A keyword suddenly dropping 25 positions in Gooogle

[Juandbbam]

Hello,

One of my clients have a new website (just 3 months old) and for some keywords it's already working quite well (some of them already on first page for organic search results in Google).

But suddenly one of the keywords (just one) dropped 25 positions from one day to another, while the rest of them are ok and even getting better.

What may be happening here? The only thing I have done for this keyword different to the rest is that I have created a few internal links (just 7 o using the keyword. The site is big, with around 60 pages including a blog.

I know that I'm not being very explicit with the information I'm providing...

Thank you in advance for your help!

[RyanKent]

With a single keyword drop on a new site there are many possibilities to investigate. A few ideas:

• Any change on the page can affect the rankings. For example a title change alone can lead to a major climb or fall in rankings.

• Any change to the site can affect a keyword's rankings. Many sites use common navigation, footers and sidebars throughout the site. Changes impact how PR flows throughout the site and can have a large impact on rankings.

• You mentioned the site is about 90 days old. New web pages receive a boost in rankings. Google rewards fresh content in that manner. After a brief period, the boost is removed and the page settles down to it's normal ranking position.

• I suggest checking the rankings from another pc and/or browser you do not normally use. Google offers personalized rankings when you are logged in. Even when you log out, your browser has a lot of information such as your location and browsing history which can be used to customize search results. You can add &pws=0 to the end of your query, but another option is using another pc. The bottom line, the search results you are viewing may be quite different from the results others see.

• Google may adjust your rankings based on numerous factors such as the statistics they have collected on your site. Bounce rate, time on page / site, click-through-rate and other factors measure how users interact with your site. If Google feels users are not happy with the result for the keyword, they may adjust accordingly.

I hope these ideas offer you a few things to investigation.

PS. "The site is big, with around 60 pages..." As an fyi, a site with 60 pages is generally considered a small site. When you say "big" site, I think of 10k+ page sites.

[SimonCullum]

An awesome answer from Ryan, very comprehensive.

The only thing I'd add is that moving forwards as the site matures, only be concerned with Average Monthly Rankings & Visitor Numbers, rather than a ranking at one particular point in time.

This is because rankings often fluctuate so much, and there will always be changes and movement going on;  look at the monthly reports and respond to those when need-be rather than daily movements, this will save a fair amount of time to spend on other areas such as content & distribution.

All the best and regards,

Simon

[rasmusbang]

Just want to add a short note on the issue with logging out of google to see the search results correctly. If you use Chrome as a browser i would recommend the add on called "SEO SERP" - it gives you the search result for a keyword on a selected area (.com, .uk, .dk or whatever) and list the sites you wish to see positions for. Great add on which i use daily.

-Rasmus

[onlinemediadirect]

I have had exactly the same problem with a clients site just one particular word totally going off the rankings ? I am going to check the client hasn't been changing any of the page titles.

[Juandbbam]

Thanks a lot for all your responses, they have been of great value.

I'm getting the info about the keyword behaviour from Seomozpro campaign. The same keyword has gone up 10 positions this week without doing anything, so it's quite strange this going-down-going-up without any aparent reason...

Maybe it's going up to its previous position? Let's see..

Thanks a lot for all your help!