My websites position has dropped, any ideas why?

[followuk]

Hi,

First off im new here, so hello to everyone.

Now to the reason why I have joined.

I am currently trying to rank for 2 terms:

**UK Bank Holidays 2013 (Term 1) **and Bank Holidays 2013 (Term 2)

The page which im trying to rank these terms on is:

http://www.followuk.co.uk/bank-holidays

Now some background history:

On the 29th Dec 2013, term 1 was 5th and term 2 was 7th - rankings achieved through guest blogging.

Last night I changed the h1 tag from 'Bank Holidays 2013' to 'UK Bank Holidays 2013'.

Re-worded the meta description to try and increase the CTR.

And removed the term 'Bank Holiday' from the end of each sub-heading - Ex: 'New Year's Day Bank Holiday' to 'New Year's Day' - I did this because I felt it was to much so in total 'Bank Holiday' term had been removed from 5 sub-headings.

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Ok, so I went into WMT and resubmitted for indexing, over night the page got reindexed - the term 'UK Bank Holidays 2013' stayed at the same position (5) BUT the 'Bank Holidays 2013' term dropped into hell at roughly position 250.

I'm thinking of changing everything back and crossing my fingers that term which dropped comes back BUT maybe im being to rash and it might jump back as the page stands.

I did a grade test using SEOMOZ and both terms generate a grade of 'A'.

Has anyone got any ideas? Sorry if the thread is a bit messy im currently crying all over the keyboard as im typing.

Thanks

[RyanKent]

You are trying to manage SEO as you would a PPC campaign. SEO does not work in this manner.

How old is this web page? New web pages naturally bounce around in SERPs as Google tests the performance.

What kind of "guest blogging" did you do? It is highly likely any links you created to your site via a guest blog was either nofollow, in which case it does not directly benefit your SERP results, or is viewed as a manipulative link in which case the link is more likely to harm your site rather then help it.

Google rankings are not static. They are influenced by your location, which Google site you are using, your browsing history, and much more. You may see yourself in #5 where another person might not see you at all for the same term. I am not suggesting you completely ignore rankings, but neither should you use them as the holy grail. Examine your traffic.

With the above noted, I see your results in Google.co.uk as follows:

uk bank holidays 2013  #5

uk bank holiday #9

uk bank holidays #7

bank holiday 2013 #6

bank holidays 2013 - not in top 50

[followuk]

Uh thanks for coming to have a look Ryan much appreciated.

The page itself is roughly 2 months old.

The guest blogging I did was through the MyBlogGuest system so 99% of the time links are do-follow.

Roughly 15 guest posts have been put up, the anchor text was split from 'UK Bank Holidays 2013' to 'Bank Holidays 2013' so roughly 8 each.

I am a little confused with your statement about guest blogging because I thought guest blogging was a good way of generating good links, I have seen a few videos from Matt Cutts and Rand on this subject but maybe I am doing the wrong type of guest blogging.

I understand what your saying about flux and term positions for different locations but I have consistently generated 50 visits a day from the term 'Bank Holidays 2013' and in the last 24 hours this has dropped to 0.

If it is as you say and it's just the way the cookie crumbles im fine with that and I know I need to generate more auth links but my worries are have I effected the ranking from the content changes I made, by the sounds of what your saying probably not.

Thanks again Ryan for looking into this.

[RyanKent]

"The guest blogging I did was through the MyBlogGuest system so 99% of the time links are do-follow.

Roughly 15 guest posts have been put up, the anchor text was split from 'UK Bank Holidays 2013' to 'Bank Holidays 2013' so roughly 8 each."

I made an assumption regarding the links you built as being manipulative, and based on your feedback so far it is likely I am correct. Can you post a link to one of the blog articles you wrote?

Regarding your traffic / ranking drop, it could have happened due to the changes you made or your links being devalued as manipulative or other factors. The links are my largest concern at this point.