Dropped 50 places for Page Title Change

[NaescentAdam]

Hey Guys,

I've got a keyword set that is really annoying me. You see on the 19th July I changed my page title for the home page to what I thought would be something more competitive and instead of climbing from rank 9/10 I dropped out of the top 50. So I waited 2 weeks to see if it changed and it just stayed out of the top 50.

After two weeks I changed it back again and I've been out of the top 50 ever since. I havnt made any real significant changes to the site as I've held off waiting for the keyword ranking to return but I dont think it will.

I was trying to improve the keyword phrase "bahamas all inclusive" for the website www.smallhope.com. I'd managed to get on to page 1 rank 9/10 depending.

I changed the title;

from "Bahamas All Inclusive - Andros Bahamas Hotel - Bahamas Vacation - Small Hope Bay Lodge All-Inclusive"

to "Bahamas All Inclusive Vacation - Small Hope Bay Lodge All-Inclusive"

This is really bad for us and I'm not sure what to do.

I had a whole plan in place starting with the Title and moving on to the H1 tags, but now I'm not so sure. I've put everything on hold. If this was you what would you do to get back to page 1?

Thanks,

Adam

[polarking]

Can I ask what you are you using for your rank check?

[NaescentAdam]

SEOMoz with Google US as the preferred search engine. Not too bothered about the others for now, as I'm hoping they'll fall in to place.... hopefully....

[polarking]

I would try rankchecker it spiders out to find your actual rank. Or Google the keywords and find your sites current rank. I believe SeoMoz does an update kind of like Semrush but not positive.

[NaescentAdam]

Ahh no I'm not after that. I know the rank has dropped and I have had this confirmed in multiple places including webmaster tools and google analytics.

So the rank has dropped.

I need to increase the position for those keywords.

Adam

[leatcristian]

I did a manual check and your website is ranking on the 10th position for the search "bahamas all inclusive" on google.com.

Your title in the search is "Bahamas All Inclusive - Andros Bahamas Hotel - Bahamas Vacation..."

Update: I've searched through an US proxy and the website is not even in top 50...strange!

[NaescentAdam]

Can i ask you where you are based?

[leatcristian]

Europe, Romania

[NaescentAdam]

Thanks Leat, I know its odd. I think I've been penalized for spam like behaviour when I changed the title. I'm a little concerned as America is the main source of traffic.

[polarking]

I lost rank on a product page for too many of the same type keywords. I scaled them back and ranking improved a few weeks later.  A program I use indicated this :Your Image Alt attributes seem very long . The average wordcount per Alt tag is 8.8 . Possibly too high.

[Zachary_Russell]

You need to remember that SEOmoz is constantly changing their ranking algorithm, just like Google is, I think that they have a place to track changes.

[NaescentAdam]

I know changing the Alt tags and other on-page optimisation was part of my original plan. Change title, stabilise, change h1 tags, stabilise, change alt tags etc..

Unfortunately the title change bombed my placement, so before I make some more changes I'm trying to start from my initial position and move forward.

Just dont seem to be able to get back to before I set my plan in motion.

[NaescentAdam]

With this though its over a couple of months with multiple sources of confirmation. My total organic traffic in GA dropped 20% about a week after the change and my Webmaster tools impressions have halved as well.

Right now checking in multiple sources I'm not even in the top 50 since making a title change and then reversing which is very worrying...

[leatcristian]

Try to continue with your plan I think Google doesn't have an "undo" button... When I'm optimizing the title I'm also changing the meta description to suit the new title, that way if Google doesn't find an appropriate part of text for the description, it will use the optimized one.

[NaescentAdam]

Yeah I might at that, just the fact that I'm not in the top 50 though is a very bad sign for the rest of my plan ....

[MarieHaynes]

I'm guessing this is not really connected to your title change.  On what date did you drop from the SERPS?  Is it concidental with a known Panda Update?

The reason I am asking is that a quick look for duplicate content on your site, shows this: Google search for a phrase from the site in quotes : 2530 results!

If Google thinks your page is a duplicate of others out there then it has no reason to offer it up to searchers.

I didn't have a thorough look though, but I'm thinking that the drop is not directly related to your title change.

[NaescentAdam]

Ahh I hadnt thought of that, the drop though was about shortly after I changed the title and requested a google reindex of the site. I wonder if the changes caused Google to push through a re-evaluation and penalised it based on the Panda update.

The Panda update was in Fed and my changes we the 19th July, so pretty far apart, but could still be linked.... hmm...

[AndyMacLean]

Bear in mind theres been alot of recent Google algo changes, your rankings may have changed because of something other than page titles.

BTW - I say that especially applies to the travel industry - ive seen alot of flux for aggregators of late.

[MarieHaynes]

There have been several Panda updates since then.  There was one on July 24th, 2012 so it's possible that this update picked up your potential Panda issues.

[NaescentAdam]

I think that's it then! Ha that is a weight of my mind, now I have a reason I can create a solution. I just checked my Webmaster Tools data and we went from a stable level of 3000 impressions on the 24th July going straight down to 1000 impressions by the 28th July then picking up slightly and staying around the 1600 level ever since.

I checked the Panda update and they said ~1% have been affected but I've got a lot of duplicate page data on there. I'm going to push forward with a complete change to the text on the front page. Ahh that is a weight off knowing what the problem probably is. Whew....

Thanks for all the help guys its really really appreciated.

Adam