Remedy for SEO performace issues (ranking drops etc.)

[Hermski]

This post is deleted!

[madegood]

I had a similar problem recently and got a great response here;

http://www.seomoz.org/q/identifying-why-my-site-has-a-penalty

I think my site is recorvering, but it's early days still. Anyway, there's some great advice in the link above

[Hermski]

Hi madegood

Many thanks for your reply. I gave your post a read and got a few ideas. For example, I didn't know that you should change all URLs to the correct destination URL when they are being handled with a 301. I mean, I always thought that's what 301s are there for, to redirect to a URL that has changed... I didn't realise that you should still change the old URLs to reflect the new destination... However, I believe this should not be the cause for all my keywords having vaporised over night.

I agree with the anchor text distribution, which should be diverse and is not great in my case. In order to even it out a little, I need yet more links I guess. It's like a vicious cycle.

If more readers have further advice, keep it coming

[madegood]

Yeah, that was news to me too. Although to be clear it's the internal links in your site you need to update, the destination urls can obviously remain in the new location.

Very impressed with the screaming frog software too, invaluable for finding all the links that point to the wrong destination.

Good luck, let me know if you find any more tips!

[gfiedel]

I have recently  had a similar ranking-drop-for-certain-keyword-experience.

I set about making any improvements I could come up with across the board primarily with the help of this forum... (so not done yet) since the end of December when it happened. But my position improved on all counts to an undreamed of, remarkable degree last week even though there is still so much to do. It seems like magic.

I don't think I will ever know for sure what did the trick and I also don't know if the rankings will hold steady, but one thing I did was singular and may be the key.

I used http://www.linkdetox.com and found a group of particularly nasty-looking article links that i was unaware of, on one site with a fictitious author etc. I was successful in getting them removed and within a couple of days, my site was back on page 1 for 10 terms it had tanked on.

You might want to take a look at any toxic links you can find by using that tool.

Here's to hoping for some unexpected "magic" for you.

[Hermski]

Hi Gina

Thanks for your response! Yeah, I agree with you, the whole rankings game is unpredictable. Well, I am also making little changes here an there, but I don't think I have an on-page issue - well, I suppose nothing that justifies the rankings massacre I've had

I believe it's got to do with my backlink profile as I was also working with an agency. I may check out the linkdetox.com service. However, it also mentions it's advisable to use when you have received an 'unnatural links' warning in Webmaster Tools, which is not my case. Has this happened to you? In addition, I've had a few people look over the backlink profile and they advise me to dilute whatever may be causing the setback with quality links.

So currently I am trying to create some good links in the realms of PR 3 - 4. If it's going to make a difference, who knows. Well, it better...

Thanks again for your reply! Further advice and help is much appreciated.

[gfiedel]

Hi Hermski,

You're welcome!

We did not have any warnings in GWT. No messages, nothing. So it's my humble opinion that it is valuable to check the detox tool regardless of whether or not there are warnings. I was pretty surprised at what I found there.

Good luck and keep us posted!