Help! Rankings dropping after optimising

[thinkLukeSEO]

I have been using MOZ a lot, in the past I have always been able to optimise a website enough to rank well in my local areas, but lately every time I optimise a website based on MOZ recommendations the rankings are just dropping and dropping... I haven't focused any efforts on backlinks, but a few sites have gone from the first page of SERP to 2nd and continue to drop... I have 2 example sites:

https://www.documentmanagementsoftware.com.au/ - optimised for "Document Management Software" - was initially ranked no.7 in google AU, now it is no.16 after my efforts.

http://www.tmphysio.com.au/ - optimised for "canberra physiotherapy" - was no.6 now it is dropping to no.9 after 'optimisation'

Any help or insights would be extremely helpful as I feel hopeless!

[davebuts]

Hi Luke,

The onsite SEO for both sites actually looks pretty good - looks like Moz has helped you optimize the pages well!

Where both sites are not doing so well appears to be with the links pointing to them.

On the Document Management Software site, there really aren't any good links pointing to the site. It looks like there are a few really old businesses linking to it, but that's about it. Not enough "quality" links for it to be competing with the top sites for "document management software".

On the physio site, it looks like there are a lot of old "SEO links" pointing to the site which would be doing more harm than good (hopefully these are disavowed), eg:
http://sportsinjurycentre.net/sports-physiotherapy-kippax-expert-sports-injury-management/
http://diagnosisneckpain.com/neck-ache-sufferers-talk-to-a-deakin-physio-for-fast-relief/

In summary, onsite SEO is looking good but I think you should focus your efforts on improving the offsite SEO for both sites.

Cheers,

David

[thinkLukeSEO]

Thank you very much for your response. After more research today and looking around the Q&A's on MOZ I thought that must be the best strategy. You response has confirmed that! Thank you again.

I'm just really surprised that documentmanagementsoftware was ranking no.6 in February 2017... was there google updates that caused that to drop?