Our keyword rank fell drastically since our last moz crawl. What gives?

[drudalton]

Our site was just crawled last night an we had a number of keywords fall 25% or so, from say # 30 to 38. What would cause such a drastic fall? We haven't taken down pages or changed changed page titles, url or content.

One thing we are having trouble with is our meta description and meta keywords for each page. Drupal 7 seems to be giving us trouble and the meta information isn't showing up anymore.

Would that cause the fall? Any other suggestions?

[applesofgold]

We also had a similar situation the previous week. This week we seem to have stabilized. I'm trying to figure it out myself as we have been steady with our pages, and actually significantly increasing in content and # of pages.

PS. If this response helps, please hit the "thumbs up"!

[jeffreytrull1]

Has it just been one day? I'd give it at least a day or two more before panicking. Things tend to move around in Google like that.

Meta keywords and description have zero direct impact on SEO rankings.

Don't bother filling in meta keywords at all. It's a waste of time.

Meta descriptions can be important for getting clicks, but they won't help for where you rank in Google if you're trying to optimize the descriptions with keywords.

[drudalton]

Thanks for the help Jeffrey. I've seen some fall for the last three weeks, but much more gradually than last nights crawl. Maybe 2 or 3 places the last two crawls and then 8 places last night.

[EGOL]

from say # 30 to 38

This could be normal flux.  Hang in there.

One thing we are having trouble with is our meta description and meta keywords for each page.

Meta keywords is meaningless.

If you have concerns about your site maybe a consult with a Drupal Expert would put your mind at ease and correct any real problems.

[drudalton]

So meta description is meaningless for  SEO correct? But it is helpful in the search engines to the person who searched so they can get a desc of the link provided right? That would be the main benefit?

[NormanNewsome]

I have seen some pretty massive fluctuations in two SERPS I keep track of over the past 24 hours. The changes in rankings haven't just affected my domains, but competitors domains as well (both good and bad for them). I am wondering if it has something to do with the changes Google launched in February.

Like others have said I am going to wait and see if the changes remain for a few days until I panic.

[loopyal]

Do you have a CDN?

They started crawling some of my pages through the CDN, which I have never seen before, and they are dropping my real pages and replacing them with CDN pages.

[drudalton]

Sorry, I'm in idiot and have no idea what CDN means. Do you mind explaining Alan? Sorry for my novice-ness.

[EGOL]

Meta Keywords is not used by search engines

Meta description is used by search engines part of the time.

[drudalton]

Thanks!

[loopyal]

Sorry Dru

CDN is a Content Delivery Network.

It helps make your site faster by serving your images, CSS and javascript from a network across the world.

If you misconfigure it or configure it lazily (as I did) then it is possible for the search engines to access your content from the CDN and that can create duplicate content, accidentally, for which you may be penalized.

• and that might be a reason for a ranking drop.

[drudalton]

Wow, thanks for the great response. Where could I learn more about properly configuring it so my dev can make sure its done properly.

Since you mention that, moz does give me a lot of warnings (about 500) about duplicate page content and titles. Maybe that's part of the issue.