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Dropped Search Engine Rankings
By Kimberly Bock | February 17, 2008
Nothing is worse than waking up early in the morning anticipating the best for your search engine rankings only to find that you’ve been caught with your pants down…dropping off the face of planet search engine.
After you have finished screaming obscenities and punishing the children, it’s time to find out what the h*ll is going on. The troubleshooting begins.
Ross Dunn of Stepforth gives some great tips on that troubleshooting process.
If you’ve just moved your site…
Did you experience extensive down-time? During a switch over the spiders may have tried to find you only to find there was no one home, which means you may be experiencing a temporary setback only. When the spider returns, all should be fine and dandy.
Did you put in a 301 redirect from the old URL’s to the new?
Contact host as well to find out if your server has had down time. Once again, if this has happened, the spider will return and you should be back in business.
Content Issues…
Is your optimized content up-to-date? Have you overwritten previously optimized material replacing it with non optimized material?
Server Headers…
Search engines are responsive to commands sent by your server. The server header may contain unneeded data. Of course there are server header checker tools available. (Free and/or at cost) Ross suggests using this checker, which he also uses.
Webamaster Tools Resources…
Make sure you have registered your site with Yahoo Site Explorer, Live Search Webamaster Center, and Google’s Webmaster Central where you can take advantage of much needed feedback and support with issues such as this and others as you go along.
- Is your site banned?
- Who’s linking to you?
- What problems may the spiders have run into while trying to index your content?
And the Obvious Reason you could have lost ranking?
Spam spam spam. Are you a spammer? Do you even know?
Read 15 Shades Of SEO Spam and Wikipedia’s in depth analysis of Spamdexing
Do you think it’s best to get feedback by someone more knowledgeable? Webmaster World will provide timely feedback in most instances.
Also, SEO Refugee provides free site reviews.
Of course you could always consult with a professional SEO which would be well worth the cost.. saving your site from future problems and possible permanent damage.
In conclusion…
View full post “How to Troubleshoot Dropped Search Engine Rankings” by Ross Dunn
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Topics: Search |
January 24th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Hi Bill, nice find.
January 24th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Kimberly, I assume you posted this article.Please properly credit “Ross Dunn” with writing this article and provide a link back to my website at http://news.stepforth.com/blog/2008/01/how-to-troubleshoot-dropped-search.php
Thank you.
January 24th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Bill thanks you.
January 24th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Hi Kim,
Thanks for citing the piece, “15-shades of SEO Spam” in this post. I just wanted to let your readers know the article is almost two years old and might be a little out of date.
For instance, there are far fewer services offering organic site submissions these days (#12). Two years ago, these businesses would flood submissions to 1001 search entities or directories and my concern was a flood of new but useless links. Google was thought to be moving to a more robust link-evaluation back then. Another example is #15, Misuse of Web2.0 Formats. I think I’d use the term Social Media rather than Web2.0 formats if I had written the piece recently. Two years ago, the social media hadn’t really developed into the landscape we see today and one could write Web2.0 without making funny faces at the monitor.
I can guarantee there would have been a few more paragraphs and way more smart-ass remarks if I was writing this piece today. Perhaps it’s time for an update.
January 24th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Jim: When I received Sitepro’s email with the referenced post I assumed it’s relevancy in full. We are not far off in that thought I’m sure. It’s still very useful information..
Thank you for taking the time to comment and for informing me of the need for an update…
January 24th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Ross: (I moderated Jim’s comment before yours not realizing my replies to each comment would be out of order..)
As SitePro News had sent this post in my email yesterday morning, I thought it to be informative and something that would be of interest given the nature of my site’s target audience.
I had assumed, inappropriately, that the writers of SitePro worked as a unit, not in singular form. I was unfamiliar with their system.
I apologize for not giving initial kudos where kudos belong..
Your post will help alot of people who otherwise may not know where to turn if they find they are experiencing sudden search engine death..
I have made the revisions and I thank you for your insight
January 25th, 2008 at 1:21 am
[...] Dropped Search Engine Rankings Nothing is worse than waking up early in the morning anticipating the best for your search engine rankings only to find that you’ve been caught with your pants down…dropping off the face of planet search engine. (tags: Dropped Search Engine Rankings) [...]