Severe Drops in Google UK rankings

[Chris_CDC]

Hi Guys,

I'm Chris - SEO Noob & appointed website man @ www.customdesignedcable.co.uk

I signed up to SEO moz at the end of February and i have slowly but surely been trying to implement the on-page optimisation suggestions with my selected keywords against the appropriate pages.

Since i have done this, our pages are still ranking but no where near what they were at before.

Out of 70 keywords, we've gone from at least 60+ pages on the first page down to 20+ and the number in the top three has dropped from 55 to 33.

Obviously i'm no seo guru far far from it but all of the changes that have been suggested i have adhered to and the result is the exact opposite of what i was hoping for and expecting.

I'm after some advice as to how to use seomoz to target my keywords to google primarily to get these page rankings back. Should i just upload backup copies of the site?

How would you suggest that i move forward to try and achieve at least similar rankings to what i had previously?

Any help is much appreciated as most of our enquiries come from the internet and it has almost completely dried up these last couple of months.

Thanks Guys!

Chris.

P.S. Would redesigning the site look, layout and feel with the same content negatively affect seo?

Also, as a completely separate question, how come sites with content that is a lot worse than ours rank higher for the same keywords as ours?

Thanks Again

[My-Favourite-Holiday-Cottages]

At a glance, I can see you appear to be targeting 3 keywords per page, perhaps focusing on one per page would help?

On the design I can say that it might (google aparently checks above the fold to see if your have a lot of ads there). Overall it's unlikly to make a diffrence if the content and structure stay the same, so if you can imporve your design and get more conversions I would always do so.

[Chris_CDC]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply!

To be honest putting three keywords on each page isn't something that i have added since i've started with SEOmoz.

We were actually targeting 4,5 and 6 per page before i started doing this

I fully accept your point though but would we not miss out on variations of keyword in a search? Such as cable braid or cable braiding? Or would i be better to just go with two separate pages one for each keyword?

Thanks again!

[My-Favourite-Holiday-Cottages]

I'd definatly avoid having unrelated keywords on a page, but if it's variations I would consider how much traffic each one gets, and either focus or make an extra page (presuming I have good, non-suplicate info for said page).

We've actualy had a lot of success recently by just targeting the most prominant in the titles/h1s, and having variations in h2's, body text, with a few quality links to each (most of the links are for brandname on the homepage). It looks a bit more natural that way.

Just one thing to check is 'when' your rankings dropped. If it was all in the same week/day, you might be being affected by the new panda/penguin e.t.c. updates, in which case there's been a lot of actional advice on the blog.