Newly designed page ranks in Google but then disappears - at a loss as to why.

[MichaelWhyley]

Hi all,

I wondered if you could help me at all please? We run a site called getinspired365.com (which is not optimised) and in the last 2 weeks have tried to optimise some new pages that we have added. For example, we have optimised this page - http://getinspired365.com/lifes-a-bit-like-mountaineering-never-look-down

This page was added to Google's index via webmaster tools. When I then did a search for the full quote it came back 2nd in Google's search. If I did a search for half the quote (Life is a bit like mountaineering) it also ranked 2nd. We had another quote page that we'd optimised that displayed similar behaviour (it ranked 4th). But then for some reason when I now do the search it doesn't rank in the top 100 results. This, despite, an unoptimised "normal" page ranking 4th for a search such as: Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered.

So our domain doesn't seem to be penalised as our "normal" pages are ranking. These pages aren't particularly well designed from an SEO standpoint. But our new pages - which are optimised - keep disappearing from Google, despite the fact they still show as indexed.

I've rendered the pages and everything appears fine within Google Webmaster Tools. At a bit of a loss as to why they'd drop so significantly? A few pages I could understand but they've all but been removed. Any one seen this before, and any ideas what could be causing the issue? We have a different URL structure for our new pages in that we have the quote appear in the URL. All the content (bar the quote) that you see in the new pages are unique content that we've written ourselves. Could it be that we've over optimised and Google view these pages as spam?

Many thanks in advance for all your help.

[GastonRiera]

Hi,

How old are the pages that you are tracking? Have you considered that SERPs will fluctuate for a few weeks since google indexed them?
Also, you should take into consideration that January has been a really windy month in the SERPs, that's because there have been many updates on the Google Algorithm.
Check them out here:
Google Algorithm Change History - Moz.com
Algaroo.com
Mozcast.com

You should also take consideration, as you've said, that your pages aren't optimized over SEO. 
I'd recommend you that learn about the major updates that have been over january and analize wether your site may be not suitable for google to rank you better.

Hope it helps.
GR

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Michael,

The first thing I would say, is that the page is somewhat lacking in actual content. There are only 168 words on there and this to me would suggest a thin page in Google's eyes.

You then have to ask yourself, who am I trying to attract to the page and what do I offer them when they get there? Do I answer a question in enough detail that Google is going to rank me well for it?

Is the page about Mountaineering or Edmund Hilary? What is the purpose of the page? What phrase are are you trying to optimize for?

I hope this makes sense?

-Andy

[MichaelWhyley]

Hi Gaston,

That's really helpful. Thanks.

The new pages are only around 2 weeks old - the ones that have appeared then dropped. The ones that still appear ranked are a few years old. So I guess we could know more in 3-4 weeks to see what our true position is.

I will have a read of those three links you've sent to me and see if there's anything that applies to us/could be affecting us. Many thanks for your reply.

[MichaelWhyley]

Hi Andy,

Many thanks for replying, really appreciate it.

That's a fair comment - I must admit that we thought we had enough content in there, but maybe not by the sounds of things. This page - http://www.getinspired365.com/genius - which is an old style page and been around for a few years - seems to rank 3rd in Google when you type in that quote (Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered) but this has even less content than our new style pages and is also not optimised in any way. Having said that, we can certainly try to add more content to the page to see if that helps things.

And yes that makes complete sense. So the purpose of this page is for people to find the quote (and be inspired by it in some way - although this quote isn't the best!), and then find out some additional information about the person that said the quote, and also have links to more Edmund Hillary quotes, and links to other inspiring people. So it's not meant to be spammy in any way - certainly not our intention. Our intention is to provide people interesting quotes, in a visually nice way whilst being able to learn a little bit more about that author. Optimise wise we try and optimise on the quote itself, as that is the focus for us and what we are about. We'll try and add more content and see if that makes any difference.

Many thanks

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Michael,

Then I would guess you want to be optimising for something like "Inspirational quotes from Edmund Hilary" or "Inspirational quotes from Albert Einstein"? There is a much bigger discussion to be had here that could reach more people.

Perhaps give the page some time and see if there are opportunities to create some internal links. Look at the stats from your other page and see why this is ranking, but the new one isn't. I am sure if you performed a mini audit, you would see lots of options that could help with this.

-Andy

[MichaelWhyley]

Thanks, I'll give it some time and as you say look at my site and try to figure out why one is ranking and the other is not.

thanks again

[EricaMcGillivray]

Hi Michael,

Glad to see you got help! If you're happy with the responses, would you mind marking this question as answered?

Thanks!

[DonnaDuncan]

I think part of the problem you're seeing Michael is due to Google's preference for fresh content. It's more prevalent in some industries but I have noticed the rankings boost you get from it is temporary. It degrades over time.