Why one of my top pages dropped?

[fablau]

Hello here.

Our website, virtualsheetmusic.com, is pretty popular in the sheet music realm, and we used to rank on the first page for the keyword "violin sheet music" until a few weeks ago with our violin dedicated page:

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/Violin.html

But a couple of weeks ago we dropped to over the 5th page on Google (I can't even find us!) and I have no idea why. Most of our top ranking pages are still there though. This never happened before, after 17 years on the web.

Do you have any idea why that could have happened?

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

What I would do is this - take a look at your competitors that are now ranking for this - look at the content that's ranking, the type of content it is (educational, transactional, informational, etc.) and see how it aligns with your content. From there, write down what you feel is most important that they are doing and how you can apply (tweaking of course for your unique site) to your marketing strategy.

I would also, because this is such a drastic drop, try aligning your Google Analytics with Google algorithm updates - you can do so with Panguin Tool, it's immensely helpful. Sometimes this could show you if you need to conduct a backlink or content audit depending on what type of penalty you align with, if any.

Also, make sure that you conduct both a SEO audit and a technical audit to see if there are any low hanging fruit.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions or comments!
Patrick

[fablau]

Thank you Patrick for your reply.

Yes, here is what we have already done and keep doing regularly:

1. Competitor research: We are perfectly aligned with our top competitors, and we would deserve the 5-10 spot in search results. Actually most of the top ranked pages are crappy websites with pages plenty of ads and pretty much the same (messy) contents, it is surprising we have been penalized compared to those ugly pages.

2. SEO Audit: We perform that monthly and we have no special technical issues right now besides some thin content among our product pages that we are trying to improve continuously since 2011.

What we have NOT done is a backlink quality audit, and what you suggest doing (and the tool you are suggesting) is something we can definitively look into right now.

What really puzzles me why that page has dropped so much (or completely  removed, I can't find it!) compared with all other top pages of ours that haven't changed. The only logical explanation that now comes to my mind, after reading your posting, is that some kind bad back link pointing to that page has caused this issue... any more thoughts?

[fablau]

Patrick, I have tried the Panguin Tool you suggested, and it looks like we had a drop in traffic after the last Mobile update of May 1st, but our website is mobile friendly, why should we have been penalized because of that?

I am eager to know your thoughts on that. Thanks!

[Everett]

Hello Fabrizo Ferrari,

Your name is fantastico!

I would listen to Patrick and do a backlink audit. Here are a few I found that would in-and-of-themselves, help explain an anchor-text specific ranking drop to a specific page:

http://www.news-1.com/musicnews.php
This page has a text link ad with that anchor text.

http://www.classicalforums.com/articles/Fourteenth_Century_Composer.html
This forum has a text link ad with that anchor text.

This "looks like" a purchased link:
http://www-education.org/music-schools.html

This "looks like" a purchased link too, as it seems very out of place:
http://www.scifipulse.net/how-long-can-doctor-survive/

I'm sure there are more to consider disavowing. Good luck to you.

[fablau]

Thank you Everett for your reply and kind comment about my name, grazie!

With the only exception of the link on classicalforums.com (which we own, and that link has been there for almost 10 years now), we never paid for links and we never "endorsed" those other links you wrote about. I guess like those there are many others around, no idea who and why linked to us in such weird ways. Some of those links looks like have been out there for a long time, and we have never been penalized by Penguin, only by Panda back in 2011... but then we recovered by Panda by tackling and fixing all our duplicate page issues.

In any case, I'll definitively do some research on our back-link profile, but how would you decide when a link should be disavowed or not?

[fablau]

Also, another couple of questions:

1. Can adding rel="nofollow" to links we own enough? I'd like to keep those links for visitors.

2. How do you suggest tackling unnatural links: contacting the web owners asking to remove those links AND submitting those pages to Google via the disavowing tool right away, or just contacting the web owners hoping they'll remove the links?

Thank you for your help.

[Everett]

1. I don't recommend nofollowing links on your own website. If you don't trust the place you're linking to, maybe then. But usually we don't link to pages we don't trust. I doubt it would help your situation.

2. Use the Moz toolset, including Open Site Explorer. If you can find their contact information request that the link be removed. Keep records of these emails or phone calls so you can submit it with your disavow file, which you should submit for any links that do not get removed after reaching out to the webmaster, or any links for which you could not find webmaster contact details (keep track of these too so Google knows you tried).

[fablau]

Thanks Everett for your reply.

About my first question, I am afraid I wasn't clear enough. I was asking about the links I have from those few websites I own that could appear like "paid" links.

For example, take the link to our site on the site below we also own which you already spotted above:

http://www.classicalforums.com/articles/Fourteenth_Century_Composer.html

Do you think that link could be easily "disavowed" by just adding the rel="nofollow" tag?

Also, may I ask you how did you find your above mentioned suspect links?

Thank you so much!

[Everett]

I found those links with Open Site Explorer.

The example you gave of the forum page doesn't see overly suspicious to me. I'd take that on a case-by-case basis. Generally you should start with the most obviously suspicious links first, like those I provided in examples above. If getting rid of those don't do the trick you can move down the list to borderline cases like the one you provided.

[fablau]

Thank you Everett,

I see what you say. But, still I need to know if a rel="nofollow" is enough to get out of trouble, if any.

Thanks!

[Everett]

If another site is linking to you, and you don't want that link to "harm" your site, a rel="nofollow" tag within the href is enough.

That said, if you want a link to "help" your site, a rel="nofollow" tag is not recommended. I don't know if your owned sites are harming or helping you. There are much more suspicious links I'd take care of first.

Good luck.

[fablau]

Thank you Everett! That makes sense. I appreciated your help!

I'll let you know if I'll have any more questions about all this, but I think for now I'll have to work to cleanup my back link profile first... thank you again.

[fablau]

Everett, I have an update about this issue and I'd like to know your thoughts about it.

After further research we have discovered that our "violin category page" wasn't the only one to have lost a lot of ranking in the past month or so. A whole bunch of category pages, similar to the violin page have lost rankings as well, a big deal, from page 1-2 to page 30 or more. Strange thing, it looks like our "most popular" and most "linked" pages have lost rankings, whereas less popular and less linked page have lost nothing (!!)

Here are some examples:

Category pages that have lost rank since June 25:

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/Violin.html (dropped on 7/3)

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/AltoSax.html (dropped on 7/19)

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/PianoSolo.html (dropped on 7-19)

and many other "instrument category pages"

Other popular category pages like our most popular composers page have lost rankings in a similar way:

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Bach/DownloadBach.html (dropped on 7/2)

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Mozart/DownloadMozart.html (dropped on 7/6)

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Debussy/DownloadDebussy.html (dropped on 6/25)

And as I said above, other similar pages, but not as popular and linked within our website, haven't lost any rankings:

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/Accordion.html

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/BassGuitar.html

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/ClarinetCBb.html

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/EnnioMorricone/DownloadEnnioMorricone.html

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/MichaelWSmith/DownloadMichaelWSmith.html

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/MarkHayes/DownloadMarkHayes.html

Another strange issue is that all our "genres" category pages are ok, up and running and seems to have not been affected:

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/Genre/Jazz/

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/Genre/Pop/

Note though that genre pages are much less popular than instrumental and composer/author pages, and less linked within our site.

Any ideas? I don't think this can be due to a "penguin" or "back-link profile" related issue, but maybe a Panda issue, or... what else?

[Everett]

I don't understand why you don't think it could be a backlink problem. All of those pages I checked had some spammy looking links. By "spammy looking" I mean exact-match anchor text and followable text ads on low-quality websites.

[fablau]

Thanks for your reply Everett.

Well, I don't think that may be a backlink problem because I haven't found any clearly "spammy" websites linking to those category pages. Actually those pages don't have that many backlinks overall.

Please, let me know if you think I am missing anything key here.

I appreciate your help!

[Everett]

This looks like a paid text ad:

http://www.news-1.com/musicnews.php

I'm not sure what this is, but it could look suspicious:

http://web.supernet.com.bo/twallace/Violin/InternetViolin.html

Some of the links are iffy, like the ones from music sites. These are topically relevant, when every link has the exact same anchor text it begins to look suspicious.

This link seems very out of place and spammy:
http://web.supernet.com.bo/twallace/Violin/InternetViolin.html

The premise for this text link, again with the exact-match anchor text, is that Dr. Who may want to relax and learn how to write "Virtual Sheet Music"?

All of these pages have links like that. You need to do a lot of disavows.

[fablau]

Thanks Everett, I am aware of those pages and they have been already put on our disavow list, but I was talking about all other category pages that have lost rankings in a similar massive way for which I can't find any particular bad back link.

For example, I have used Open Site Explorer for the following similar category pages, but I couldn't find any bad back link:

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/Choir.html

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/StringQuartet.html

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/TenorSax.html

The following ones belongs to a different category altogether (composer's pages) and yet, I can't find any bad back link pointing to them:

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Beethoven/DownloadBeethoven.html

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Chopin/DownloadChopin.html

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Debussy/DownloadDebussy.html

And many others...

So, I am wondering, why those pages dropped as well? Can a single penalized page put down an entire category of similar pages?

[fablau]

Everett, another clue that suggests me that those category pages may have been hit by a "quality" algorithm instead than a "back link" one, is that it looks like Google released a "Panda" like update in June, and that's exactly when the problem started on my own website:

http://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/june-2016-google-algorithm-update/

I can confirm what Glenn highlighted in his article over there: same dates, similar issues.

[Everett]

Fabrizo,

You may be correct about it being a quality issue. What makes me think it is link related is that you said it only affected certain keywords, which tends to be the result of overoptimized anchor text. You may also want to check internal links, which can be overoptimized as well.

In terms of quality, it wouldn't hurt to improve the pages visually. You conversion rates would probably skyrocket.