6 replies to this topic

[davido]

Great site, should have discovered this earlier.

My site www.worldwar2aces.com was listed number 1 in Google for the phrases "King Tiger" and "Tiger Tank". It achieved high rankings (usually 1st page) for related phrases (such as "King Tank", "German King", etc).

Now my site's been completely dropped for "King Tiger" and "Tiger Tank". From number 1 to zero, zilch, zip.

It still has high rankings for the other phrases and number 1 ranking for "King Tiger Tank".

What can I do to regain my listing for "King Tiger" and "Tiger Tank"? Those two are the most relevant and are the highest traffic generating keywords for my site.

You'll notice the methods used for optimizing "King Tiger Tank". It might also be useful if you are studying the techniques employed to get high listings. I used :-

1) Effective title and description
2) First and last phrase containing the target keywords.
3) Keyword prominence.
4) Keyword density
5) Bolded keywords.
6) Keywords spread out evenly throughout page
7) Outgoing and incoming text links with the targeted keyphrase
8) PR3
9) Proper use of H1 and H3 tags
10) Alt text containing keywords
11) No java, just plain friendly html
12) Reasonable page size (30k) with lots of text
13) User friendly and not spamming or irritating the visitor

I did not use :-
1) Domain names with keywords
2) Images and directories named after keywords


Just can't figure out how it got dropped from "King Tiger" and yet first page for "German King" which was not even targeted and less relevant. Over optimization?

Any advice how I can regain back on "King Tiger" and "Tiger Tank"? I will implement it and report the results back to you for your study and musings if you wish.


Also, I notice that Google no longer updates its directory listing from DMOZ. My site was listed on DMOZ since November last year and till now google directory has not been updated. Just my observation.

Have a great day!!

[Beth_C]

davido,
I feel your pain. Same EXACT thing happened to me. If you come up with any clues let me know. I'm at a loss. Maybe it IS too much optimization. My site is optimized similar to yours. Guru Jill suggested I cut down the number of times my key words are listed. She said she did that for one of her sites and it popped right back in to Google. I did that and am still waiting. So far it hasn't helped.

What I find really weird is that I'm just totally gone for "exit interviews". Not that my rankings fell to the 3 or 4th page -- just gone. Yet I still show up as number 1 for "online exit interviews". Surely if we warrant first place rankings for online exit interviews we should be SOMEWHERE for exit interviews, shouldn't we?

Oops, sorry, davido, didn't mean to highjack. Good luck with your site and keywords. I'll let you know if I find out the secret.

Beth C.

[SearchRank]

Welcome davido!

A very quick glance at your site and I would say you need to build up your external links (other sites linking to yours) my friend if you are going to compete for those phrases. The recent changes at Google have made it much more difficult for many to position themselves well.

Stick around and get involved in some topics and once you have 20 posts, you can request a site review in the web Site review topic and hopefully pick up some good tips that will help you get back in top positioning.

[nacho45]

This just happened to me too!! Today!! Yesterday I was ranked #1 in several search terms, and now I'm nowhere to be found.

Possibly this over-optimization does have something to do with it.

[davido]

Thanks for the tip, searchrank. I will build a links directory to create reciprocal links. I notice that slowly more and more keywords are losing its grip. Have to use other methods of generating traffic too.

[dynamic1]

I am experiencing the same thing with one of my pages in particular. This page (yes, it's a door page) is optimized for a specific keyword phrase. It's not a true door page because there is a link to the page from her site. It is a restaurant review that I wrote for a client that also had me build her optimized site...and yes door pages work...I get plenty of traffic from door pages and fairly good ranking in the SE's as well.

What's happening with this page is interesting. It was initially somewhere between 20 & 29 in Google for the target keyword phrase when it first got indexed, and a short time later it went to # 1 for a while. Recently it has dropped to # 8 & now it is fluctuating between # 8 & # 9 for the last couple of weeks. I happened to check yesterday & it was # 8 ...today it is # 9. I don't monitor my rankings regularly, but I have a feeling that the fluctuation in rank is happening at a greater frequency than what I happen to catch. Perhaps a lot of this has to do with the aftermath of the Florida update. In this particular case the pages I see that rank above my client's have not changed...it's the same top 10 pages. I've looked at the other pages that are now above my client's & if I was the Google algorithm, I would not have put those pages there. Well, Google is pretty F'ed up these days...I search for things on a daily basis & know my Boolean logic & it's been the pits finding specific things lately.

The page I'm talking about is optimized for one particular kw phrase, BUT this target kw phrase is not excessively repeated throughout the page - not repeated enough in my opnion - it's just the way it worked out - it was a tough phrase to sprinkle through the body text.

I am going to make some changes in a few areas - both on-page and off-page factors and track the results carefully - it's all about testing anyway. I consider this field a science - as crazy as that sounds to even me - it's a science & there are people out there that pay me well to benefit from what I know.

I have my own sites to work on - various sites & pages pushing goods via affiliate programs, and others. I will come back and post the results of my testing....would be good if others did the same. Let's keep this thread going since a number of us are encountering the same issue. Perhaps through a joint effort we can gain some more insight as to why all the fluctuations in rank. If this is indeed fallout from Florida I don't want to sit around and wait any longer for Google to make things right again. It's been how long already? ...since November? Some of my pages just NEED to be at the very least top 5 for their targeted kw phrase....and then again I see a lot of my pages bouncing all over the place in rank, but managing overall to stay in the top 30 ...wondering if it's worth the fuss. Maybe I should just build more pages.

Cheers

[dynamic1]

That page is #1 again for the target kw phrase ...and I didn't change a thing. I'm so happy I'm peeing in my panties.

I met a guy at a particular webmaster's convention back in 2000. At the time he had over 1200 pages. His words of wisdom were build a page, submit it, and forget about it. Good rule.

Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes "analysis causes paralysis"