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Here is one for you. We had a database crash, and was down for an hour and 15 minutes, on Dec 18th. During this time our system automatically sent out a 301 redirect to our product home page. (iboats.com/boat-parts-accessories/dm/)

On Dec 24th I noticed a huge ranking drop on a lot of our keywords, and some keywords that were serving up the redirect page from our database crash, in place of its normally ranked page.

So my assumption is that Google was crawling our site during the database crash and caching the redirect pages in place of our regularly ranked pages. So when a search query is made that would normally display our ranked page, it is now displaying the redirect page from the crawled cache.

And on other keywords where we normally would rank for, Google no longer has that page cached, so it drops it from ranking.

My question: Does this assumption sound accurate? If so, I'm assuming over time that our past ranked pages will show up once again after Google recrawls those pages and saves them in their cache.

I have several sites that were affected with this:

boatcovers.iboats.com

boatpropellers.iboats.com

iboats.com

Thanks in advance for your input

I have tried to put my keyword phrase in "All in One SEO" title tag at the beginning of my tag line, following with something relevant. For example, if the headline of my page content is "How to Get the Most out of the Trinidad Carnival?" In the All in One SEO section for the title I would put "Trinidad Carnival - Getting the Most Out of It."

Do some keyword research to determine some of the longer tail keyword phrases that are using your main keywords, and try to incorporate these long tail phrases into your headline and title tags. I have found that if I do this and add a new post or page at least once per week, your page or post will be immediately indexed and ranked within seconds. Just make sure that you have a sitemap plug in that immediately pings the SERPS.

Another point I might add. Make sure that you post regularly on your blog, whether your blog is internally or externally. I recently tested this and found if I post at least once per week on a regular basis, within seconds my post is immediately indexed and searchable. This is, of course, that you have an active sitemap that pings the search engines when a change is made to your site. There are several good wordpress sitemap plugins that do this for you.

For longer tail titles, they are usually on the first page immediately and in the top 3 positions.

If you are referring to outside links to your website, as report in Google Webmaster Tools, I had a similar issue where the links reported in GWT were reduced in the thousands. I closely watched my rankings and metrics, which were not affected, I concluded that Google was doing some clean up work in GWT. Those links that I lost were not valued links, and Google probably wasn't given them any value, so removed them from their report list.

I would suggest to just watch you metrics closely to determine if it affects your ranking positions. If not, then it is probably just a clean up issue on Google's part.

Alan, good to hear from you. How is SEO doing down under?

Brad

iboats.com

Thanks... Should have read the YouTube description.

Cutt's did not indicate how to download the tool. Did I miss that?

Thanks for the heads up. Just watched the video.

Did he say when the tool is available?

Need more information to give an adequate answer. There are so many factors that can influence it on both sides of the fence. (Google's side and your side) If you have not changed anything on your site and have not done any off-page SEO, then you are seeing the changes with the algorithm that is affecting your ranking. Google is making changes almost every day, and it will affect your rankings, and those of your competitors if those changes are targeting certain attributes on your pages and other's web pages. As you add more content and pages to your website, it tends to settle down on movement.

My traffic and rankings are all normal. So I'm making an assumption that Google is just doing some cleaning up in Webmaster Tools by not showing a lot of of those internal links that are not being given a lot of value anyway. It's been almost two weeks now, and nothing is affected.

Thanks for your reply and input.

If anyone else has seen this with their internal links, I'd be interested in your outcome.

Yes they are on the same server. These are sister sites that have been live and up for about 7 to 8 years. They get decent traffic, which is directed to our main sites. They were not necessarily set up for link juice. But, until last week, the links were showing up in webmaster tools. I'm assuming that Google is just doing some clean up, since they were not giving them link value anyway. Just wanted to make sure that was it and not something else I should be concerned about.

We do outside link building to legitimate sites, and do get good results. Just seeing if anyone is seeing the adjustment from Google from sister sites.

This morning I noticed in Google Webmaster Tools that my internal links to my root domain (Home Page), dropped from 428,000 to 58,000. It appears that this could be my header or footer links back to the home page that Google is not showing any more. My programmers claim they have not made any changes over the last 30 days. My rankings and traffic are normal.

Any cause for concern?

Last week I noticed a substantial drop in "Links to Your Site" in Google Webmaster Tools on several of my websites. Upon further investigation the reduced links were from our sister sites. It appears that Google has reduced the number of links they are counting from links in our headers and footers from these sites to our main websites. It is not affecting our rankings or traffic. Is Google doing some clean up with what they are showing in webmaster tools for links from related, owned sites? Any cause for concern?

I have been working on a keyword term "boat covers" - however a link from the manufacturer site with the anchor text something like "Company Name Boat Covers" would be just a good or better.

Is this correct?

Thanks,

Brook

Thanks again Alan!

Thanks Alan. So basically, if I anchor text 3 or 4 times in the body, above the author backlink,and point my hyperlinks to internal pages, I should get positive link love from Google, as well as have original, relevant content on my website pages.

We are trying to build up article content on our website, and are looking at soliciting fresh articles from authors on various subjects, and in turn give them an author link back to their website or blog in exchange for writing the article. Our website has massive traffic so this would be a good thing for the author.

My question is this: If I put a couple of anchor text links into the article, having them pointed at various pages on my site, and then allow the author to link back to his site, will I lose the link love in the anchor text? Or does it depend on the number of anchor links I have? Like 3 to 1 type ratio.