What's the issue?

[jasarrow]

Hi,

We have a client who dropped in the rankings (initially from bottom of the first page to page to page 3, and now page 5) for a single keyword (their most important one - targeted on their homepage) back in the middle of March. So far, we've found that the issue isn't the following:

• Keyword stuffing on the page
• External anchor text pointing to the page
• Internal anchor text pointing to the page

In addition to the above, the drop didn't coincide with panda or penguin. Any other ideas as to what could cause such a drop for a single keyword (other related rankings haven't moved).

We're starting to think that this may just have been another small change in the algorithm but it seems like too big of a drop in a short space of time for that to be the case.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

Thanks.

[Adam.Whittles]

There was a penguin data refresh on 25th/26th May which had minor algorithmic changes. This could be a possible cause, if the dates match.

Check your webmaster tools to see if you've had any messages from Google. A penalty could have caused such a drop. Carefully review all of your backlinks and your content to see if there are any issues there such as duplicate content or spammy links.

Adam.

[BenRWoodard]

Here are some questions I would ask myself:

**How long it had been on the top of the rankings?  **

• Based on this answer you may be looking at the natural flow of Google's algorithm and not a "penalty".  Your page just didn't have the authority to stay in the top spots.

**What links were pointing to the page?  **

• Smaller sites usually are not penalized, they just lose the authority of a once powerful link and therefore begin dropping.  The fix is just to gain better quality links and create more authentic authority.

Was there a big shift in the SERP or does it seem as if your site was the only one that moved?
  - If there was a big shift (or even a small one), you may be looking at a change int he way Google renders the SERPs for that market.  I have a client that sells "medical equipment" and that SERP all of the sudden went local.  That changed the entire results.

Hope those help.  There are a ton of variables with this kind of stuff but I wanted to share what I would be thinking.  Hopefully it's just a "big" SERP dance and you end back up on the top again.

[jasarrow]

Hi Adam, thanks for you thoughts.

Unfortunately the dates of the drops don't match either penguin or or panda (or any of their updates. I say unfortunately as if that was the case at least we'd know what the issue is.

We've also had no message in webmaster tools from Google. Duplicate content is another thing we considered - I think a few sites have copied content from the homepage so we might have a re-write of that and see if that helps.

Thanks again,

Jason

[jasarrow]

Hi Ben,

Thanks for taking the time to reply,

The site was on or around the first page for at least 18 months (longer I think) prior to March. Additionally, there were a few other sites moved around a lot around the same time (although we can figure out why these have lost rankings, which makes it more frustrating). I think you may be correct when you say that it's a change in the way that Google renders the SERP's for that keyword.

Thanks again,

Jason