Why sudden change in rankings?

[waynekolenchuk]

I have been working on a domain for site which has only been up for a few months. I have mainly been working on building trust and authority for the site, with only a few links to my keyword phrases, which I was saving for the end, and concentrating on good quality non-spammy type links.

It was progressing nicely until last weekend when I went from the first page on Google to the 3rd and 4th pages.

Was there some kind of update?

[itrogers]

Were the links you have obtained already directory or paid links? Usually a drop in ranking will mean that Google has penalized you for paid links or duplicate content (especially after the recent Panda update). Make sure that your pages are canonicalized correctly also.

[waynekolenchuk]

Yes, some directory links  but they were there before the drop. No paid content, no duplicate content, no canonicalization issues.

[itrogers]

Are the directories links that your competition ahead of you has as well?

[waynekolenchuk]

For the most part, yes.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Just about every site when starting out gets an initial boost - I have seen this dozens of times. You appear quite highly ranked for a while and then suddenly drop.

This is nothing more than Google putting the site where it really belongs. I wouldn't worry about it at all, but this is quite common. If you think about it, Google placing a site first page in just a few short months is pretty much unheard of.

I can't imagine that the addition of links at this early stage would be responsible for the drop as the site is still young.

Just keep concentrating on good (non reciprocal) links from trusted sites and keep the content flowing.

Regards,

Andy

[vforvinnie]

I think Andy explained it pretty well.

New sites do tend to get a temporal boost, as well as new links (I believe Rand did a great post on SEOMoz about temporal links but I can't seem to find it).  The issue may be that you didn't keep up the link pace, so it went back down to where it should be for the time being.

If it is a fairly competitive term that you are talking about I wouldn't be that surprised, as 2-3 months usually won't be enough for a brand new site/domain to rank for the bigger phrases.  Give it a few more months of steady link/content building and you should see some positive results.

I'm sure most SEO people here can share a story where they had the temporary boost and crossed their fingers hoping that maybe it isn't temporary only to see it go down a few pages.

[waynekolenchuk]

I did slack off the link pace, waiting to see what would happen when it was digested but thought itmight stay up there as the phrase I'm competing for is quite niche oriented.