Ranking drop Feb 2013?

[eolithicproductions]

I'm trying to get to the bottom of why Directholidays.co.uk suffered a drop in rankings for the term "cheap holidays" in February 2013.

Im looking at this recently and as an outsider so I haven't got access to Webmaster tools and I haven't been tracking rankings/link profiling.

They moved from 2nd to 10th temporarily and then recovered at 7th the new 10th!

I've looked at keywords improved/declined on, keywords lost/gained, traffic, traffic price but im failing to see exactly what I can use to show whether Panda #24 (officially 22nd of January) had a significant effect.

Can anyone shed any light on this? It would be massively appreciated!

[Nick_Ker]

I am not sure how knowing whether or not one particular piece of Google's algorithm found a problem with the site is going to help, but since Panda is generally going after copied or thin/weak content, I think it is safe to say that a lack of unique and "quality" content is to blame. All those links using the anchor text "cheap holidays" are also a potential problem, though not specifically a panda thing.

If I understood correctly, the site dropped from #2 to #10 and back to 7. Still on page one, so count your blessings. With a relatively small drop like that, it is probably just the Google algorithm in general or external factors like lost or devalued incoming links, rather than a specific filter against the site. Not every ranking change is due to a named algorithm update.

[Mike_Davis]

Not every ranking change is due to a named algorithm update.

I want everyone who uses the Q/A to have to repeat this 10 times before they are able to post a question.  Well said

[eolithicproductions]

Thanks Nick,

I was trying to assess the "SEO landscape" at the time, but i'll hopefully cover that by discussing the progression towards a deeper, more naturally distributed valued content based SEO strategy.

I'm still keen to identify if there are any obvious factors besides general algorithm updates competitor growth that resulted in the observed ranking changes.

It would give me a better idea of how to plan an effective strategy on re-gaining the #2 ranking.

Thanks in advance and apologies for sounding like a parrot!

[Nick_Ker]

No worries re: parrotting. If you look here in the Q&A and on things like Disqus, you'll find me repeating myself pretty often.

Travel sites like yours can be really difficult. There are so many of them, most have virtually the same content, and it seems that most are extremely committed to link spam (and are often still succeeding with it).

My gut instinct would be to try to come up with some really useful travel planning guides as a linkable asset like a PDF or maybe video. Some general guides for specific parts of the world (things like "How Not to Offend People in _____"), and maybe some for more specific locations. Then the tricky part is promoting that content in a non-spammy way so it will get shared, Liked, linked to, etc.

That's a lot of work, but if Google ever drops the hammer on the travel site niche which is competitive and pretty spammy, you will have a better chance of survival.