Finished On Page optimization and slipping in rankings

[devonkrusich]

Just finished on page optimization for a client that was on page 2 for the keyword.  Went from an on page score of D to an A.  But we are still slipping down the rankings.  We were towards to top of page 2 now we are towards the bottom.  Is there a time that it takes to change or does the on page not really make a big impact?

[jgower]

On page makes a HUGE impact, at least from my (limited) experience...We have gotten a few backlinks over the past month, but most of what we have done is on page optimization.  We've went from page 7 to 2 for our main (very competitive) keyword and we're number 1, 2, 3, 4 (or all of them) for a lot of the long tail keywords we went for.

If you haven't yet, make a sitemap (I've been using gsite crawler), then submit that to google in webmaster tools.  Granted, it's taken some time....I haven't actually done very much in the last couple of weeks but we're still slowly coming up the rankings.

[RyanKent]

Is there a time that it takes to change or does the on page not really make a big impact?

Google crawls sites in small pieces. Depending on the site's DA and the PA of any given page, it can take a month for your site to be fully crawled. It is normal for a web page to bounce around in SERPs, but it should settle down after a month.

There are many factors of page optimization beyond the grade in the campaign manager. It is a helpful tool which can identify various issues, but it is not complete and there are various site wide and off page factors which influence ranking.

[SarahGoliger]

Hi Devon,

How recently did you finish these changes? It's possible that Google hasn't even seen the changes yet and moved you down for reasons totally unrelated to this. For example, if you changed the page title or meta description, is that new title or description showing up in the search results yet? If not, chances are Google has not crawled the page recently and the changes are unrelated to your ranking change.

If yes, what elements did you change on page? Did you change the URL of your page? If you changed the URL, even if you did a proper 301 redirect right away, you may still see a temporary drop in rankings for about 1-2 weeks before it recovers and rises back up. Even with a 301 redirect and everything done perfectly, it can take some time for Google to recognize the authority of the new URL and rank it appropriately.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Best,

[theChris]

In Google Webmaster Tools you can fetch the page as googlebot and then submit the page to the google index.  No guarantee that this will improve your rankings but it helps insure that Google is looking at the most updated and optimized version of that page.

In Google Webmaster Tools, go to: DIAGNOSTICS > FETCH AS GOOGLEBOT, then enter the url for the page you want crawled and click FETCH.  After the url is successfully fetched it will appear in the list below the search box and a blue link next to the "Success" check mark appears with the text "Submit to index", click that and you're set.