Alarming

[Paul78]

Hi there,

I just noticed that some of my best performing keywords have taken a drop down the ranking by maybe 10 positions, some of them being ranked no.1 for quite sometime.

My link building activities are such things as guest posting on relevant and topical websites and always have original content.

Is it a coincidence?

For many months now I have been using the keyword analysis tool in SEOMOZ checking my own page authority & linking root domains, nothing changed on any of these keywords except for improvement on SERPs, however today I have noticed at the same time some of my best performing keywords have dropped is that the page authority & linking root domains for those keywords changed also, and for the better but dropped in SERPs.

Any idea on what's going on? anyone experienced this?

Kind Regards

[RobertFisher]

Gary,

It would help if there were at least one url to look at, but i will give it a go. You say you just noticed. The change in your PA and Linking root domains is likely due to the update to OSE recently.

Now were your drops in Google Bing or Yahoo or all? If in Bing/Yahoo, I would give it less notice as for the last couple of months they have been a bit schizoid in our opinion. A dramatic drop in Google makes me wonder if you changed anything with content or on page SEO? Have you looked for crawl errors, etc.?

If your area is highly competitive or newly competitive, you could have newer sites that have popped up and are just being floated by the search engines. If so, they will slide away usually.

With more data, we could assist more.

Hope it was of some help.

PS - Support Open Source Developers - contribute when you use their tools.

[Paul78]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your reply.

I am referring to Google. For one particular keyword, I had been ranked pos.3 for quite sometime now, a highly competitive keyword.

The 2 websites above me have lower PA, less linking root domains, looks like poorer quality backlinks, lower PR, so I did a bit more digging on this and thought that it maybe due to my keyword density being too high compared to the 2 website above, so I reduced the KD, then few days later it dropped by 7 positions, surely it can't be for that change? I mean the on-page optimization tool in SEOMOZ report says that I still have way to many mentions of the targeted keyword and now it has less mentions when it was on Pos.3

I think it's highly unlikely that it's the keyword density, but a freaky coincidence that the first time I made any changes on the page for months, it drops. I have checked for crawl errors, nothing there.

[My-Favourite-Holiday-Cottages]

The first thing I would try is reverting the changes on page, also one thing to check would be if any sitewide changes have been made.

When reverting, make doubly sure that you havn't done something like remove the h1 tag e.t.c. when you were removing the keywords.

[Paul78]

Hi there,

I am going to give it a week or so, just to see what happens next, as I do believe making those changes on page will have a positive affect.

Over the past few hours or so, I was just making some checks to make sure all the links that were pointing into the page were still live, and not changed to a nofollow etc, all seems good. Checked for crawl errors etc, you name it I have done it, i'm rather confused on this one. I have been doing SEO for quite sometime now, but this was one I just can't get my head around.

Thanks.

[RobertFisher]

Sorry I could not get back to you quicker Gary, but had to earn a living for a bit. As to your reply of: I think it's highly unlikely that it's the keyword density, but a freaky coincidence that the first time I made any changes on the page for months, it drops.

I would say it is not in the least unlikely. It happens all the time.

I would follow the course you outline above and just hold tight. I think if that is all you did and you just chill that chances are it will start moving up again.

Keep us posted. (I would certainly make notes as to when changes made, when drop occurred, etc.  I like having that kind of stuff stored as I do not remember near what I think I will. 
Best

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Gary,

I'm wondering if you have an update for us of how things are going for you?