Dropped in SERPS after changes - help please!

[powsurfer]

Hi All
Can anyone point me in the right direction as to why we could have dropped after making the following changes. I don't want put all back but if anyone has an idea/opinion on what could be the main problem please let me know.

Index page: Ski Chile & Argentina
Resort page: Valle Nevado

Changes Made...
1. Title change on resort page from Ski Valle Nevado Chile to Valle Nevado to match more frequently searched term
2. Removing 3 aliasing domains (some pages were appearing in SERPS) including the original site (Ski Chile & Argentina) with IBLs and set them up as 301 redirects
3. Added some tours at the resort linking out to full pages

I would have thought the title would have helped.
Can the redirects as opposed to aliasing have hurt - I thought we were at risk of suffering from dupe pages as Ski Chile & Argentina was being indexed for some of the inside pages
I am expecting I need to add 'nofollow' to the links out

The page has dropped from position 11 to 47.
This is also replicated on our 2 other main resort pages.

Thanks in advance

[incrediblehelp]

What keywords did you exactly rank for before?

Why would you want to rank for "valle nevado" instead of " Ski Valle Nevado Chile"?

[InkodeR]

Agree with incrediblehelp.

Also how long ago were these changes implemented?

[morestar]

hm, my first little instinct was that removing some of those pages you said you removed changed things around for you and although you may, and i say may have been eventually penalized for them you end up showing your truthful colors by removing them and showing good practice but in the end hurt your self....

maybe, just maybe...

I'd throw it ALL back up and slowly add those new pages you mentioned and slowly take everything you don't want there away...

hurry hurry!

[dann]

I'm with morestar, I have done the same thing in the past as a preemptive move to avoid a peanalty only to lose serps when I was never in jeopardy in the first place.
Slowly put your older pages up and get more aggressive in a few weeks.
It will take time! Don't do it all at once.

[powsurfer]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

What keywords did you exactly rank for before?
Why would you want to rank for "valle nevado" instead of " Ski Valle Nevado Chile"?

I was specifically talking about the keyword "valle nevado". We changed the title for this as it has no detrimental effect on the usability and accuracy of the page and "valle nevado" gets about 440 searches compared to 30 for "ski valle nevado" whilst at the same time including "ski valle nevado" and "valle nevado chile", which we shoudl also get picked up for as we have "ski" and "chile" within the text.

I have now added "nofollow" to some of the on-page IBLs.

The changes were made about 2 weeks ago and SERPS were constant until the last few days and then the sudden drop.
Our 4 other main resort pages have had the same if not greater drop.

Slowly put your older pages up and get more aggressive in a few weeks.

I am now wondering the best way to do this. The complete domain Ski Chile & Argentina was set up as an alias (on windows shared server) so putting it back up would be for all pages at once.
I had been advised to change the domain aliasing to 301 redirects. I did however do this site wide rather than all the individual pages that Google is indexing (14) for Ski Chile & Argentina, i.e. Ski Chile & Argentina (all!) to Ski Chile & Argentina

I guess changing the title can also have a major effect, as this is one of the main ranking factors, so maybe was best left alone.

I also notice http://www.webproworld.com appears in the SERPS for both the .com and the .net - must be being alaised as ours were before.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by powsurfer

I was specifically talking about the keyword "valle nevado". We changed the title for this as it has no detrimental effect on the usability and accuracy of the page and "valle nevado" gets about 440 searches compared to 30 for "ski valle nevado" whilst at the same time including "ski valle nevado" and "valle nevado chile", which we shoudl also get picked up for as we have "ski" and "chile" within the text.

So ranking for "valle nevado" will convert and attract a better audience than something more targeted? What if someone types in "valle nevado" looking for plumbers?

[powsurfer]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

So ranking for "valle nevado" will convert and attract a better audience than something more targeted? What if someone types in "valle nevado" looking for plumbers?

I see your point although most of our resort names are not locations/places other than ski resort names. There are exceptions to this, but 'valle nevado' is nothing other than a ski resort and that is what people appear to be searching on.
Another example is 'termas de chillan' which gets 197 searches and is nothing other than the name of a ski resort, but the term 'ski termas de chillan' gets less than 25 searches.

I am however thinking that Google is ranking the page differently because there is less relevance of the title to the on page content. The words 'ski' 'valle nevado' and 'chile' all match well to the content where as 'valle' 'nevado' would match well, but 4 well matching words may count for more than 2!?

What's your view on the issue of aliasing (with some inevitable dupes) versus 301 redirects?
and should the 301s be for all individual pages or site wide e.g. www.edass.com/ to www.snoventures.com

Thanks again for your valuable help.

[incrediblehelp]

I always use 301 redirects and never alias. I have seen to many websites get into trouble with aliasing.

1. Changing your title tag to be only "valle nevado" is not going to help much at all. You can see most of the other websites ranking well for your targeted phrase have other terms in the title.

2. I think your internal and external linking could be better. I would try harder to make sure your targeted phrases are in the anchor text more often than they are now.

Do you have any affiliation to this website?

www. snowventures. com

[powsurfer]

Thanks again incrediblehelp
Should I make individual 301 redirects or site wide is ok?

I'll change the titles back.

Any pointers on how improve the internal (& external) linking?
By anchor text do you mean the text within paragraphs rather than the menus?

www. snowventures .com is nothing to do with us.
They have now started selling some of the same products that we sell!
We own www. snowventures .net and www. snowventures. co .uk so thinking of setting these up as info only with links to www. snoventures. com, although may be best just to focus on Ski Chile & Argentina

[scanmonkey]

I agree with incredible and would keep the ski chile in the title.

It doesn't seem that the term is super competitive. I would try social bookmarking the site, getting some blog posts on travel websites and posting a video on youtube from the resort area.

[powsurfer]

Working on the suggestions, many thanks for all your help

[datetopia]

It it possible to have most of the backlinks contain keywords from your old title. Changing the title causes a keywords on links - keywords on title mismatch, resulting in a lower ranking.

[powsurfer]

Good point, that would ring true as there are several internal links that use the text 'Valle Nevado Ski Resort' which would then have been matching with the page title.

[powsurfer]

Wow, this page is now ranking higher than us for Valle Nevado!

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by powsurfer

I see your point although most of our resort names are not locations/places other than ski resort names. There are exceptions to this, but 'valle nevado' is nothing other than a ski resort and that is what people appear to be searching on.

Well, yes; but, the point is that while you and some others may know that "valle nevado" implicitly defines a ski resort, SEs and searchers rely on explicit data.

Therefore, there can be no advantage in removing "ski" from your title, only an advantage in including it.

[powsurfer]

Thanks Deepsand for the clarification.
I had it in my mind that it was more specific i.e. fewer words, the most important words in the title would carry more weight.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by powsurfer

Thanks Deepsand for the clarification.
I had it in my mind that it was more specific i.e. fewer words, the most important words in the title would carry more weight.

It is important to bear in mind that, in the absence of quotation marks surrounding a query string, a simple, non-Boolean search returns all results which contain all of the words in the query string, regardless of their order or placement; i.e. the query string A B C D E is taken to mean A & B & C & D & E.

Therefore, a search for either lodge name or name lodge will return all results which include both lodge and name, while a search for ski lodge name, or ski name lodge, or lodge ski name, or lodge name ski, or name lodge ski or name ski lodge will all return only that subset of the previous search that also contains ski.

In your case, having all 3 present in the Title both ensures that your page will be one of those which is matched to either search, and, by virtue of their appearing in concert, being given greater weight than if they were separated.

[powsurfer]

Thanks again. I have made the relevant changes to reflect these recommendations for the title, now waiting to see if our positions are restored, fingers crossed,we can get soem of our traffic back.

[Janna122003]

Originally Posted by powsurfer

Hi All
Can anyone point me in the right direction as to why we could have dropped after making the following changes. I don't want put all back but if anyone has an idea/opinion on what could be the main problem please let me know.

Index page: Ski Chile & Argentina
Resort page: Valle Nevado

Changes Made...
1. Title change on resort page from Ski Valle Nevado Chile to Valle Nevado to match more frequently searched term
2. Removing 3 aliasing domains (some pages were appearing in SERPS) including the original site (Ski Chile & Argentina) with IBLs and set them up as 301 redirects
3. Added some tours at the resort linking out to full pages

I would have thought the title would have helped.
Can the redirects as opposed to aliasing have hurt - I thought we were at risk of suffering from dupe pages as Ski Chile & Argentina was being indexed for some of the inside pages
I am expecting I need to add 'nofollow' to the links out

The page has dropped from position 11 to 47.
This is also replicated on our 2 other main resort pages.

Thanks in advance

If you change something in any text within your site that would cause SERP to change. BUt if you think your changes is good optimization then you should wait for your site to come back because google is just evaluating the new updates in your sites.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Janna122003

If you change something in any text within your site that would cause SERP to change. BUt if you think your changes is good optimization then you should wait for your site to come back because google is just evaluating the new updates in your sites.

SEs do not arbitrarily change a site's ranking simply because it's content has changed.

It is only after the site's new content has been fully crawled and indexed that it re-ranked. Until that process is completed, its previous indexing and ranking remains unchanged.

[powsurfer]

Originally Posted by deepsand

SEs do not arbitrarily change a site's ranking simply because it's content has changed.

It is only after the site's new content has been fully crawled and indexed that it re-ranked. Until that process is completed, its previous indexing and ranking remains unchanged.

I am guessing that one or several of the other sites aliasing snoventures.com was indexed and it therefore got lowered in ranking for duplicate content or something similar.
Since removing the others over to 301 redirects and working on getting those right for good practice, I have resubmitted the site map and now Google's webmaster tools are showing a total of 63 pages in the site with 54 being indexed, as opposed the previous 25 pages being indexed, so hopefully in time and after the other changes intended as good SEO we will get our good rankings back.