Several Keywords Dropped Completely

[38wesley]

On December 14th one of my sites dropped completely for multiple keywords. I cannot figure out why this happened. I have been adding content more in the past few months than ever before...

www.howtomac.com is the website

I am attaching a few webmasters screenshots so you can see the drop.

Any help is much appreciated.

htm-webmasters-0.jpg

[eTundra]

There are far too many factors at play here to really be able to pin any one thing down, but I do have a couple observations for you:

1. I only looked at the two keywords you cited in your screenshots "how to mac" and "imovie" and really, for how competitive these keywords are you had no business ranking for them in the first place with a DA of 13, even with an exact match domain.  Is your site pretty new?  It's possible you were getting a test drive in the SERPs (Dr. Pete talked about this phenomenon here).

2. I didn't look at more than two articles, but the ones I did look at seemed a little thin on content.  Great topics, great images, but I'm guessing there were only about 100 - 150 words in them.  I have no idea if that has anything to do with your ranking troubles, but just from a user value standpoint these articles could be a little more meaty.

[Thos003]

Did you add any specific links at that time?

Have you had rapid movement to the top? If you moved to the top quickly then it could just be Google testing your site with the old results. I have seen them do this on several occasions. You get moving, hit the first page, stay for a week or a month then drop down about 30 spots or more.

If you didn't do any specific link building at that time, then keep your current pace going and wait to see if it rebounds next month.

[38wesley]

Hi Thomas,

I appreciate your response.

I did not add any links at that time. Yes, the site has had very rapid movement to the top so your theory about the site being tested in the SERPs makes sense

Thank you!

Wes

[onlinemediadirect]

I have a similar issue with a clients site - http://www.tshirtsubway.com it was 2nd page for the keyword t shirts.

Then it totally disappeared just for this one keyword. All the other ranking are fine its just this one keyword that has totally vanished.

Contacted Google abut it via webmaster tools but not sure whats happening here.

Maybe to many in coming links under that word ?

[Thos003]

You want your "Branded" name to be the highest anchor text. The trip wire for individual keywords isn't known by many. We do our best to guess. But I'd say 50% is very high, and I'd shoot for around 30% to be safe. Again, it's a guess at what that limit is.