Page Rank Worse After Optimization

[dkeipper]

For a long time, we had terrible on page SEO. No keyword targeting, no meta titles or descriptions. Just a brief 2-4 sentence product description and shipping information. Strangely, we weren't ranking too bad. For one product, we were ranking on page 1 of Google for a certain keyword.

My goal to reach the top of page 1 would be easy (or so I thought).

I have now optimized this page to rank better for the same keyword. I have a 276 word description with detailed specifications and shipping information. I have a strong title and meta description with keywords and modifers. I have also included a video demonstration, additional photos and an PDF of the owners manual.

In my eyes, the page is 100% better than it ever was. In the eyes of MOZ, it's better also. I've got an A with the On-Page Grader.

Why is this page now ranking on page 8 of Google? What have I done wrong? What can I do to correct it?

[DirkC]

This can have different reasons - without having the actual example it's difficult to assess. Based on the info you give, adding all this content, video, images, it could be that your page became a lot heavier to load (check the page on webpagetest.org and with pagespeed insights). May be you exaggerated a bit with the optimisation - and is Google considering the page a bit too spammy.

If possible, can you give the actual url of the page?

rgds,

Dirk

[DirkC]

Hi Dustin,

If the site is the one mentioned in your profile - it's almost certain that it's a speed/performance issue. I checked one product page - and grade from google for desktop is 49/100 - 67/100 for mobile. Webpage test indicates the page size of 2700K - mainly images, javascript & flash. It should not be to difficult to improve these scores - optimising the images & the js will help a lot.

rgds,

Dirk

[dkeipper]

Hi Dirk -

It's actually another website, not included in my profile.  
The page is: http://www.1-800-shaved-ice.com/simply-a-blast-snow-cone-machine.html

I did the same optimization with some other pages, and we are ranked number 1 on the first page.  These are the pages that have done extremely well.
http://www.1-800-shaved-ice.com/c-hc-8e.html
http://www.1-800-shaved-ice.com/swanblocshav.html

Thanks for your feedback

[DirkC]

Hi Dustin

I checked the last example a bit more in detail:

Webpagetest indicates that his page is even heavier than the one I tested the first time - results here: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150501_XQ_Q1H/ (load time ok - but page way to heavy)- page speed analyser results are not terrific either. Check also the links on the page - a lot of your css files seemed to be 301 to a new location - it's better to call directly the final location. Optimising shouldn't be too difficult - compressing images, js,..etc should really increase your scores.

Also on the technical side, probably good to clean the code a bit. You don't really have to pass the W3C validator test, but it seems your page generates a awful lot of errors.

From a content perspective - looks good. A remark could be that a lot of content is not directly visible when loading the page (read more, tabs). Google announced end of 2014 that they don't really like content that is hidden when the page is loaded (https://www.seroundtable.com/google-hidden-tab-content-seo-19489.html). Don't really think this would cause a drop - but it's something you could consider changing if you modify the HTML code.

Hope this helps,

Dirk

[dkeipper]

Thanks Dirk -

I will try out your suggestions and let you know my results.  I appreciate your help.