Penalty or Algorithm Change - Confused SEO seeks help

[SEO Badger]

Hi All,

A site I work for (directconservatories4u.co.uk) has had the following Google ranking fluctuations in the last two months under the keyword "conservatories".

After a couple of forum posts and a blogspot blog posting, the ranking for this term increased from 26 to no. 4-6. This position maintained for 10 days then dropped back to position 21.

This was not unsurprising as I expected a temporary uplift from the blog posting.

However, it has been what has happened since then that suprises me.

The ranking position for this term has now dropped in the following manner; dropped to position 28, then 34 then 46 and now the site appears to have settled at position 52!

All other conservatory related keyword phrases still rank either page one or two; including DIY conservatories & conservatory and appear to be completely unaffected by this situation.

I have examined the blog and forum postings and some had paragraphs that could have been considered duplicate to the site, this has now been changed.

I cannot identify why the site would be punished/penalised and why under just one term, particulary as this term is semantically related to all other keyword phrases being targeted for this site and whose ranks are unaffected.

I'm not 100% sure that the site is being penalised by Google, therefore I am in a difficult situation as I do not want to make sweeping changes to a site as, in general, it ranks well for every other term targeted.

Obviously though the term conservatories is my clients primary target.

My questions are:

1. If I have had a penalty applied, how long until Google will index without the penalty being applied as everything has been repaired the site has been cached three times since, yet no improvement in rank?

2. My other thought is that Google may have altered it's algorithm in terms of saturation of content, against my advice, the content on the targeted page is overly saturated to the term conservatories (around
8%) the other targeted keyword phrases are around the 4-5% mark. Again I am loathed top make a change for fear of affecting the other ranking positions attained - so any infop on this subject would be appreciated.

Not being too big headed but I have been an SEO for over ten years and have never had a Google penalty applied to any site I have worked for.

So hopefully another expert might have some ideas?

Cheers


SEO Badger

[Dan01]

We had a similar thing happen.

Over the past few years we have noticed fluctuations in our earnings. Lately we have studied the SERPS and found that many keywords ranked high. But then one day they disappeared. Nearly all of them were gone. We worked with Google's Webmaster tools and in a couple weeks poof, they reappeared right at the top again and the dollars started rolling in again. That lasted for several weeks. But then Sunday the dollars slowed drastically so I checked the SERPS again and they were gone again.

If I had to guess, I don't think you are penalized. Very doubtful, otherwise you would not appear at all. I doubt there was a change in the algorithm. So what is it?

I have speculated that some of their servers went down that housed some of our rankings. Maybe not. But why did we get our rankings back after a couple weeks? And then they went away again.

Maybe others are out-working you on SEO. I don't think that happened to me because a whole slew of my SERPS disappeared in one day. The articles are still listed, but not ranking good.

I have been talking about this on another thread about Google's servers. I will update everyone when my SERPS come back. I think this has been happening off and on for years. I have checked my SERPS for years, but have not been as diligent - I have content to produce...

[j0nyDzine]

Curious, why do you decide to point to the Google servers as a possibly culprit? If this were the case, then why wouldn't everyone else nearby you also then just disappear in the same way?
I guess then I should ask did ALL others in the top 20 also disappear in the same way?
Also, did you possibly check to see if your rankings were in fact (or not) gone from other Google servers?
:confused:

[Dan01]

Curious, why do you decide to point to the Google servers as a possibly culprit? If this were the case, then why wouldn't everyone else nearby you also then just disappear in the same way?

I used to think it had to do with the Google Sitemap. I have considered lots of things. Since a whole slew of SERPS disappeared at one time, I thought it was a server issue, rather than some software problem.

I did find one search term page ranked at the top. I checked the PR of that page it was a "2". But it was number one in the SERPS. The other articles are ranked "0". They were at the top of the SERPS and then disappeared.

Take a look a this too:

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=23490

[pnisbet]

I have read a lot about the new Orion algorithm recently that is intended to make changes to listings and duplicate content. Could that be relevant here, or does anybody know anything about it and whether it is live yet? :confused:

[SEO Badger]

Hi all,

Thanks to those of you who replied (with the exception of the link baiting article from Digital Sales promoting Brad Callen) with your opinions.

Today, following another visit from the Googlebot (and some work behind the scenes absolutely ensuring no text duplicates in any way in forums/blogs)our position for conservatories has reagined a more "normal" position and is in at 31.

As usual there is nothing to pin point the exact cause of this but I feel that Google is not updating it's scoring for inbound links as often as others seem to think. Only at the weekend have any links in August been picked up (seen through webmaster account)and only now have we seen an improved serps position.

Anyway thanks SEW community.

SEO Badger

[Portran]

Hi

Many people seem to be reporting changes in SERPs recently, mainly downward, although they are the ones who would bother of course; you don't see many posts "I've just jumped up 15 places, can you help?"

From all related posts, in many forums, a few by good people, can't escape the feeling that Google are hurrying down the road of trying to reclaim links as true editorial votes. Mission impossible but sufficient evidence is gathering to at least have a feeling that many links which may have helped a little, are now of not much use.

So the recent cry of penalties might be better thought of as devaluation and if this drive is real, there is bound to be a fair amount of fluctuation, as more sites are re-evaluated.

This is just another step in the dark theory, that's mainly all were left with but if completely false, a lot of people are imagining things.

[Dan01]

Hey Portran,

I have tossed around what happened. Our SERPS dropped back in May all of a sudden, and then poof they all came back. I have considered a penalty, but I can't find anywhere where it says we were penalized. Sometimes it may not say though, right??

It could be this: QDF Freshness.

But then our SERPS came back a few weeks later. Why? But then they went away again the Sunday before last.

Did our server go down too much? I don't know. We were getting tons of traffic for a couple months.

Also, not all of our SERPS completely disappeared. We are still ranked #1 or 2 on a few SERPS. But most disappeared. We still rank where we did in Yahoo and MSN on those missing SERPS on Google.

Was it a change in the algorithm? Who knows!

[Gooner151078]

HI SEO Badger,

There are rumoured to be over 200 equations that make up the algorithm that calculates organic ranking in Google. All of these are not reviewed with the same regualrity or even the same intervals.

Taking a simple example, if you have more inbound links than your competitors, your position will be enhanced at when Google examines your sie for this part of the algorithm. If your site has less targeted content than your competitors, your site will drop ranking when Google reviews this aspect. Again, this isn't necessarily how it works but hopefully you get the idea!

Whilst it is unlikely that you have received a Google penalty for your site, there are some areas that may have been effective for you in the past that could now be regarded as slightly spammy.

For example, using a H1 tag for the main title and reducing the size of this through CSS or other formatting is one of the more basic things that Google uses to identify malpractice.

Another method that you appear to be employing is the use of alt tags on some of the spacer images. It is easy to see this using the Google cached version (http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:http://www.directconservatories4u.co.uk/&hl=en&strip=1) of your site. For example, the spacers in the navbar are loaded with keywords in the alt tags.

I would guess that when Google looked at the links from the blog post they recognised your site as having enhanced authority on the subject and the position was elevated. When they later looked at the content of the site, they would have seen some of the spammy elements and downgraded accordingly.

I hope this helps

[rensquared]

We had a similar thing happen.

Over the past few years we have noticed fluctuations in our earnings. Lately we have studied the SERPS and found that many keywords ranked high. But then one day they disappeared. Nearly all of them were gone. We worked with Google's Webmaster tools and in a couple weeks poof, they reappeared right at the top again and the dollars started rolling in again. That lasted for several weeks. But then Sunday the dollars slowed drastically so I checked the SERPS again and they were gone again.

If I had to guess, I don't think you are penalized. Very doubtful, otherwise you would not appear at all. I doubt there was a change in the algorithm. So what is it?

I have speculated that some of their servers went down that housed some of our rankings. Maybe not. But why did we get our rankings back after a couple weeks? And then they went away again.

Maybe others are out-working you on SEO. I don't think that happened to me because a whole slew of my SERPS disappeared in one day. The articles are still listed, but not ranking good.

I have been talking about this on another thread about Google's servers. I will update everyone when my SERPS come back. I think this has been happening off and on for years. I have checked my SERPS for years, but have not been as diligent - I have content to produce...

So why do you think the keywords disappeared, then reappear, then disappear again?

[Dan01]

That is a great question. I have no idea. The same thing happened back in May and they came back again.

I have started several threads looking for comments. If anyone has an idea let me know.

[SEO Badger]

message for Gooner151078

Thanks for your input, I have to admit that I wasn't aware that headers could cause any issue at all with SEO, rather the opposite as they add relevancy to text content. I must be behind the times here and it's cool to get some new (to me) knowledge.

Off to the forums I go for more information, thanks very much for your comments. The site is back to ranking better now anyway at position 22 for conservatories but hopefully, changes to the alt txt and header set up may help push it even higher.

cheers

Badger

[rensquared]

message for Gooner151078

Thanks for your input, I have to admit that I wasn't aware that headers could cause any issue at all with SEO, rather the opposite as they add relevancy to text content. I must be behind the times here and it's cool to get some new (to me) knowledge.

Off to the forums I go for more information, thanks very much for your comments. The site is back to ranking better now anyway at position 22 for conservatories but hopefully, changes to the alt txt and header set up may help push it even higher.

cheers

Badger
Sir Badger, i'd like to ask the question above again..
I hope you can enlighten us..


So why do you think the keywords disappeared, then reappear, then disappear again?