorrs site. That test says my site is as fast as the competitors.... Or can it be because site is hosted in Norway and I live in Norway so when I test my site I get higher performance because of me living in the same country?

My other theory is that google is dancing:
About 2 weeks ago I submitted my site to dir.yahoo.com, So I get very strong backlinks from dir.yahoo.com, uk.dir.yahoo.com etc
So think google are working on where my site should be placed in the SERP.

What you suggest?

Both of your theories are not correct
I don't think getting link from yahoo directory will decrease your serp ranking.
There may be lot of reasons for ranking in serps,your domain is just 5 months old it is common for new sites so no need to worry about it.PM me your domain i will tell you the problem

listen bro if you give me your domain i can run a report in internet business promoter and email to you after that. This way you wont be guessing.

According to Google, site performance is now included as a determining factor in the ranking of sites. So, this could be a reason. It is at least worth testing. More likely, your site is just going through a normal "shake-out" process and will bounce back in the rankings.

I have had sites that were a couple months old and were ranking in the top 50 drop out of the top 100 for several weeks and then bounce back.

I see about 40% of the request to my site results in 404 not found
Suppose that may be cause someone have created a faulty backlink to my site.

I'm looking into how to detect which site have the url. Also I have a redirect from another domain, will contact host and stop the redirect tomorrow

Now it's been about 14 days since my site had a drop in the SERP. About 7 days I added a Robots.txt file and have fixed some minor issues which somehow causes a 404 error

This morning I removed all the adverts (adsense) from the site, thought that would speed up the site. - strange but Page Speed don't report any increased speed.

My site has some very powerful backlinks from dir.yahoo.com, uk.yahoo.com and au.yahoo.com. The drop in google SERP happend about 7 days after I got those backlinks

My site appear at about SERP 700 (last page) for it's main keyword. Have keyword in url, h1 tags, titles, meta description etc. But if I narrow the search down to only find pages from Norway (site is hosted in Norway), then my site is found in the top 100.

You think this is a google slap or is google just recalculating my new SERP?

IF you are getting a lot of 404 errors, you can stop that by changing your 404 into a working page...Post a message on it saying something like:

" This isn't our homepage but while you are here, check out this offer... "

Or, you can also post live pages of content to them, like affiliate pages, prebuilt product pages, etc.

I use these techniques to make extra sales from hackers that actually are trying to get into loopholes in my sites and end up buying the product that I offer. It converts really well with people that get redirected to you by server error or old page links that no longer exist.

IT will help your ranking a lot because you won't ever have a dead page, which google reads 404 and 401 errors as your site being down/damaged, which will effect your rank and position over time.

food for thought.

loginname said:

Now it's been about 14 days since my site had a drop in the SERP. About 7 days I added a Robots.txt file and have fixed some minor issues which somehow causes a 404 error

This morning I removed all the adverts (adsense) from the site, thought that would speed up the site. - strange but Page Speed don't report any increased speed.

My site has some very powerful backlinks from dir.yahoo.com, uk.yahoo.com and au.yahoo.com. The drop in google SERP happend about 7 days after I got those backlinks

My site appear at about SERP 700 (last page) for it's main keyword. Have keyword in url, h1 tags, titles, meta description etc. But if I narrow the search down to only find pages from Norway (site is hosted in Norway), then my site is found in the top 100.

You think this is a google slap or is google just recalculating my new SERP?

Click to expand...

ok, just a simple question, do you have google webmaster. if so that should give you all the information about problems with the site ( not ranking issues )

so make your speed adjustments
fix all the problems with your sitemap ( submit only once, if you keep on resubmitting, you'll get de-indexed, I learned that the hard way )
and make sure you don't have any issues

after all that's fixed you can then proceed to optimization.

Well, that only happens if you resubmit a lot.

I actually recommend resubmitting due to the drop-off cycle in google. After 90-120 days, google cycles you into the older sites directories and pushes you out of the ' new site ' server systems, due to keeping content fresh. This will also result in a drop in rank and site function on the serp.

You should resubmit on a regular basis of about 3-4 times per year. You can't go in there and resubmit within an average 90 day period unless you have made major changes to your site, such as a revamp of the design or something else drastic.

Resubmitting due to posting a new blog post or a couple of articles will tank you quick. However, resubmitting every few months puts you back into the new content bot searches and at the top of the list in the database, as a new submission to be spidered.

This will allow you to update 3-4 months of major content that will tend to drag and get missed over time, as when you post it and when a spider actually picks it up due to crawling your site or the site of your article, post, or ad will be varied.

billygood said:

ok, just a simple question, do you have google webmaster. if so that should give you all the information about problems with the site ( not ranking issues )

so make your speed adjustments
fix all the problems with your sitemap ( submit only once, if you keep on resubmitting, you'll get de-indexed, I learned that the hard way )
and make sure you don't have any issues

after all that's fixed you can then proceed to optimization.

Click to expand...