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View Full Version : Plural Keyword: Number One Singular Keyword: Number Fiv- POOF!


Skiddo
05-15-2008, 01:12 PM
This is a new one to me.

Been consistent over the past 5 years on our organic search. Good spread of keywords, no jamming, no tricks, no stupidity. Solid links across the board and good placement without fault.

This last weekend...new crawl and POOF! Singular term keyword is gone....no 200 penalty slide, no ban warning, nothing that would throw up any signals. No movement on anything else to suggest we did something wrong. Just gone!

We have not done anything major to the site as far as adding content that may throw up flags and our last major revision to the site was back in December.

As I said, our plural term is fine, and smaller keywording comes up solid.

My questions is:

-Do you see something in our site that is giving you pause?
site:www. saunas.com
plural: saunas
singular: sauna
-Does Google usually tell you pretty quick if you have been blackballed for some reason? I have dealt with penalty kicks before and come through ok but this is something altogether.
-Is this a job for reinclusion? Will reinclusion hurt my already established indexing?
-Should I be worried for my other placement?

I am not looking for miracles...only indications of what the heck happened.

JohnW
05-15-2008, 03:30 PM
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c2coff=1&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=Cv2&q=allinanchor%3Asauna&btnG=Search

What I'm not sure about is how you were able to rank for this before... did you have some anchor links for sauna that have been penalized, or that no longer exist?

beu
05-15-2008, 04:00 PM
Like JohnW pointed out I'm not sure how you ever ranked tops on the singular version based on what I see here.

I'm seeing image results for "sauna" and that may be new? Interesting to note that one of the images resides at one of the top results. Perhaps considering ALT text for more of your images wouldn't be a bad idea.


Here are a few other things to consider fixing:

- removing the commented out & potentially hidden "storefront dot net" URL with REFERER=StoreFrontID

- removing the verisign logo and ALT text since your site doesn't seem to use versign products.

- removing the expires -1 meta

- updating your copyright from 2007 to 2008

- fixing "search", "checkout" and "view cart" so that they function on every page.

- providing a link to your home page from other pages

- fixing canonical URLs (IE www and non-www versions)

Skiddo
05-15-2008, 04:58 PM
Good suggestions. I will get with my guys and see if there has been some changes and make the changes you gave me.

Thanks

AussieWebmaster
05-15-2008, 05:07 PM
normally we do not allow link drops but will leave it for this one.

You need to build your inbound links... also the scandiahealth site wide links may have had a drop in impact and thus your site drops.

Skiddo
05-15-2008, 05:13 PM
Whoops...sorry missed that rule. It's ok if you have to make an adjustment. I understand.

Skiddo
05-15-2008, 06:42 PM
While I got a few people on the horn here...

Does an IIS treat canonical links (yoururl.com and www. yoururl.com) as the same without a 301 redirect? Got a guy saying they do but I don't believe so...

JohnW
05-15-2008, 06:52 PM
IIS can redirect the non-www to the www, but that is NOT what is happening. You should fix it.

Skiddo
05-15-2008, 06:55 PM
Thats what I thought.....thank you

Skiddo
05-15-2008, 07:17 PM
also the scandiahealth site wide links may have had a drop in impact and thus your site drops.

Could you expand a bit on this...I and my associate are a bit confused on how this affected us since it is a competitor website.

AussieWebmaster
05-15-2008, 07:26 PM
Google stops the link juice from sites that give sitewide links to another site

you could have gotten a boost from them but lost it when they dropped the link juice transfer

beu
05-16-2008, 12:29 AM
Thanks
Hey, no problem & happy to help. I hope you'll see some results! Either way welcome to SEW...

Skiddo
05-19-2008, 12:55 PM
Just an FYI...

Google 'belched' and we popped back up on our original placement.

We are undertaking some suggestions given here but for the most part, proverbial whews, acquisitions of frosty barley beverages, and management talked down from ledge waiting to 'target' said web monkey with his body upon leaping...Crisis adverted.

All in all, thanks to everyone that helped.

AussieWebmaster
05-19-2008, 01:09 PM
Congrats on the return... but SEO is not stagnant so I would implement a few of the suggestions here to keep yourself in front

Skiddo
05-19-2008, 07:07 PM
Indeed. Everyone's insight and suggestions earlier are highly valued. We are striving to kill those annoying craptacular coding practices and make us even more sexy in Googlebot's eyes.

:D