Our rankings for "Tree Service" dropped last month

[SavATree]

Hi, we've had a page www.savatree.com/tree-service.html which was ranking top 1-12 on the google rankings but has complete dropped out. We don't have any duplicate errors from that page on here. Do you have any suggestions? We do rank highly on Bing and Yahoo (1-2 pages).

We can't figure whats going on.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

Have you checked your average positions in Webmaster Tools? The reason I ask, this can give you better insight to overall rankings because this will take into consideration location, personalized search, and more to give you an idea of how your keyword performance is overall for a particular query. I would see when the dropoff started and line it up with Google's algorithm history - that can maybe guide you in a direction.

Is the drop in ranking at all reflecting in your organic traffic in Google Analytics?

According to SEMRush it looks like you saw improvements from 14 to 10 - so it may be location based for you and the search you are conducting.

I see that you are in quite a few areas around the United States - I would look into your local SEO for all areas that you service and audit your citations and listings. Remember - a lot of organic search is based on location, so taken the steps to increase visibility in areas you service will be super beneficial to your organic performance.

Here are a couple of resources to help you build citations and listings:
Moz Local
Whitespark

When going through your organic search data in analytics, check your geo specific information under "Audience" to see if you lost traction in a certain region - that can help you prioritize.

Hope this all helps! Good luck!

[MattAntonino]

This specific page has either been copied to or from lots of other pages around the web. (Maybe 15-20 I saw?)

I would change the content some, make it unique and get it recached. If it's still not ranking I would start with everything Patrick suggested. But getting the duplicate content off first is important because if Google sees 10 versions of the same thing they may rank your page one day and the other version the next - they simply don't know which one to rank as often as they should (original content, not authority, in my opinion.)

http://bit.ly/1Edmyxw

http://bit.ly/1e9Oq0H

[SavATree]

I never knew about that tool. I do notice activity when there's an update. Also, when there was an update the drops were more dramatic (I've attached the graph). I do believe we are solid on our local SEO because most of those pages normally do get served up first.

Does you know what happened in the April 1st update?

ranking.png

[SavATree]

I think you make a very valid point. We first thought we could be getting penalized from the duplicate pages on our own site (which we couldn't find) but never questioned if our site was being copied. It seems like our content is being taken and re-purposed by other sites (a few competitors). This makes me feel both flattered and slightly irritated.