Is there an issue with my site?

[WallerD]

Been mostly hanging around top of page two for the last couple of years for “Liverpool Wedding photographer” although got myself on page 1 for “Liverpool photographer”

I have split the title of the page to target these two keywords. I took the Liverpool photographer off the title to see if it was being detrimental to the “Liverpool wedding photographer”

I didn’t see no increase in ranking so put it back as I get a bit of commercial work from it.

Since last year I have got onto page 1 at least three times around position 5-6. Within a week or two I start sliding down again and end up back at top of page two.

I could understand this slow push out if my competitors were busy SEO wise but from what I have seen they are not.

There is a guy using the keywords in URL and calls himself “Liverpool wedding photographer” last time I checked he literally had no links but is in the first 5 positions. I have I think a better link profile than every one else.

Although I am on and off with Facebook and Instagram, (more off) so that probably isn’t helping. Although I have a colleague in the video side of things and he doesn’t use social media at all and it hasn’t harmed him.

A few years ago I was burned quite badly by a total charlatan. He sunk my home page to page 4. He talked the talk about creating landing pages but his methods were shoddy to say the least. I can’t believe I was taken in by him, although I was only with him for 2 months. He was still using spammy link techniques to generate lots of toxic links for me!

I disavowed all of his links and put the keywords back on the home page and was back to my usual top of page 2 position within a week.

Since then I have disavowed all directory links and anything not wedding related.

I have an article which ranks 1st or second for “Nikon CLS”. I have also another article of 2000 words or so on another reasonable placed photography website. A few links from other vendors or people I have taken photographs for. I have about 10 featured weddings with a link on 4 good weddings blogs. I don’t think a massive amount of blog comments although I have stopped doing this. If I look at most of the competitors these are their main links, with directories as well!

Last winter I put a quite substantial article about documentary wedding photography on my home page.  I flew to number 2, although I photographed The World Transformed (the alternative labour conference in Liverpool). I got a lot of clicks to a gallery page (few thousand off social media} so I don’t know if that coincided with it.

Same thing – watching the website go down a few positions every day until within just over a week or two I was about 4^th  on page 2!

Its like my website is on a spring which can push into page 1 but rebounds back to top of page 2.

I am staring to worry that my site has been marked as a bad character in some way because I get what seems to be rough treatment from google compared to my peers.

I have written I think 4 or 5 (1500 word) articles the last couple of months  talking about lenses and wedding photography related topics and Google pushed me back to page 1, peaking At position 5. I was there for a few weeks and then the slide happened again. Bit demoralised at the moment, what to do? Any help or pointers would be most appreciated.

Best wishes.

David.

[benesmartin]

Hey David,

Have you noticed similar fluctuation for your competitors on TOP 3 positions as well?

Google sometimes change the SERP randomly to provide diverse results for the users. But this doesn't look like the case.

Do you have any blog on your website? You have the article for "Nikon CLS" but if you have only one on your site, it might be not enough.

I'd start publishing regularly on your site which should massively help with the rankings.

Cheers, Martin