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I noticed similar drops in the latest report too (same date). That's really frustrating. However after digging a little deeper, I noticed that one of the modules we use with our CMS had a problematic update and it caused hundreds of duplicate pages, removing the NOINDEX tags from some pages. (pagination problem)

You should do the same and try to understand what may have caused the drop in rankings.

I looked at your attachment. Those are some very difficult keywords to rank for. That's not going to be easy if you start from scratch. By the way,  I think Google is making some unfortunate changes again. I see irrelevant webpages outranking us all of a sudden because they have domain authority. Domain Authority is probably getting stronger again. It will make everything harder for new sites no matter what kind of content you have on your site.

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Hi Jamie,

Thank you for putting this nicely. This is the type of attitude I have expected from SeoMoz to begin with. It's still reassuring to be reading your explanation and resolution.

As I said before I am not really looking for refunds but I was looking for this. An explanation and a compensation/refund offer on the table to anyone who would choose to cancel a subscription. Good to see someone has decided to make this right. I appreciate it.

" think you are simply trying to get attention by implying I am questioning Dr. Pete's honor I have a great deal of respect for him and everyone at SEOmoz "

I am not trying to get attention but it's clear to me that it's you who is trying to get attention by praising and defending SEOMOZ in every single post. So if it's ok with you, I would like to ask about a service that I have purchased. If it's not ok with you, then maybe we should be given the right to talk to SEOMOZ about this in private without you interfering.

What is it that you don't get here? I paid annually for a service that promised 1 private questions a month, which means I have already paid for 12. I don't think we live in a world that service providers can change the product description without offering a compensation.

This is getting ridiculous. You're talking like I am asking them to continue offering a free service or something. Meanwhile in your long post, you have the nerve to tell the community to stop complaining? Who gives you the right to tell a customer to stop complaining? You are not INVOLVED in this. You are a 3rd party and I don't know why I should stop complaining just because you say so.

How is this any different from another service provider suddenly changing the service? Let's say SEOMOZ's web hosting provider emailed them tomorrow morning and said "Sorry we can't scale this anymore, so we won't be offering postgresql anymore". That wouldn't make SEOMOZ happy, would it? Would it be ok if that hosting provider said "Only 4% of our users are using pgsql and others don't".

Why do I have to care about what 96% is doing and not doing. I purchased a product and paid annually. Is that so abnormal that I am expecting to get what I paid for?

Seriously? Are you saying that unless you sign an NDA with every individual, you should be ready for surprises? All the people who answered my private questions seems to be very friendly people who wouldn't go around talking about my questions or sensitive information. You can'be comparing the little risk involved in what you are suggesting to making a post 100% public.

_ "public or private question meaning if the person answering your question thinks their answer is relevant to somebody else's problem they will most likely give them the answer that worked rather be private or public they want to do the right thing."_

Most likely? I doubt it. I haven't seen any staff sharing someone else's private stuff with me and I don't think that they do that at all. I am sure people like Dr. Pete and others who help with private questions are better than that.

Hi Rand. First of all, I subscribed annually. So, I still have about 6 months to see if I will cancel my membership.

I am not saying pro tools are completely useless but I don't know why it's not understandable that I am reacting to losing two features (private QA and pro webinars) I valued the most.

Let's take a look at Pro Membership Plan features you currently have. Out of the 5 main features, private is one of them. So it's something you considered to have great value too. (at least back then)

Sure the response time was sloe with private questions but I was still happy with it. The staff who answered the questions offered so much insight and detail, that you would never ever see in a public QA.

Instead of saying "take your business somewhere else" you could say "ok so you trusted us and paid annually, we will offer you private QA until the end of your billing cycle".

That would be more fair and to be honest that's something I would have expected from SEOMOZ.

I also don't think it's best practice to take decisions based on statistics only, especially when it's about customer satisfaction. Maybe the 96% did not use private QA but what is the percentage of annually paying customers? That's a sign of trust in your name and company. To be honest, it was your name that I trusted in and chose to pay annually right after the trial. Maybe that 4%  is so critical and influential, your long term losses would be more to neglect.

Oh an I should mention this now. I am not looking for refunds either. Time is more valuable today. Not that I am truly in love with SEOMOZ tools, I still use them and I would hesitate to start over at somewhere else after setting up a campaign here (and have spent 6 months analyzing weekly results).

thanks anyway

Public is still public. Private didn't only mean special care. It also meant that you could share sensitive information without disclosing it to the whole world.

I am speechless. I bought PRO membership for the sake of pro seminars and private questions. First three months, there were no seminars at all. So I thought "ok I will be patient I am sure they will have more in the future."

And then all seminars became FREE.

And now private questions. Down the drain.

I don't rate the pro tools highly. They are not magical and there are alternatives to it. And who knows? Maybe it's the next to make free too.

Private Questions, being answered by SEOMOZ staff. That's something you could not find anywhere else. Now it's gone too.

So why I did I really sign up for? No idea.

It's incredible (and too bold) how a company is turning everything free without even considering the rights of its paying customers.

Frankly, I am one disappointed customer now.

just my two cents.

Well, if we go like that. Wouldn't it also involve a risk of negative SEO? A site who rips content from another is more likely to be considered a spam site. (linking to your site now)

Yes, you can link to them. It's not like you would be linking to them on a daily basis. As far as I know Google loves it when you link to relevant sites (outgoing links are valuable too). And what's better than competitors in terms of relevancy. And if they notice that you are linking to them, you could be making good connections with them and who knows, they might do the same. Everyone wins in long term.

I am speechless. I bought PRO membership for the sake of pro seminars and private questions. First three months, there were no seminars at all. So I thought "ok I will be patient I am sure they will have more in the future."

And then all seminars became FREE.

And now private questions. Down the drain.

I don't rate the pro tools highly. They are not magical and there are alternatives to it. And who knows? Maybe it's the next to make free too.

Private Questions, being answered by SEOMOZ staff. That's something you could not find anywhere else. Now it's gone too.

So why I did I really sign up for? No idea.

It's incredible (and too bold) how a company is turning everything free without even considering the rights of its paying customers.

Frankly, I am one disappointed customer now.

just my two cents.

Hi Rand. First of all, I subscribed annually. So, I still have about 6 months to see if I will cancel my membership.

I am not saying pro tools are completely useless but I don't know why it's not understandable that I am reacting to losing two features (private QA and pro webinars) I valued the most.

Let's take a look at Pro Membership Plan features you currently have. Out of the 5 main features, private is one of them. So it's something you considered to have great value too. (at least back then)

Sure the response time was sloe with private questions but I was still happy with it. The staff who answered the questions offered so much insight and detail, that you would never ever see in a public QA.

Instead of saying "take your business somewhere else" you could say "ok so you trusted us and paid annually, we will offer you private QA until the end of your billing cycle".

That would be more fair and to be honest that's something I would have expected from SEOMOZ.

I also don't think it's best practice to take decisions based on statistics only, especially when it's about customer satisfaction. Maybe the 96% did not use private QA but what is the percentage of annually paying customers? That's a sign of trust in your name and company. To be honest, it was your name that I trusted in and chose to pay annually right after the trial. Maybe that 4%  is so critical and influential, your long term losses would be more to neglect.

Oh an I should mention this now. I am not looking for refunds either. Time is more valuable today. Not that I am truly in love with SEOMOZ tools, I still use them and I would hesitate to start over at somewhere else after setting up a campaign here (and have spent 6 months analyzing weekly results).

thanks anyway

I think on page card should be discarded. I don't know why SEOMOZ still keeps it in Research Tools while most SEOMOZ writers don't even talk about on-page factors these days.

I have been running my own experiment with SEOMOZ on-page optimization tool and I have come to the conclusion that it is a waste of time to play with it.

I have hundreds of pages that would get F from the very same tool but rank in top 10 and other A rated pages fail to even show up in the top 50 results. Not to mention that it doesn't work at all for long-tail keywords...

The only positive I can see is that it gives you a general idea of what not to do on your pages, such as keyword stuffing or the use of meta keywords.

If I was SEOMOZ, I would change the grading system from the current A-F to a simple POSITIVE-NEGATIVE. This was it wouldn't drive people crazy over it, trying to convert a C/B to and A. Importance of On-page Optimization is way too exaggerated because of this tool, showing up in your campaign report and in emails.

The tool is apparently obselete and I really hope SEOMOZ updates the grading system and stops showing it as an important tool. I have wasted hours and hours with it because it looked like an important part of SEOMOZ Research Tools.

Actually, I'd rather read more blog posts, listen to the webinars and then spend time with other research tools than wasting time on this on-page report card.

Public is still public. Private didn't only mean special care. It also meant that you could share sensitive information without disclosing it to the whole world.

Thanks Adam and Vahe. Your suggestions are definitely helpful.

No he simply says "bid on those brand name keywords".

Hi Jamie,

Thank you for putting this nicely. This is the type of attitude I have expected from SeoMoz to begin with. It's still reassuring to be reading your explanation and resolution.

As I said before I am not really looking for refunds but I was looking for this. An explanation and a compensation/refund offer on the table to anyone who would choose to cancel a subscription. Good to see someone has decided to make this right. I appreciate it.

SEOMOZ tools are not able to detect penalties (if there are any). I would first check Webmaster Tools and check for any messages. If there isn't any, take a look at search queries.

About those 100 keywords. You might have ranked higher as Google ranks new site and new content  for a short period of time. I have seen this a lot. You rank for a few weeks and then disappear from top 50.

Have you made a list of ranking pages before they dropped? I see that pages with more links and social signals tend to stay where they are and the others fall.

The site seems ok. I didn't see any issues. I also see that it was registered in 2008. Was it re-designed in September? I see only about 120 pages indexed. This looks like the content is quite new. And most of them (except for the front page) don't have any backlinks. Without links, it's not a surprise to see a huge drop.

good luck

I can help by giving you an example and its actual results.

I hope this helps.

On our site, for a certain word, just like in your case, the page is named let's say www.example.com/real-examples

When you search for "real examples" it is in top 10 but if you search for "real example" then it is not even in top 50.

I still don't think on-page adjustments decide the rankings on themselves as there are more factors involved.

Anyway, I hope this helps you a bit.

Yes guest posting still works. I see you have a Facebook and YouTube button but they are not linked? You might want to start using social media. Get a Google+ page as well.

If you have a YouTube channel, and I see that you do charity work. Make a video and try to rank with videos too. You can even get a link inside the video to your site when it's charity work. (check YouTube's external links page for more information on that).