Inconsistent rankings with search terms

[philg]

One of my websites recently took a major dive in rankings on an important keyword search: 'queenstown wine tours'

And yet it still ranks highly on: 'queenstown wine' which is less specific. The only recent change was to have a google sitemap created.

The website is www.appellationcentral.co.nz

I have waited a few weeks to see if it improved but nothing has changed. Secondary pages still rank in the top 20 but the index page seems to have disappeared down the rankings.

Can some please offer some advise.

Phil

[scanmonkey]

There are only 628,000 results for 'queenstown wine tours', it should be fairly easy to rank.

What you need are a good amount of relevant inbound links with your keywords in the anchor text.

#1 Local Rank - go through the first 200 results for 'queenstown wine tours' and see if there are any pages that will link to you
#2 One way in bound links - post your link with the keywords in the anchor text on some wine forums and issue a press release
#3 Authority sites - Try to get some links from some authority sites like yahoo directory , DMOZ, botw, JoeAnt, GoGuides, Specialty (wine directories), .gov and .edu sites
#4 Look for link partners or directories that give free or trade links

http://www.pheedster.com/directories.php
http://www.best-web-directories.com/free-directories.htm

-- some paid directories
• Yahoo: http://help.yahoo.com/help/bizex/ $299/year – Note they feed many secondary SEs and Directories, also a number of people are growing increasingly disgruntled with Google
• SEOMA (www.seoma.net) $15/yr
• Microsoft Small Business Directory (http://sbd.bcentral.com/addsite.aspx) $49/yr
• InCrawler (http://www.incrawler.com/cgi-bin/dir/addurl.cgi) $49.95 (1 time)
• BestofTheWeb (http://botw.org/helpcenter/submitcost.aspx) $49.95/yr or 149.95 (1 Time)
• JoeAnt (http://www.joeant.com) $39.99 (1 Time)
• GoGuides (http://www.goguides.org/topic/78677.html) $69.95 (1 time)
• TyGo (http://www.tygo.com/dir/) $39.95 (1 Time)
• Skaffe (http://www.skaffe.com/viewCat/68981) $39.99 (1 Time)
• SiteSnoop (http://www.sitesnoop.com/submit.shtml) $10.00 (1 Time)
• Axeq (http://www.axeq.com/submit.php) $10.00 (1 Time)
• Site-Sift (http://www.site-sift.com/53) $49.95 (1 time)
• Sezza (http://www.sezza.com/) $14.95 (1 time)
• All Business (http://www.business.com) $199/yr
• Business.com (http://www.business.com) $199/yr
• US City (http://www.uscity.net) $149/yr
• What U Seek (http://col.whatuseek.com/) $49.99 Submission Fee + $16.99/yr
• WOW Directory (http://www.wowdirectory.com) $55.00 (1 Time)

[philg]

Thanks SCANMONKEY, I have done some but far from all of what you suggest. So I know there is room for substantial improvement. I will follow your advice.

However, what I don't understand is that this website did having a ranking of 9th in google using 'queenstown wine tours' 4-5 weeks ago and had held that position for several months. And now I can't find the site using those terms, yet similar terms e.g. 'queenstown wine' I rank 4th!

Does anyone have any ideas on this?