Impressions and search queries help

[raph3988]

Hello,

In the past month alone, my website www.shiftins.com has had a significant drop, about 50%, in my overall impressions and search queries (info from Google WMT). Now my target keywords have maintained their rankings but it looks like my site has dropped off the map for every other search term. I have not received any unnatural link warnings or anything of that sort so I don't think I have been penalized. Does anyone have an idea of what might have caused the decline and is there a solution to restore my prior status?

[Bryan_Loconto]

It all depends on when you lost your rankings and if there were any recent changes that may have caused the drop.

[raph3988]

Thanks for the response. It happened 10/06/12 and has continued to the present. There have not been any additional changes besides the addition of a video (around 10/16) and of course a few new links. Is there any other insight you may have?

[Bryan_Loconto]

There was a Penguin (http://mozcast.com/events) update on Oct 5th. THis update was targeting sites with low quality links and search engine manipulative link profiles.

[raph3988]

Thanks do you have any recommendations for how to recover?

[Bryan_Loconto]

First you must diagnose you anchor links. Are most of them linking in using exact keyword phrases? or are they mostly linking in with your Brand Name/URL?

A natural linking profile is 50% brand keyword phrases and your URL, 25% Diverse anchor text (ie. how to "keyword"), 25% Exact keyword.

If you linking ratio is not like this it might be the cause for your problem. To fix this you will need to contact all the sites that are linking to yoursand ask them to change the anchored link to your brand name.

Hope this helps.

[raph3988]

Thank you this is what I suspected since only non target keywords went down. So do you think if I start changing my anchor text and start building new links using only branded anchors to dilute my exact match, that i will be able to regain my search queries or is this also an over all link quality penalty?

[Bryan_Loconto]

Yes this should help, I would focus on earning new links by creating real value to your audience/users...

What are they searching for and what is the quickest way to deliver this message. As long as you are adding value and building a clean link profile you should rank again.

[raph3988]

You have been extremely helpful Bryan Thank you very much. So you don't think my site has been penalized?

[Bryan_Loconto]

IMHO It's not likely, just an algo change.