Homepage is losing rankings...need help!

[zoomzoom]

Hi folks,

Our company has been doing SEO for www.3dincites.com since October. Since the website hadn't been optimized at all, one of the first things we did was to add keyword-optimized page title and meta description to the homepage. The person who implemented didn't do it right the first time so we needed to change the page title again after a week or so. We also changed the preferred domain in GWT. Ever since those changes were implemented, the homepage has been decreasing in rankings for the the keywords we optimized it for. This is very surprising as the website has high-quality unique content and pretty solid backlinks. Moreover, the search traffic to other pages is through the roof (2K increase since October) so the client is happy, however, this decrease in rankings for the homepage (from 3d to 6th page for "3d IC technology" which is the main keyword) doesn't let me sleep well at nights. Any ideas why this is happening?

[mediawyse]

Hi ZoomZoom,

Although I can't do a full site audit in this forum I see some clear issues which could easily explain your drops:

• Your site loads horribly slow. You're scoring very low on the Google PageSpeed Insights Tool
• You've got 70 images on that home page. That's hurting your Page Speed and overall usability.
• You appear to optimizing for the phrase "3D IC technology" and yet it's not represented on the page once.

I'm showing a PageRank 0 on your site, a white toolbar. There has been a PageRank update since October. What was it previously? Did you lose PageRank during the last update? It looks like you have a relatively average DA 34 score which should be enough to rank you for most keywords. Make sure to head over to the Panguin Tool and run this site against reported recent algorithmic updates by Google, that will help fine-tune your site auditing.

Finally, when you change or jigger with setting in GW Tools it can take a period of a couple of weeks for things to "shake out." So just an FYI there as well.

Good luck!

[zoomzoom]

Thanks Casey! I really appreciate it!

We are aware of the load speed issues. We just started featuring ads on the website so we are currently working on fixing it. However, this is a recent issue and we've been losing ranking for a few months already.

The tool you recommended is great however, because the website overall is doing well there is no clear indication what is causing the drop in rankings for the homepage only.

It does concern me, however, that the page rank is 0. I know it hasn't been updated for a while but how come it was 0 in October? Is that a sign we had some bad backlinks? I personally did a link audit a few weeks ago and didn't find any suspicious websites.

[mediawyse]

To clarify, I didn't say that your PageRank was "0" in October. I was hoping YOU knew what your PageRank was in October because if it was 3 and you are now a 0, then clearly that would imply a larger issue. So unfortunately, unless you can backtrack your previous PageRank histroy, all we can do now is speculate.

And I'm confused about your statement here: "because the website overall is doing well there is no clear indication what is causing the drop in rankings for the homepage only." The tool I gave you is for Google Organic-only traffic. And I'm sure most of your traffic is still coming to your home page, that's common for sites. So I'd really look at the tool to see if there was any noticeable drops especially "back a couple of months ago."

You also said specific "ranking drops." So that means you have been able to map keywords to your home page, correct? I would do a couple of things with that information:

• examine the sites Google is now ranking above you for these keyword queries and look for trends
• example your backlink profile with an eye towards these specific keyword phrases that have dropped
• example your on-page optimization (especially internal linking) that references these specific keyword phrases (anchor text)

Keep me updated.

[zoomzoom]

Thanks!

Sorry my typo, I meant December page rank. October PageRank was also 0, which was not unexpected since the website had just been launched last April. However, it was a surprise to us it was still 0 in December, after we had got a number of good backlinks.

As I mentioned earlier, organic search traffic has been increasing steadily since October even for the homepage that was loosing rankings. However, most of the increase was probably due to low-tail keywords. I cannot see how anyone would be going to page 6 of search results.

I'll follow your advice on examining the competition in more detail. However, it still seems the problem is deeper than that.

[ThompsonPaul]

You missed Casey's most important point, zoomzoom. You say the primary phrase you're targeting on the home page is "3d IC technology". But the only place that phrase exists is once in the meta-title of the page.

There's no way a page is going to rank for an even moderately competitive term by only have it in the meta-title. If that phrase is the focus of the page, it should naturally occur multiple times in the copy of the page, in captions, alt tags, etc. Right now, Google has no solid reason to think the page is actually about that phrase.

Now, whether the home page is the most valuable one to rank for that phrase is another discussion, but if that's the page you want to rank, you've at least got to use those words on the page!

Hope that helps?

Paul