Dropped from Page 1 to Page 7 in Google

[watto]

After over 2 years on page 1 in google.com.au for my main search terms 'business for sale' and 'businesses for sale', I was shocked to see my ranking slip from position4 (page 1) to page 7. Businesses for Sale - Buy or Sell Australian Business for Sale

Could this be a penalty of some kind?

I have never bought or sold links or practiced black hat.

All of your advice is greatly appreciated.

watto

[watto]

My google rankings just returned to normal. Very weird?????

watto

[kevsta]

theres been something going on with google for a few days and some wild ranking fluctuations across 2 sets of data last night.

and i still think you ought to remove or change most of your image alt text before they hit you for spamming that

[jabo]

there are lots of factors to consider like ^^. well, you should also consider that competitors are also learning each day and they would have done some techniques or something that could made their sites increase in SERP with that keyword and bumping you lower.

[google junky]

Hello watto,


You should really think about cleaning up the HTML.
The worst place to have bad coding is between the Head tags.

Would you like for me to go through them or do you want to find the errors yourself?
[Invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.business-trader.com.au/ - W3C Markup Validator

[2fk]

With the updates being done by G this is not ordinary this days..so to stay in the competition apply the best and appropriate methods in optimizing your page...everything do change..just what happen to your site...you can't really tell that you'll going to stay on the top forever,,

[watto]

Hi google junkie,

I have started to fix errors on my page and have got them down from 75 to 29 [Invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.business-trader.com.au/ - W3C Markup Validator

watto

[confettiguru]

Originally Posted by kevsta

theres been something going on with google for a few days and some wild ranking fluctuations across 2 sets of data last night.

and i still think you ought to remove or change most of your image alt text before they hit you for spamming that

Why should you remove image alt text? I thought you were supposed to have image alt text?

[kevsta]

Originally Posted by confettiguru

Why should you remove image alt text? I thought you were supposed to have image alt text?

that particular site is an excellent example of how not to use alt text

[watto]

You mean was! I have since changed my alt tags. Actually, I changed these alt tags quite some time ago.

I now rank on page 1 in google .com.au and google.com for my main search term 'business for sale'. :- )

watto

[Henry Andersson]

Can anyone be a little more specific about how not to use alt tags? I have different variations of my main keywords placed inside some descriptive text....does this give any seo penalty now?

[kevsta]

Originally Posted by watto

You mean was! I have since changed my alt tags. Actually, I changed these alt tags quite some time ago.

I now rank on page 1 in google .com.au and google.com for my main search term 'business for sale'. :- )

watto

heh, good lad, well done.

[kevsta]

Originally Posted by Henry Andersson

Can anyone be a little more specific about how not to use alt tags? I have different variations of my main keywords placed inside some descriptive text....does this give any seo penalty now?

no sorry to have given the impression that was a bad thing per se, its just that as am sure watto will tell you he had slightly overcooked it a while back there.

this is the right way to do it Alt Attribute & Image Search Engine Optimization - SEO Workers

[Russianzio12]

Originally Posted by watto

My google rankings just returned to normal. Very weird?????

watto

Unfortunately you will experience more of drops. There must be something wrong with your site. If you don't see what exactely, try to understand thoroghly. Sites don't just drop out like that without a reason.

[watto]

Russianzio, if you read the last 5 post on this thread, you will see that my rankings have returned and are now infact the highest they have ever been!

Kevsta is correct. I definitely over optimised my alt tags and as a result I may have been penalised. They are now much more accurate, user and SEO friendly. Once again, thanks for the tip Kevsta!

watto

[xuchunfeng1984]

Originally Posted by google junky

Hello watto,


You should really think about cleaning up the HTML.
The worst place to have bad coding is between the Head tags.

Would you like for me to go through them or do you want to find the errors yourself?
[Invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.business-trader.com.au/ - W3C Markup Validator

i agree. there are many factors for seo. firstly you should seo for your page html. and make google spider it easier. and you can get good postion as well as other seo methods. good luck.

[tushar123]

Try to keep a check on your competitor's.

[brandmantra]

update your site so that crawler finds something new to your site.

[Mikeantony]

Originally Posted by kevsta

that particular site is an excellent example of how not to use alt text

I dont think it happen because of image alt text. Site is penalized because of some other reason. This is not the reason for getting down in SERP.

[myx20]

What do you mean "you OVER optimized" your alt tags? Do stuff keywords in your alt tags? Umm... quite interesting...

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Henry Andersson

Can anyone be a little more specific about how not to use alt tags? I have different variations of my main keywords placed inside some descriptive text....does this give any seo penalty now?

Peter I am sure you still have a problem. I will explain below.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Russianzio12

Unfortunately you will experience more of drops. There must be something wrong with your site. If you don't see what exactely, try to understand thoroghly. Sites don't just drop out like that without a reason.

I fully agree. And one thing I always believed was what is mentioned here:
Experiments in keyword rich links to Home

What did the webmaster test?

The webmaster tested the effect of links from sub pages of his website to his home page. He tried links to the home page of his website from the navigation and from the content and he tried links with and without keywords.
The test was done with a 4 year old domain name with a dedicated IP address. The web pages were HTML only. The website ranks top 5 in Google for its main, second and third keyword phrases and it has a total of 90 pages with unique content.

What were the results of the test?

It seems that too many links to the home page of your website can have a negative effect on your rankings:

1. Linking to the home page from every page in the content with the same keyword caused a six pages drop in rankings (-6 pages).
2. Linking to the home page from every page in the content using keyword variations caused a three pages drop in rankings (-3 pages).
3. Linking to the home page from the navigation with "main keyword" also caused a six pages drop in rankings (-6 pages).
4. Linking to the home page from the first 10 pages listed on Google.com for "site:domain.com/*" increased the ranking from 5th to 3rd (+2 positions).

The webmaster also observed the following:

• Linking from the content using keyword variations was effective to a point, after which the rankings dropped.
• There seems to be a page threshold. If the number of pages that link is even slightly above the threshold, the rankings will drop.

Does this mean that you shouldn't link to your home page?

• It's hard to tell whether the results of this experiment are valid because there are too many other variables that influence the rankings of a web page.
• It doesn't sound sensible that Google will downrank a web page that has a link to its home page on every page. Most users expect a link to the home page on every page of a website and even Google has a link to its home page from every page.
• As Google's usual webmaster advice is to focus on the website user, it seems implausible that Google would penalize home page links.
• We think that it's more likely that the ranking drops are caused by Google's change filter. If you change your web page contents, Google will temporarily downrank your web pages. This has been described in a Google patent.

Resource: Got this info a while ago from Axandra Weekly Search Engine Facts Newletter.

What does that mean to you? Maybe that the so called Google sandbox phenomenon may apply to your web site if you change your web pages?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by myx20

What do you mean "you OVER optimized" your alt tags? Do stuff keywords in your alt tags? Umm... quite interesting...

Absolutely! Google Lodges Patent For Reading Text In Images And Video

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by brandmantra

update your site so that crawler finds something new to your site.

Do you want to say here that if I do not update my web site, my rankings will drop? I hope not!

[watto]

Thanks for your input webnauts. Good to hear from you!