I've Been Hit!

[snakeman]

Deepsand, (and Watto) my apologies, I did overlook "that" factor.
Yes, in the absence of any identifiable loss of backlinks, it would appear that you are correct in assuming that "major structural change to the site; and, then, made a second one before everything had settled from the first" is likely the cause of the problem.
If this is so, then it is probably the best possible source as it is also (I presume) the most easily fixed!
All the best
Snakeman

[watto]

My research tells me that my link pop has actually increased over the past months, so I can't put it down to a loss of links. Also, even if I had lost a few powerfull links, would it have resulted in a drop of 7 positions?

[SEOforGoogle]

My research tells me that my link pop has actually increased over the past months, so I can't put it down to a loss of links. Also, even if I had lost a few powerfull links, would it have resulted in a drop of 7 positions?

Yes! I spend more time on obtaining authority links rather than a bunch of lesser quality links. It's been in my experience that some links are that powerful.

[deepsand]

Yes!

Purely speculative.

While it theoretically could, there is no evidence to here suggest that it would have.

[watto]

Purely speculative. While it theoretically could, there is no evidence to here suggest that it would have.

I agree in this case. As I said, I have not seen a loss in high pr links to my site.

I have noticed I jumped up to #4 for my main terms (from #7) yesterday, and then this morning back to #7......

[Webnauts]

Also, even if I had lost a few powerfull links, would it have resulted in a drop of 7 positions?

Yes, that can happen, because it is not about few or many powerful links. It is about quality! If you lose only one single powerful link that was giving you the power to to rank Nr. 1 instead of Nr. 7, you are done.

Some things I would look into:

1. I checked your link profile with SEOMOZ Open Site Explorer and found that you have 729 followed and 154 nofollowed. Does that ring any bells?

2. Your competitors are not sleeping. They also try hard like you do. How did that happen overnight? Nothing unusual. It could have been just another update which after re-evaluating your site and of your competitors, they graded you for the position Nr. 7 for term "business for sale".

3. About being harmed by the mobile version story, it is absolutely ridiculous. If you dig deeper into Mobile optimization, you would give up making such assumptions. So once again: That is not the case.

4. You said that you did not experience any drop of traffic. Would you mind sharing us a screenshot of your Google Analytics?

5. As others said here already, you should wait some more days, but I would not dare to give you any hopes. Seems to me that it is final. When did it happen? 8 days ago?

Still I wish you good luck. (Valto and don't forget to Vgalto).

[watto]

About being harmed by the mobile version story, it is absolutely ridiculous. If you dig deeper into Mobile optimization, you would give up making such assumptions. So once again: That is not the case.

Yes I said I have ruled this out, but at the time it was indexed my rankings dropped, so I guess I could be forgiven for trying to conmnect the dots

You said that you did not experience any drop of traffic. Would you mind sharing us a screenshot of your Google Analytics?

No man, I said I did not experience a 'huge' drop in traffic as expected, but obviously there is a decrease.

As others said here already, you should wait some more days, but I would not dare to give you any hopes. Seems to me that it is final. When did it happen? 8 days ago?

It happend last Saturday, so I need to give it at least 1 full week before I accept this is how it is going to stay (until I start working my ass off again).

Still I wish you good luck. (Valto and don't forget to Vgalto)?

Thanks and no rotton hotdogs here! (personal joke).

[watto]

So after 9 day my site has dropped to #9 for my main term (after holding the #1 spot for a long time)....... Something doesn't add up.

[Webnauts]

So after 9 day my site has dropped to #9 for my main term (after holding the #1 spot for a long time)....... Something doesn't add up.

Oh! Now #9? Well I would assume that revising your titles tags back as you had them should solve the problem. Don't you think?

You need professional SEO services Peter. There are plenty of experts around here who would be glad to offer you their services. You are in a very high competetive industry, so I cannot believe you can compete with just some free advises from forums. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

[claybutler]

So after 9 day my site has dropped to #9 for my main term (after holding the #1 spot for a long time)....... Something doesn't add up.

To put things in perspective, I had the #3 spot on Google for just the word "dieline" for about nine months. Only dieline magazine and wikipedia were ahead of me. Then I moved to #9 a couple weeks ago and now I'm #13.

I'll probably shuffle back up as I build more links (as well as all the organic ones I get because people like my dieline tutorial) or after the next update, or if the other sites ahead of me lose links or any number of other reasons.

But the bottom line is that it was kind of miraculous that I held that spot for so long as I did. Just because you hold a spot for a while doesn't mean you are entitled to it. And panicking about a rankings drop that's less than a week old, and then making changes in reaction to it, is just not the way to go about these things.