Massive rankings drop in last 2 days

My main site has seen a massive drop in rankings in the past 2 days. Here's a screenshot from Serpbook:

EDIT: Don't have permissions to post link. There are 25 pages which have gone from positions 1-10 to positions 11-66 with several pages dropping 20+ spots

This site has been ranking consistently for these terms for 3-4 years. I have no alerts in Webmaster Tools.

Where should I begin in identifying and correcting what is causing this?

First, I wouldn't make the assumption that there's anything you did or anything you can do to fix it.

That's because it could be a boatload of competitors magically doing better all of the sudden (unlikely) or what's most likely is Google rolled out some RankBrain change to your niche and you took a hit.

Have you been getting links and promoting in these 3-4 years you held the ranks? If you haven't, and 30 of your competitors had been, it wouldn't be a surprise that one day, when Google shifts some weighting factors around, that you take a hit.

I'd suggest using something like SERPWoo to get a bird's eye view of those rankings you lost. You can quickly see the Top 20 all in one go and see what changed.

You can hover all of the data points and change the "focus date" so you can quickly identify whatever factors gained in power.

If it's anything like I've been seeing in other niches over the past 3 months, Google has been doing two things...

1) Rolling out the Mobile First index and then having to correct problems with it (this sucks and was fixed in my main niche just before the holidays, thank god. I lost 25% of traffic before getting it back. There's nothing you can do here but wait.

2) I can tell you what happened though, in my neck of the woods, is that they gave short-tails and commercial intent ranks to older sites and gave everyone else more long-tails. Then it's like the data from the Desktop index started feeding into the Mobile First or they just waited to get the feedback they normally get from user metrics and it all started moving back to how it was.

So you can use SERPWoo to roll through the winners and losers and see if there's a huge discrepancy in domain age. That's definitely what happened in my niche. @CCarter also noticed and wrote a post about domain age recently: Domain Age For SEO Is EXTREMELY Important

He's got the real data to back up something that I've been saying that's quoted in that post:

Keep in mind that Penguin is part of the algorithm now. You won't get a notification if / when an update starts affecting you - you'll just see severe organic drops. Have you been acquiring links naturally, or was there some gamification in your efforts before? I'd start looking at your backlink profile as the culprit.

To make it easier, start with GA or GSC and see which pages experienced the worst drops.

Good luck!

Thanks to all three of you for your advice!

@Future State Yes, some link building but not very aggressively.

@Ryuzaki I will check out SerpWoo to see if I can get some insights. My traffic is down about 35-40% from normal levels. The domain is just a bit over 5 years old, so it's not brand new but some of my competitors do have older domains.

@IngvarXH Mostly "naturally", I have never done anything super aggressive with this site. I have a few pages which have dropped 30+ positions and I'll start with those.

@Etido, I've not seen it on my sites so I wasn't aware, but I'm hearing whispers about an algorithm update that seemed to happen on December 12th.

People are reporting losing 25% - 35% of traffic, like you're saying. Someone said that a page they had ranking at #1 for several years dropped to #9 and was replaced by less relevant content on older, stronger sites.

Others are saying similar things, and it's one of those situations where the top 3 and top 5 are all from the same domain. I'd hang in there, Google usually dials these updates back big time once they collect some data.

That's all I've got thus far. It didn't hit my sites so I can't deduce anything yet. If I can get more info I'll start a thread and notify you.

I did notice this on at least one site, within the same timeframe. It's a test case of exactly one, so this might not mean anything.

In that particular case, my best guess is the cause for the site I'm referring to might be related to links, possibly anchor text, and maybe something related to EMD/PMD. That's just a guess, and of course based on only one site.

@Etido, are the keywords that dropped short or long tail? What does your site's anchor text distribution look like for those terms? Is it an EMD/PMD domain?

I noticed more big brand general sites with worse content taking over snippets, including where snippets weren't even there before (and aren't necessary).

Snippets are bullshit and will be the death of me. Can't compete with big brand domains on them (and yes I've followed all the snippet case studies and guides on how to get them). Big brands throw up a table with some content and it's automatic snippet (and #1 spot) take over.

I noticed a traffic drop recently. After reading this thread I went back and checked the date. And yeah, it started on Dec 12. However, every day after that traffic started coming back more and more. As of today traffic is back to what it was before.

I had two good ranking pages drop on that date as well. Traffic hasn't changed thankfully.

@Ryuzaki Thanks for the update! I'm trying to weather the storm (some pages are jumping all over the place) but not an ideal time to lose 1/3 of my display revenue. I would definitely appreciate any more info you receive!

@turbin3 These are long tails with a PMD. My anchor text is mostly naked or branded.

@Sutra Glad to hear your traffic levels came back! I'm still down about 35% but several pages have been all over the place the last few days. Hoping things will recover!

Etido said:

@turbin3My anchor text is mostly naked or branded.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't have thought this is a good idea. Take some big/real sites eg Walmart and look at their anchor clouds on AHREFS. Aside from about 25% typically which is branded or naked most links are to random pages/things and just about every anchor text variation you see outside the top 25% of links is pretty varied <1% total. All sorts 'press release', 'click here', 'article'...

These days variety is the spice of life and all that when it comes to anchors you want to end up with. Especially if your brand is a partial match that effectively has keywords in... more risk of triggering something.

Not saying any of this has anything to do with recent flux - on our YouTube show we've been talking for a while about how there seems to be a lot of flux every week lately - but something worth thinking about as you go forward if your domain is heavily deviating from normal in your niche (maybe it's not and your niche is heavily brand/naked only in general and you can ignore me completely).

Etido said:

@turbin3 These are long tails with a PMD. My anchor text is mostly naked or branded.

Click to expand...

Branding with PMD's can be a very fine line. Many SEOs will throw out ball park numbers on percentage of branded anchor text. The thing is, with partial match domains, that may not always work and might even be a bad idea.

At this point, I am getting the opinion that they might even be more "dangerous" than EMDs. Reason I say that is the false sense of security people can get with the whole "partial" thing.

With exact match, I mean there's no hiding it, that's what you've got, and most will know there is absolutely a fine line in on/off-site optimization with it.

With PMD, it can be pretty easy to fall in to a false sense of security in thinking your BestBlueWidgets partial match site is somewhat unique, "therefore it's a brand", "therefore do-all-the-brand-things with it". Not. So. Fast.

Slaying Sacred PMD Example Sites

Think about it like this. Is it just one keyword in the domain? Is it a set of keywords or phrases?

If it's multiple, how risky do you think it would be if you had that same "branded" percentage of anchor text, but in short tail keywords? Think about it in context of this totally made up example:

PMD: BestExampleSites.com

You'd have 3 major keywords and multiple phrases technically within the brand name. Now imagine you religiously brand title tags:


In that case, your PMD and big keywords or phrases are entirely duplicated in just the title tag alone. Damn. We're already screwed just out of the gate!

Now imagine throwing 25% branded anchors at that amazing long form guide we've built. You also know you're gonna have some short tail or exact match anchors from internal links.

Lettuce not even mention how those duplicate KW title anchors are gonna multiply from your related post widgets...

See what I'm getting at? It's kind of hard to see when you're right in the middle of it, and taking no prisoners in the niche. Take a step back though, and things might look totally different. In one of my own sites I'll mention next, I'm actually leaning towards going with WAY less branded anchors than the average SEO might recommend. The PMD nature, in that specific case, seems like my current higher percentage is a bit too dangerous.

With one of my sites, it's a PMD with a significant percentage of the brand name being multiple major keywords in the niche. Those keywords in different order even spell multiple phrases in the niche. Admittedly, when I originally created it, I knew there were some risks, as there are with anything EMD/PMD. I "went for the gold" anyways and placed a lot of emphasis on branded anchor text. Now it seems that may not be working so hot right now...

I have yet to see definitive evidence that this recent update is absolutely to do with off-site factors. That said, if it is, I'd recommend looking at options to diversify your anchor text distribution. Take some branded stuff and slap your TLD on the end. Maybe sometimes a www and TLD. If it's possible, you might even come up with an abbreviation for your brand, so you can throw that variation in the mix too!

Also, if you are pretty heavy on naked/branded, I'd recommend diversifying with long tail. Another thing, don't just think of keywords or direct phrases. In some cases, it just makes sense and can even be safer if your anchor is an entire sentence, or a fairly long part of one. Stuff like:

So I was [checking out this guide on example sites] the other day, and I think I FINALLY found THE ONE!

I wanted to provide an update on this now that the holidays are over. SE Roundtable did a good writeup for anyone who hasn't read about the latest update, which they are calling Maccabees:
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-maccabees-update-analysis-24951.html

My site fits this pattern in that 90%+ of the pages are targeting a permutation of a keyword phrase. The site is not technically a directory but most of the posts do follow a similar flow to provide the same information on each page.

My traffic is down over 40%, so I'm looking to make some changes. Here are the options I'm considering:

1. Change post titles. This is easy to do but there are only a couple other keywords I could use that would still make sense.
   
2. Produce more "news" posts which do not include the keyword phrase. This will eventually lower the percentage of pages targeting the phrase but will take a while as the site has over 2000 posts.
3. Write a script to display page elements in a random order instead of the same order every time. To me, this would create a worse user-experience as everything is currently uniform in its presentation.

Which of these would you try first? How long would you wait for signs it is working before trying something else?

I have multiple sites in different niches that have also experienced the "keyword permutation" form of these updates, so I can relate.

First off, I'd ignore #3. While I don't want to state anything absolute, #3 would likely have no worthwhile effect, and possibly a negative one. If all page content is basically the same, and orientation is simply changing at random, that's something that can easily be detected with machine learning, and at an algorithmic level. So it stands to reason that "easily" detected manipulation is probably factored in and dealt with accordingly...

#1 could be good, and it's certainly an easy change for most sites. Considering that, it may also be low-impact too. Here's some worthwhile options to consider:

Title Tag

• Removing branding entirely
  • Maybe not sitewide, you'll have to determine.
  • Focus on whether the domain name is resulting in duplicated keywords within the title.
  • Is there an acronym or abbreviation you sometimes use, and that's recognized for your brand? If so, maybe try using one of those versions on pages where you definitely want to keep some title branding.
• Dedupe words where possible
  • Particularly major keywords. If possible, try to keep it to only 1 usage in the title, and no duplicates.

On #2, actually, I might even recommend looking at taking things in the exact opposite direction. Page volume may have been the issue in the first place. I can't say for sure, though that's certainly the case in at least one of my examples. One approach might be:

Page Consolidation

• Create comprehensive pages. aka "skyscrapers"
• Basically, you might have a bunch of thin content, weak pages that aren't really worth keeping on their own. Find a bunch of them that are sub-topics of a larger topic, and combine them all in to the larger topic page.
• You aggregate your content, semantic keyword usage, LSI, etc. and you're also aggregating traffic, engagement, link value, etc.

URL Rewrites
In more extreme examples, this might be worth a shot. In one of mine, I suspect it unfortunately is. Idea being, you're even trying to strip duplicated keywords from the URLs. This may not be a big deal for most sites, but when dealing with sites of 100k+ pages, things often work a bit different. I wouldn't worry about this quite as much with a site under 10k pages (just an arbitrary, ballpark number).

Hi Etido
Sorry to hear that your blog is still affected by the recent algo update(s). A couple of my blogs were hit in the Dec2016/Jan2017 shake-up so I know it can be a tough experience.

I managed to restore one of the blogs to its pre Dec2016 SERPs. These are the changes I made (took 6 months to start improving UV's)

• Removed links from Expired domain PBNs (think I registered too many around the same time on late 2015/early 2016 with obvious footprints)
• Removed links or disavowed spammy sites
• Built a lot of Q&A links from Quora with misc anchors to my "info" pages
• Built referral traffic from Pinterest to be greater than organic (side effect is that you begin creating content that your audience actually enjoys reading, rather than 'best memory foam mattress for side sleepers' type content.
• Any 'best' or 'review' pages which weren't generating traffic/making enough money before the hit got deleted (404) or redirected (301)
• Lowered onpage KW density where higher than sites in positions #1-4
• Paid for an onpage audit. Fixed a lot of technical/historical SEO errors

Just beware that fixing your site may take many months, and cost a lot of money. I'd suggest running a full competitor audit and be 100% sure that you want to spend the time and money recovering.

For the second site that I've been unable to restore, in hindsight, some big players had also moved into the niche and I'm struggling to keep up. I would have been better off researching easier niches and building a site that didn't have a question mark over it.

Hope that helps

Thank you both for the advice!

@turbin3 I am going to test the title tag suggestion. It does including branding which is redundant with the keyword permutation I am targeting. I will use an acronym for the site instead and see what happens.

Regarding page consolidation, it is difficult for this site as each page is about something distinct which makes combining them less useful to the visitor. Do you think it would be wise to remove some of the pages which receive little or no traffic instead?

@nigeb Good advice on researching competitors! I know a few new sites have popped up. I'll dig into what they are doing and where my time is best spent.

Etido said:

Regarding page consolidation, it is difficult for this site as each page is about something distinct which makes combining them less useful to the visitor. Do you think it would be wise to remove some of the pages which receive little or no traffic instead?

Click to expand...

One option might be noindex/nofollowing some of those. Sometimes I like to go through my analytics logs and noindex, consolidate, or otherwise remove pages that are weak and have consistently not gotten traffic. Whether it's a good idea or not will be something you'll have to determine. In general, if I was considering that, I might look at several factors like:

• Q) If I remove these posts, do I still have plenty of content/posts within that part of the site?
• A) If removing them only cuts a few percent of total content in the category, I might not see that as a big deal. If it's removing 30-50%, I might think about it a bit longer, and maybe consider content enhancements like what I've shared below.

Also, another thing to consider is whether there's any realistic option to enhance the content on these pages. For example, maybe there's a common content type among the pages, that represents a good opportunity for enhancement. A few types might be:

• Common questions people have
• Lists of items about an on-page sub-topic

In some cases, I might see if I can identify a common content type across a set of pages, even though the actual topics may differ a bit. From there, I'll figure out an efficient way to "source" those items. For example, if a SERP related to the topic gives you a common question box, BAM! Got you some popular questions right there! So go grab a bunch, "clean" the data and make it your own. Then do some batches of content improvements across a set of pages.

Other factors I'd also be looking at are:

• Internal link structure. Could your internal profile be optimized a bit? Do you have solid category/silo pages that help set the link structure for your lower level pages? Do your lower level pages link up to their silo pages? How much of the link structure is purely navigation/sidebar versus within the actual body?
• Click depth & orphaned pages. Building on the structure, if you don't have strong silo pages, it's pretty typical to have tons of low level pages that are 4, 5, even 6+ clicks away from being reached from a higher level page. It's a bit like the "tree falling in a forest" analogy. All those deep pages might not go anywhere because no one can ever find many of them.