Ranking Fluctuations
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I need your help. My rankings have been on a wild roller coaster ride since I started optimizing the site with standard on page optimization changes. (No keyword stuffing or over-optimization...) I have only made positive changes for the content on the page; I created unique descriptions for every product. I redirected some urls that weren’t readable into a more user- friendly format.
I am only doing completely organic link building, really.
Yet for some weird reason the rankings initially rose and then steeply fell and ever since have went back up to the top and right back to not in the top 50 results.
Just to give you an example this is a graph of one of our main keywords: https://www.diigo.com/item/image/3vpdp/gd2q
This is another keyword that we admittedly never were in the top 5 results but usually we were in the top 20. Check out the wild fluctuations. If it wasn't the main keyword we were going after, I would probably laugh. https://www.diigo.com/item/image/3vpdp/rcy9
I asked an expert he said he think it might be from a major issue with internal competition. The keywords that seem to fluctuate the most, have numerous landing pages that compete for the same keyword.
Since we sell the same object in many many different sizes, thicknesses and colors it only makes sense that we have the same keyword on many pages.
I would love someone that is an expert in this area to have a look at the site and give actionable advice so I can stop the craziness.
Do you have any suggestions?
Do you have anyone that you’d refer for this type of job/consulting?
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What's the domain you are working on and what are the KW's you are targeting. Graph's work, but without actionable information, it's difficult to look over and help make a few suggestions
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I sent you a PM with the domain.
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Ask your boss if they ever got a link warning in google webmaster tools about links - it could be you have a penalty you need to deal with or it could be you have some bad links that are hurting you now you need to disavow or remove -call me if you need more help
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I check the google wmt weekly. I have never seen a link warning yet. Additionally all the rank fluctuations didn't happen when there was google updates, which would have been a sign of a penalty.
In the past the company had an Indian SEO company posting links to our sites on really spammy sites. I tried to contact some of the sites but I couldn't get them removed and I am hesitant about using the disavow tool.
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This probably has at least something to do with it. What does your anchor text profile look like?
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You should consider using the disavow tool, when needed, but only after the a very thorough back-link analysis. This tool can be used for good
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It's actually not bad, here's a snapshot of the anchor text: http://awesomescreenshot.com/01f1k00j2f
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Can you please share the website URL and both the keywords? If possible, can you please check your Google Webmaster Tools and let us know about the internal linking for these two keywords as anchor text along with the number of back-links for each keyword?
The reason for such a HIT & Drop in the rankings may be due to the "Over-optimization" of the keyword as against all other keywords in the website. I've been getting the same results for one of my website for one keyword only which has reached the fourth page of Google almost 7-8 times in last one year; but never came in the top 30 rankings. Whenever I think this time the keyword will surely achieve rankings in top positions, the website goes down in rankings..as far as 15th page of Google. Analyzing this, I'm thinking about stopping the SEO work for this keyword once I get it in top #50 positions this time..and may be this keyword will be stable for few weeks..
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I think the keywords you are going after have bad toxic links with those anchor texts that are hurting you i would check into that
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While I agree with you that there are some links I should get rid of, I don't think the ranking fluctuations have to do with back links because then I would have probably saw changes to my rankings on the days of the updates.
Please correct me if this isn't the case.
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I sent you a PM
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The recent updates have not been like the previous with 1 date of change- it has been rolled out over the summer with lots of fluctuations as you can see here.
You need to remove the bad and work on getting really good links to replace the old.
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edit: sorry my response was to Rachel here and not David. Didn't want this to be misconstrued:
Yeah I don't think this is necessarily accurate. Yes most sites will see their rankings plummet the day of an update, but the update isn't a one-day event. It carries over to every crawl Google does.
Therefore if your site slips through the algorithm, it isn't guaranteed to continue doing so. Perhaps the next time around the algo catches something it didn't before (for lack of a better visual.)
There is never any harm in removing poison links, that much we know for sure. So at least if you can get rid of those we can eliminate that as a possibility, right?
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Your 100% correct that I should remove as much poison links as possible.
Google doesn't recommend using the disavow tool if you didn't receive a spam warning. Additionally google wants you to try to remove the actual link from the web itself. This would be a huge job to do if I'm not completely sure what is actually causing the fluctuations.
I should do it as soon as I can but I first need to ascertain that this is indeed causing the volatile rankings.
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Is that for the whole site, or is it for the home page? Is the home page the only page you are seeing fluctuations for? It's quite difficult to assess what's happening without seeing the site, but some of these details might help.
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The anchor text is for the whole site. The home page is not the only page I am seeing crazy rankings for. The site name is http://plasticplace.net.
Thanks so much for taking a look!
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