Main keyword decline in SERPs ranking :-(

[well-its-1-louder]

Hi Moz,

My very humble attempts at SEO has been doing very well for over a year with the keyword phrase 'vintage chanel bags'.

Recently, about 3-4 months ago I noticed it dropped from rank 1 to rank 5.

I've slowly but steadily been building up more social marketing interaction (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram mostly), brand awareness in company is increasing more searches for 'Vintage Heirloom', great in-links from reputable companies & bloggers.

What I'm confused about is that one of our competitors Rewindvintage now appears as no.1 for this keyword but tracking with Moz every metric we outperform them on, namely domain authority & Page Authority.

I have noticed they have 4 anchor text links (dubious quality wordpress comments), with the anchor term vintage chanel bags and we have none despite ranking no. 1 for so long??

I'm trying to use the Moz science here, just a bit confused.

Any help, insights, similar experience would be much appreciated.

I engage only in white hat and look for slow & honest SEO growth (as far as I'm aware ! ).

Thanks for looking Kevin

[Chris.Menke]

Kevin,

Not too long ago there was a whiteboard Friday that covered why this may happen.  Essentially, it listed these potential reasons:

Poor search result snippet
perceived lower value brand
lower design/user experience value
Citations: (links, social shares, mentions)

• quality
  * quantity
  * variety
  * acceleration rate
  Usefulness or quality of content
  * searcher intent fully addressed
  * unique value of content

Results Biasing
* local
* mobile
* verticals

[well-its-1-louder]

Hi Chris,

I'll definitely give that a look. I'm sure my snippets could be improved, I'm moving to Wordpress before Christmas so I'm hoping that platform has better support for this than my current OpenCart cart.

Thanks for the heads up...

Kevin

[Chris.Menke]

Well, there are plenty of folks out there who can help support your wordpress installation.  Be sure to be familiar with these as you get ready for your move:

• Moving your site - Webmaster Tools Help
• Redirection - SEO Best Practices - Moz