Sudden drop in rankings

[MulberrySqCraig]

I've been working on a site since it launched in April and the rankings for all targeted keywords have been creeping up in that time. For example the site was position 5 for "satchel" and 6 for "satchels".

I've just had the latest rankings report from SeoMoz and it is showing "not in top 50" for both keywords and big drops on most other keywords. What is the likely explanation for such a big drop?

The website is Z atchels.com

[RobertFisher]

First, I may be in the wrong business.....I did not realize satchels were such an important item in the world. I am amazed at the number of high DA, high PA sites on page 3, 4, 5 of Google organic for satchel or satchels. So, it makes me wonder how you were ranking in slot 5 or 6 under these terms at all. The reason being that your DA is 29 and your PA on the home page is 36.

Your site is great, you've done a lot right, but you have DKNY on page 5 or 6, Hayden Harnett with DA of 54 and PA of 46 on page 4, shop.nationalgeographic.com...with DA of 92 and PA of 31 on page 3....

I think the bigger question for me would be, "How, with a new site were you up there to begin with?" Even assuming you had a site and all is the same but you rebuilt/remodeled, with your DA and PA, I just don't see how you could move that far ahead that quickly.

It really is an interesting, perplexing, issue. If you find out it would be great to share with all.

Good luck (any good satchels for 17" MacBook Pro, let me know....).

[RyanKent]

If you were ranked #5 and are not presently ranked in the top 50 there are numerous possible causes. A few of the more popular ones are:

• the page previously ranked has been removed from your site

• the page previously ranked has been altered in such a manner that it had a negative impact on SEO

• the site has been altered in a negative manner. For example, another page might be cannibalizing the keyword

• the site has suffered a manual penalty from Google or whichever search engine is involved

• the site has suffered an algorithmic penalty such as Panda

• the site has lost backlinks

EDIT: I looked at the site. A major issue which should be fixed right away is the non-www address is 302'd to your www address. You should change it to a 301, then check your site to ensure that no pages are 302'd. No link juice is passed from a 302 redirect, whereas over 90% of the linking page's value is passed from a 301.

Also, remove all the nofollows from your home page links. You are nofollowing links to your own facebook and twitter page. Those are trusted pages under your control so the links should be followed. You are also nofollowing links to your "Delivery and Payment Information" page. That page has backlinks and unique content which some users may find helpful. Let your internal juice flow naturally.

I like your site's overall design but you do have some opportunities to perform better.

[AnthonyGrillo]

I just realized, I need a satchel...Thanks..

PS,

the site looks very good and is designed smoothly..Good work.

[MulberrySqCraig]

The site is new but has had a lot of PR which has gained links from high profile blogs and sites like Grazia and various UK national newspapers. I suppose one reason for the drop could be that these links are ageing?

[MulberrySqCraig]

The page that was ranked was the site homepage. No changes have been made to that page in the last couple of weeks and very few changes have been made to the rest of the site.

I have changed the 302, I hadn't realised that the redirect that Magento applies by default is a 302!

The delivery and payment information links are no followed as their are multiple links to that page from the homepage. The main link doesn't have a nofollow on it. I was under the impression that it was better to have a single link to a page than multiple routes?

[MulberrySqCraig]

They don't do anything at the moment that a 17" Macbook would fit in but if they do in the future then I will let you know!

[RyanKent]

When was the last time you checked and noticed your site as rank #5/6?

I was under the impression that it was better to have a single link to a page than multiple routes?

I would agree with that statement, but if you do provide multiple links to the same page on your site, then I would follow all the links. There are a few instances where you could nofollow an internal link such as if you have a "print" copy of a page, or perhaps for tag/category pages. In those cases it's an all or nothing thing.

[RobertFisher]

great, thanks, let me know what the resolution on this is. Ryan had asked when the last time it was ranked at 5 or 6 was, do you recall?

[MulberrySqCraig]

It is set up to track rankings as a SeoMoz campaign I've just double checked and satchel and satchels were actually around the 13 mark, now they are not in top 50. Handmade leather satchel was rank 6 and is now not in top 50.

[RyanKent]

My main question is when? When was the last time you can confirm it ranked at those levels? Was it back in April? Or can you confirm it was ranking at that level in the last week or two then suddenly dropped?

Which search engine had these results? How do the results compare with other search engines?

[MulberrySqCraig]

They ranked position 6 for handmade satchel on 23/8/11 which is when the rankings were updated on SeoMoz. On the last update on 30/8/11 it is not in the top 50.

All of the keywords I have mentioned are being tracked by SeoMoz and were ranking highly up to and including the 23/8/11 update but dropped significantly in the 30/8/11 update.

[RyanKent]

You stated "no changes have been made to that page in the past couple of weeks". It is entirely possible a change you made a couple weeks ago is just now impacting your ranking. Your site DA is low and you may only be crawled once every couple weeks.

I again need to ask, what search engine exactly are you using? When I check Google.co.uk you are presently ranked #9 for "handmade leather satchels" which seems reasonable. You are also ranked #19 for "satchels". Is there a possibility you were ranked his in google.co.uk and you are presently checking google.com?

[MulberrySqCraig]

Hmm, it looks like the SeoMoz rank checker is reporting rankings incorrectly for Google.co.uk then.

I've taken a look at google.co.uk and you are right the rankings are pretty much the same as they were before. SeoMoz Rank Tracker tool is reporting the positions correctly but the Campaign rank tracking is way off.

[MulberrySqCraig]

Thanks, I'm pretty pleased with the site and the client is certainly happy with their sales so far!

[RyanKent]

Any chance the setting was changed to use Google.com instead of .co.uk?

[MulberrySqCraig]

As you can see it is set to use Google UK.

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[RyanKent]

If the report is not appearing correctly, my recommendation would be to contact the SEOmoz help desk for assistance. They could further analyze your issue from the back-end and if there is a bug, they can capture the details so it might be fixed.

Good luck.

[MulberrySqCraig]

Thanks for your help in tracking this down!