Sudden rank drop with no apparent reason

[outletseason]

Hi to all,

Last month I woke up with a sudden rank change and without any apparent reasons, as I never used any 'techniques', to boost my rank, I was really careful choosing, and selecting every content I added to my website, doing regular updates and even adding RSS Feed to auto-display my latest products, I was even careful with product's description, and ALT texts, so this dramatic drop was really a bitter surprise, in the past I was reluctant to do a major update, in order to avoid sudden ranking changes, I even have google analytics in place and even my rank was lowered I am getting traffic from related forums, posted by our international sales people teams, as our intended niche is not general public but business, and importers, I was not really worried much about ranking 'too high', because for us what it works is not hits from the general public, but from the business seeking for our products, and easily finding them.
Anyway this sudden and dramatic drop from 5 to 2 and then from 3 to 1, and now is 1 everywhere is really worrying.
I would welcome any insight and ideas.

My website is http://www.theoutletdseason.com, and I have been working hard on the subdomain Outlet Season :: Worldwide Market :: OEM manufacturers,IT and Electronics : Welcome to Outlet Season LLC OEM manufacturers:cases, keyboards,mice,speakers,headphones,computer monitors,CRT monitors,LCD monitors, LCD TVs,mp3 players,mp4 players,USB devi or the link Outlet Season :: Worldwide Market :: OEM manufacturers,IT and Electronics : Welcome to Outlet Season LLC OEM manufacturers:cases, keyboards,mice,speakers,headphones,computer monitors,CRT monitors,LCD monitors, LCD TVs,mp3 players,mp4 players,USB devi.
Thank you

Rick Fitzgerald
Outlet Season LLC

[Webnauts]

- Are you worrying about PageRank or Rankings?
- Did you experience any drop in the organic search.
- Did you experience a sudden drop of traffic?

[outletseason]

Thanks for replying, I am worried about both, to get ranked 1/10 makes us looks as newcomers to the web, and in the event a prospective client, has google bar, then it will makes us look awful as far as traffic, it has been steady, even with PR dropping it seems to have even increased in some regions, but decreased dramatically, my question was more related to Google's PR, as the little bar, even though is not considered relevant by many, is still has some followers, specially among businesses, to have a good PR means things are going well, and to have a very small one means there is something wrong, and in business that's very bad image ...

What I still don't understand is why this sudden drop ...

[Webnauts]

One reason which most will agree here is, that could be that your PR have been dropped, because IBLs (sites linking to yours) most probably have experience a drop too.

I am not willing to mention other reasons I think that could have caused the problem, as I am not willing to start a debate again.

By the way you said that it dropped in some areas. Did you also experience there a drop of rankings? Or did you experience a loss of rankings? And a last important question: Have pages been dropped from Google's index? Just for the record.

[incrediblehelp]

Just off the topic and off the top of my head you might want to be a little less spammy in the home page title attribute.

Now back to the issue.

1. Why is the deal with this subdomains. it seems like a regular full store dealing with electronics. The main domains has nothing to do with this. Why wouldn't you build your store off of its own domain?

2. Understand the competition level for your products. You competing with some very big boys like Amazon and the manufacturer websites for each product.

3. Your main navigation is in JavaScript which is not a great method for internal linking from a SEO point of view.

I would have a look over this link and familiarize yourself with some SEO basics:

Search Engine Marketing For Newbies - Jaan’s Search Marketing and SEO Blog from Cincinnati, Ohio

[outletseason]

Thanks for the insight, but we are not a 'store', neither we sell to RETAIL customers, we are only using the IT and ELectronics Division website as a showroom for our products and to allow our customers to request for quotes, we are not selling anything!, at least not online! As far as javascript in the menus, it's just for design, as the SEO is completely automated, as pages are generated in php and then RSS, so these are not the culprit ... The site has been like this for years and this is the first time it has a sudden drop, the onyl difference is content is updated, and more products added, but even though it looks like a store and uses a kart system it has been modified, because we work on ICC terms, and Amazon or any other store are not our competitors, because we don't take credit cards, we don't take checks, we don't sell anything online! Our b2b customers know the way an OEM manufacturing operation works, a we don't care if a guy that wants to buy a Plasma TV for his own use, comes in, we only want the business owner who buys Plasmas by container! BTW you got it all wrong, because I have been reading and adapting using SEO techniques for years ... and the site managed to rank 5/10, and that was not spam, it was because of the way the content was posted ... so please don't send me newbie links ... because the site was never this low before ... that's why I asked in first place ... As I said the only importance I give to the site is a showroom and automated quote system, that's it ... and my competition is not in the US it's in China BTW, because we sell products FOB Asia, so we are not competing with retailers we sell to them ...
As per the home page is not even finished ... as we deal with many different things ... and we are now testing changes we made to the database and scripts ... still the only interesting response seams to be a ranking drop in the group's link ... which might have affected the main page ...

[Webnauts]

Rick don't get me wrong, but the SEO techniques you implemented on your site are altered and today pretty spammy.

I am sure you need professional help from an up-to-date ethical SEO professional, or you have to go on learning and stay up-to-date if you can afford that.

And about the design issues, like the Javascript one, it can sure be fixed. But only if you want that. For example: *** 100% Pure CSS Menu (Visual / SEO / Fast / Full Featured!) ***

And looking at your site, I fully understand why IncredibleHelp posted a link for newbies.

Once again, please don't get me wrong. I have no intention to offend you here, rather I am just sticking on the facts and I want to be honest with you.

[Webnauts]

I also would like to add here, that if your SEO techniques are so great, why do I get this?

• Google has a total of 344 pages indexed from Outlet Season LLC -- worlwide network a part of RINESU Group
• 7 are in the main index
• 337 are in the supplemental index

Only 7 pages in the main index, and 337 in the SI?

97,97% of your site in the supplemental results?

Just thought you would like to know that.

[dartman]

I find nothing informative "about" the company and the links go nowhere.
Seems to me the content needs more work then the seo.

[cass-hacks]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

For example: *** 100% Pure CSS Menu (Visual / SEO / Fast / Full Featured!) ***

I'm not sure about the "Zero Script Capable Navigation" claim. Turn off Javascript and any part of the menus not visible at the time become inaccessible. Even much of the site's navigation doesn't work without Javascript Something more useful might be Stu Nicholls | CSSplay | CSS only menus which are truly pure CSS I definitely agree about the old practices possibly having caught up with the site though. The most often case of someone having problems is not when first starting out but more often years later when things all of a sudden head south.

[outletseason]

Well, thanks for the tips but ANY of those problems you are pointing out made my site gone down in the past, BTW the DHTML javascript menu, is auto-generated by a php script which also generates SEO friendly URLs, in order to be spidered by the search engines, and I haven't used many SEO, techniques, to be honest with today's constant changing in the rules, I decided not to do anything, just not do anything that might considered SPAM, as my site is dynamic not static, some scripts have to take control of search engine spiders, and even metatags are auto generated everytime I post a new product plus a new RSS feed is also created, even if I consider implementing a CSS only menu, I will have to create a new script from scratch in order to auto generate the new menus ....
BTW I separate all sites, because our group's activities are diversified and not related at all, that's why it seemed wise to have everything linked from the home page ... the problem is we are still working on the different sites, and parts ... anyway my question was why now this happened? NO why it happened, as I said the site is like that since 2003 and in more than four years we never had this kind of problem ... So if Google changed some rules recently like the famous 'dancing' then I want to know what has changed ... I can't do a complete redesign as this takes time and we are in the middle of the Holiday Season (for businesses that starts 'before' the holidays in order to have enough time left and be prepared for the actual ones)

[Webnauts]

Why all this happen? Google updates tweaking their algorithms every day. When did you tweak you site the last time conforming to the most recent SE guidelines? 2003?

Think about that. And be sure you are one of millions of sites who are going through this pain. Trust me.

[dartman]

Your index page links (top and bottom) keep me on the index page. Maybe IE6 isn't compatible with your menu scripts/links. Possibly the fancy scripting is contributing
to your problem.

[outletseason]

Well actually, through the years I have been working on new techniques to improve and stayed away from black hat ... so I recently added RSS feeds, and starting adding content rich descriptions, without sounding too much like marketing jargon or unnatural, and Google listed my new products pretty fast, in a matter of hours after being posted ... I also checked many SEO sites and decided everything was fine, and I am talking just a 5 months ago ... not years, because dynamic sites are simply too hard to optimize I relied on the scripts ... and even developed my own ... BTW I just noticed this crazy drop ... and I was really reluctant to make improvements creating new links that need to be redirected for instance changing the URL and using more SEO friendly scripts ... now that I hit the bottom I think it is time to make a more aggressive approach ... Some just didn't work because social sites and blogs are not for my business, as traffic from there is not relevant to us.
I never purchased links neither do reciprocal linking ... nor adwords campaigns ...

[outletseason]

Well, those links in Home page are not working ... as I had a very serious SPAM problem due to SQL injection into the mailing script I decided to disable then until I fix the security problem ... NOw it's apparently fixed, but I feel it was more important to generate rich content on the IT and Electronics site, and finally work on the main page ... BTW I never did an about page ... So I was thinking to completely modify my Home page, but in the meantime I had to test some new scripts ... in order to avoid spamming I keep any info hidden ... specially email addresses and just in case if they need to be shown, but not linked to mailto: tag, I just display it as a graphic.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by outletseason

BTW I never did an about page ... So I was thinking to completely modify my Home page, but in the meantime I had to test some new scripts ... in order to avoid spamming I keep any info hidden ... specially email addresses and just in case if they need to be shown, but not linked to mailto: tag, I just display it as a graphic.

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