Sudden drop in rankings

[RyanKent]

When was the last time you checked and noticed your site as rank #5/6?

I was under the impression that it was better to have a single link to a page than multiple routes?

I would agree with that statement, but if you do provide multiple links to the same page on your site, then I would follow all the links. There are a few instances where you could nofollow an internal link such as if you have a "print" copy of a page, or perhaps for tag/category pages. In those cases it's an all or nothing thing.

[RobertFisher]

great, thanks, let me know what the resolution on this is. Ryan had asked when the last time it was ranked at 5 or 6 was, do you recall?

[MulberrySqCraig]

It is set up to track rankings as a SeoMoz campaign I've just double checked and satchel and satchels were actually around the 13 mark, now they are not in top 50. Handmade leather satchel was rank 6 and is now not in top 50.

[RyanKent]

My main question is when? When was the last time you can confirm it ranked at those levels? Was it back in April? Or can you confirm it was ranking at that level in the last week or two then suddenly dropped?

Which search engine had these results? How do the results compare with other search engines?

[MulberrySqCraig]

They ranked position 6 for handmade satchel on 23/8/11 which is when the rankings were updated on SeoMoz. On the last update on 30/8/11 it is not in the top 50.

All of the keywords I have mentioned are being tracked by SeoMoz and were ranking highly up to and including the 23/8/11 update but dropped significantly in the 30/8/11 update.

[RyanKent]

You stated "no changes have been made to that page in the past couple of weeks". It is entirely possible a change you made a couple weeks ago is just now impacting your ranking. Your site DA is low and you may only be crawled once every couple weeks.

I again need to ask, what search engine exactly are you using? When I check Google.co.uk you are presently ranked #9 for "handmade leather satchels" which seems reasonable. You are also ranked #19 for "satchels". Is there a possibility you were ranked his in google.co.uk and you are presently checking google.com?

[MulberrySqCraig]

Hmm, it looks like the SeoMoz rank checker is reporting rankings incorrectly for Google.co.uk then.

I've taken a look at google.co.uk and you are right the rankings are pretty much the same as they were before. SeoMoz Rank Tracker tool is reporting the positions correctly but the Campaign rank tracking is way off.

[MulberrySqCraig]

Thanks, I'm pretty pleased with the site and the client is certainly happy with their sales so far!

[RyanKent]

Any chance the setting was changed to use Google.com instead of .co.uk?

[MulberrySqCraig]

As you can see it is set to use Google UK.

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[RyanKent]

If the report is not appearing correctly, my recommendation would be to contact the SEOmoz help desk for assistance. They could further analyze your issue from the back-end and if there is a bug, they can capture the details so it might be fixed.

Good luck.

[MulberrySqCraig]

Thanks for your help in tracking this down!