Sudden rank drop for 1 keyword

[Netboost]

A page of mine  (http://loginhelper.com/networks/facebook-login/) was ranking in the top 10 for keyword (facebook login) and has been for at least 2 months, moving between 5th and 10th.

Suddenly in the last 3 days the rank for the keyword dropped from 7th to 46th, yet none of the other keywords have been affected (they target other pages) and their ranks have continued to improve.

I am trying to figure out what caused this sudden drop in the ranking of 1 page (the page has quality mainly text based content and isn't in the least bit shallow or spammy)

I have been thinking perhaps a crawl or server error may be to cause leaving the page temporarily unavailable or with a big load time... Otherwise what could cause one page to drop so much so quickly whilst other pages improved their rank?

[SeanElkin]

So, without any URL or KW example, usual suspects (answers) include: panda, junk link devaluation, or your page may have had tech problems and disappeared out of the index for a bit.

First two are self-explanatory.  One example of the latter situation, a domain name or hosting account that is let to expire, is crawled by bots after it expires (and they find the generic registrar/host page page) and BAM! that top 3 ranking nationally for a valuable phrase is toast.  I saw this happen with a client site that was down for less than 48 hours.  So they went from #3 to 70ish.  They are still trying to recover rankings and that was about three weeks ago.

So I would look real hard at your analytics and logs, particularly crawl logs and see if there are any anomalies.

[AdiRste]

Do a site: check in Google and see if the homepage still ranks #1.

Give it 2 weeks and if nothing comes back up then as you mentioned, go through crawl errors etc using W3C Validator, Screaming Frog, Xenu, Webmaster Tools and use some SEOmoz tools.

Check for broken back links and try building some new links.

If nothing changes then consider a reconsideration request through Webmaster Tools.

[Netboost]

the site still ranks for its domain name and ranks in the top 10 for other queries - it is just this one keyword that the rank has dropped for - unfortunately it is the websites money keyword

[RyanKent]

what could cause one page to drop so much so quickly whilst other pages improved their rank?

Without knowing the page URL and keyword, we are left to guesswork. As Sean suggested, the most three likely issues are either:

1. Google has made an algorithmic adjustment which was unfavorable to that page.

2. That page has been penalized in some form. It could be there is an issue with the page's content, or perhaps a link to the page has issues and has been devalued.

3. There is a crawl or other issue preventing page rank from flowing properly to that page.

[Netboost]

updated with url and kw

[SeanElkin]

Thanks.  I don't see any major issues with the page (although you have some html validation errors which should be tidied up).

Any changes made to that page/the site/.htaccess/robots.txt recently?

Do you monitor site down time, and if so, was there any corresponding down time during that period?

Did you track inbound links to the site before/after this happened?  If so, any big changes?

[RyanKent]

Joshua,

Your site has many SEO issues. My recommendation would be to either hire a SEO professional to work with your site, or sit down with the Beginner's Guide to SEO and take it one chapter at a time, applying what you learn to your web pages.

There are numerous possible causes for your page's bouncing in SERPs. You say this is your site's money page, but you definitely do not treat it as such from a SEO point of view.

You want this to be your site's "Facebook Login" page, but on your home page you present that exact key phrase "Facebook Login" on your sidebar in the "Links" section. This link directs users to a page on another site. That perfect match anchor text is an indicator to search engines you want the other page (http://www.ghacks.net/2009/11/18/facebook-login-phishing-and-account-hacking-warnings/) associated with the term "Facebook Login" instead of the page on your own site.

Another suggested change would be change your page's title from a H2 tag to a H1 tag, and remove the link. There is no reason to link a page's title to the same page it is located upon.

[SeanElkin]

Joshua, I mention html validation and Ryan makes some points on ways to improve the site, but I'm looking for causation for the drastic drop in rankings for that phrase and that is what my previous questions are about.

While we wait for your answers, I will assume for a minute that you are absolutely positive that no changes were made to that page or the site recently and your inbound links remain constant, external site referrals and other analytics/log data do not indicate any problems.

Which essentially leaves you with link devaluation (algo change) or being dropped from the index for a bit.  Unfortunately your only course of action would be trying to improve site SEO and building & improving external indicators to help you get back up in the rankings for that phrase.  If that page was crawled and had errors or was not found and dropped from the index, time should help your cause.

[Netboost]

Ryan does (harshly) make some decent points although I am already very familar with all the stuff listed in the seomoz seo guide....

No onsite changes were made in the last few months at all and no blackhat linkbuilding has been done.

Inspired (and annoyed - haha) by Ryan response I decided i would actually go through and do an onsite audit of the page and did find some disturbing things...

The biggest was that large chunks of the content appear on multiple other websites. I am also concerned that the actual content may be seen as having overused the term 'facebook' and also the xml sitemap was broken..

Do you guys think these factors could be related to the sudden drop for this page (no other pages on the domain are having issues)

[SeanElkin]

I don't know if he was harsh, every site can be improved, it's the nature of the changing beast.

Large chunks of the content appearing on other sites is a big problem and could explain drop if Google has recently crawled/valued those sites.

I had already checked your KW density for "facebook login" and it is reasonable (not over the top).  That page is in the index so whatever your XML sitemap problem is, at least it is not keeping the page from the index.  If all other pages on your domain are okay and the XML sitemap problem was not related only to this page (which I am assuming), then that is obviously not the culprit.

If you're content is going to be syndicated/"borrowed", you might want to add the rel="author" etc. info to your site.

Q: Do you see any of the other websites' pages (with the copied content) ranking for your term?

Q: You didn't answer about link tracking.  Here's what I am getting out here..

Hypothetical: let's suppose a few weeks ago you have 40 external links to that page.  Let's say of that 40, Google may value 12.  Of those 12, perhaps 2 have great authority, relevance, PR, etc. according to Google.  And then, for reasons unknown, those two sites have removed the links to your page.

So if you have before/after tracking of inbound links, you might see a changes that wave a red flag.  It's just one more thing to check.

[RyanKent]

Joshua,

My goal was to respond to your question and bring issues to your attention. I apologize if the reply seemed harsh.

When I view your site, I like the content, the images and the idea behind the site. I see you filling a popular niche very well. The biggest concern I have, which could potentially cause a bounce in SERPs, is your anchor text.

I cannot say with certainty this is the root cause of your issue. I can say it is a big concern to me which relates to this issue. When a particular search term is entered into Google, their job is to return the specific pages most relevant to the given search query. Your site is focused on various "facebook login" issues with pages such as "facebook login approvals" and others that are very closely worded to your money phrase.

If "facebook login" is the most important phrase for your site, and the /facebook-login page is the target of that phrase, you need to send a very clear and consistent message to Google on this topic. My concern is when I examine your sidebar right now, I see the same "facebook login" anchor text (exact phrase match) five times.

Three of the times where the phrase appears the link is to the correct target page. Once it appears in the tag section as a link to the http://loginhelper.com/tag/facebook-login/ page. I would recommend removing that tag. Having a tag link identically phrased to your most valuable page can lead to confusion. This tag anchor text is telling Google that when a user searches for "facebook login" the tag page should be the target. While you can also ask "I have three links going to one page, and one link going to another so don't the three links win?". That is not necessarily how it works. It's an issue which I would suggest correcting immediately.

The same goes for the "facebook login" anchor text which links to the Ghack page. You can still offer a link to the page, but don't use anchor text related to any terms from your site.

Do you guys think these factors could be related to the sudden drop for this page (no other pages on the domain are having issues)

It is definitely possible the two identical match anchor links are causing this issue. I can only say it is possible, not that it is a sure thing, but it is the most glaring issue I noticed which could cause this problem.

[Netboost]

Thanks for the input guys. I have taken your suggestions on board and made some additional optimizations and edits as well. I will let you know how it goes.