Unexplained Ranking Drops

Hi guys,

Im currently tracking around 25 terms for one of my sites, i noticed traffic had dropped today, by maybe half or so of what it normally would be for this time of day on a saturday.

After using my serp checker to check, ive had a substantial drop on 4 of my terms. Funnily enough none of these 4 terms are my "main" money term, although all bring substantial traffic.

My rankings are as follows

Term 1: was 3 now 10
Term 2 : Was 2 now 10
Term 3 : was 1 now 3 (not a huge drop)
Term 4: Was 5 now 39

Should i wait a day or 2 to see what happens? About a month ago something similar happened to me, and within less than a week i was back on top. I built a very small amount of web 2.0 links in that time, and added them to my gsa campaign.

Im unsure if i should just wait and see what happens, or if i should start building links for these terms again. All terms point to the same page (as all are very similar)

Thanks guys.

Many things can cause it..

Here are two things that might be responsible:

1. You built new links and it's propagating... Sometimes, moving down a bit is a sign of moving higher than you were..

2. Your links are getting removed..

It may be just Google dance or links getting removed as john1444 said.

Ive not built any new links in probably 2 weeks or so.

So should i look to build some new links right away?

Nope, you wait. Check in two weeks or so.

Wait a week and then you can make a decision. Odds are it is just a Google dance and nothing to be
worried about at all.

Let the dust settle and check after a while.

Thanks guys. Ill give it a week or so and then if it hasn't increased, ill build some more links

Yeah wait a week or so. OR your competitors are being more aggressive. Check their link profile.

Is this a brand new site(< 6 months old)?

bartosimpsonio said:

Is this a brand new site(< 6 months old)?

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Hi,

Sorry for the delay in reply, i kept getting an error message when logging in yesterday so was unable to reply.

The site has been registered since January, so is around 11 months old.

A few more of my rankings have dropped. Each of the rankings that have dropped are all similar search terms. My main money term is unaffected, and my other terms are plodding along as normal, with no negative impact.

Its just the related search terms for my main money keyword that have dropped. This has caused me to lose about half of my traffic. (Just this 1 page along was bringing in around 900+ unique visits a day due to all the LSI & related search terms).

Im thinking about building some more links for these terms due to more of them dropping off, as i think waiting will only make the situation worst?

wait for some more days and check it out, may be a google dance.

seo9791 said:

wait for some more days and check it out, may be a google dance.

Click to expand...

I had thought this, however as mentioned in my latest post, a few more rankings have dropped, and the drops are considerable. From page 1 to 5th page.

I'd just to to stress (so no one misses it) my "main money term" is unaffected. Its the LSI terms and similar search terms that have been affected. The onpage SEO isn't AS OPTIMISED for these terms, however i did go back and add the terms in etc and they had been performing fine, up until this past weekend.

Any more advice would be awesome as to what i should do next.

Any thoughts guys ?

Was your site ranking for the terms somewhat stable already before they moved down?

tompots said:

Was your site ranking for the terms somewhat stable already before they moved down?

Click to expand...

Yes, no ranking changes for weeks. All terms were stable for 2 months +

Have you noticed any new competitors slipping up into the SERP for your term?

No one "new". One of my competitors wasmissing from page 1 for a while and now that site is back. Wikipedia is in th etop spot for a few of the terms, along with a few e-commerce sites.

lolseo said:

No one "new". One of my competitors wasmissing from page 1 for a while and now that site is back. Wikipedia is in th etop spot for a few of the terms, along with a few e-commerce sites.

Click to expand...

Are you keeping track of how fast your links are building up? You may be the target of a negative seo campaign.

UPDATE-

So my main money keyword is still sitting pretty at number 1, however things have gotten worst.

Keyword 1- ranked at 2 in .co.uk and 4 in .com 1 week ago. Current rankings Now out of top 100 on both
Keyword 2 - ranked at 1 in .co.uk and .com 1 week ago. Current rankings .com = 10. / .co.uk = out of top 100
Keyword 3 - ranked at 7 in com & 11th in .co.uk 1 week ago. Current rankings / .com = 23 / .co.uk = 60
Keyword 4 - ranked at 2 in .com and 6 in .co.uk 1 week ago. Current rankings / .com = 11 / .co.uk = 24

Since the rankings first dropped on the 23rd November, i have not built any more links. My site has ranked quite well with only some minor drops throughout the entire year. These previous drops were only minor , with my keywords remaining on the 1st page and returning to previous positions after a few days.

These rankings have gotten worst as each day has passed.

What is puzzling me is that a number of other terms are still ranking exactly the same (in the #1 spot)

My manually built backlink profile consists of blog comments, directory submissions, guest blogging, forum profiles, forum posts, web 2.0's, video upload sites. I have not carried out any automation on this site.

This is the first "real problem" i've had, and its not affecting all my terms, or my entire site, just a number of LSI terms. I haven't really optimised my anchor text to revolve around these LSI terms, I just noticed that people were finding their way to my site through the limited keyword data still available through jetpack seo & google analytics. These terms have brought in excellent traffic however, which is why im worried.

Im thinking about building some more web 2.0 links (new profiles, and post on existing web 2.0 sites), as i've not built any links to my site in probably 3-4 weeks + now.

Any thoughts guys?