Dropped 9 positions

**Nick R** · 05-02-2009, 05:44 AM

I'm a bit ticked off right now because my site, which has always been #2 on Google for my main keyphrase (lineolated parakeet) has dropped 9 spots to position #1 on page 2.

At first, it may seem like a puzzle. But it's really not.

In the beginning, I had nothing in my domain's root; just a redirect to my forums (/forums directory). So I guess Google attributed all of my /forums rankings to the root.
Well, a little over a month ago, I created a blog to go with my website and I placed it in the root. So now visiting my domain took you to the blog instead of redirecting you to the forum.
I was hesitant to put the blog in the root in the first place. You can see where I asked for feedback on that idea, here: Not sure what to do...

I guess my blog just isn't up to par in order to be as high as my domain used to be.

So now I'm wondering if I should revert my domain/directory setup to how it was before. The root being a redirect to the forums and the blog going into a /blog directory.

I'm still #1 for "Lineolated Parakeet forum" or "Linnie Forum", but I want to be where I was for "Lineolated Parakeet".

Any recommendations?

**KevinL** · 05-02-2009, 05:53 AM

I have been reading this a lot lately! I don't think it's just you.

I went from 30k pages indexed to 8k! I don't know what is going on with google lately!!!

I just searched for lineolated parakeet and your site was the #5 on the first page.

Awesome looking site by the way!

**Nick R** · 05-02-2009, 06:49 AM

#5? That's not where I am seeing my result. lol

I wonder if any others have observed weird behavior as well. But I'm still wondering if I should move the blog to its own directory rather than the root.

**KevinL** · 05-02-2009, 09:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nick R

#5? That's not where I am seeing my result. lol

Thats weird! I took a picture just in case I'm going crazy haha

**Nick R** · 05-02-2009, 12:03 PM

How odd!

Check mine out.

**FoxyWL** · 05-02-2009, 12:30 PM

On one of my sites i'm 2nd for my search term when logged into my gmail account, once I log out i'm on the 2nd page. I've never used that button that puts a page to the top.

**Brandon Sheley** · 05-02-2009, 01:57 PM

First off, make sure you are checking your rankings NOT logged into google
and 2nd, what type pf plugins to you have on the blog, wordpress I assume?
Wordpress is great in terms of SEO, how many articles are you putting up about "lineolated parakeet"?
What sites are you pinging with each post? Are all your backlinks to /forums/ or do you have some pointing to the root?

regards

**partyon** · 05-02-2009, 03:56 PM

We have experienced the same recently with a drop from page 3 to page 40 and now were back on 3-5 most days, cant wait till we are indexed properly.

**Nick R** · 05-02-2009, 05:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brandon Sheley

First off, make sure you are checking your rankings NOT logged into google
and 2nd, what type pf plugins to you have on the blog, wordpress I assume?
Wordpress is great in terms of SEO, how many articles are you putting up about "lineolated parakeet"?
What sites are you pinging with each post? Are all your backlinks to /forums/ or do you have some pointing to the root?

regards

I made sure to be logged out when I checked. I haven't used Google's stupid SearchWiki feature anyways.

As for plugins related to SEO, I have Platinum SEO Pack and Google XML Sitemaps.

On average, we have 1 to 2 posts (not all posts are articles) per week. I really wish we had more though.

Not really pinging any sites with the posts.
I'm not really sure where most of my backlinks are pointing. How can I check?

The whole reason I'm puzzled is because my blog has still been in the top results up until the last few days. The blog has been in the root for over a month and has been indexed just fine... so why the problem now?

**Brandon Sheley** · 05-02-2009, 06:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nick R

I made sure to be logged out when I checked. I haven't used Google's stupid SearchWiki feature anyways.

As for plugins related to SEO, I have Platinum SEO Pack and Google XML Sitemaps.

On average, we have 1 to 2 posts (not all posts are articles) per week. I really wish we had more though.

Not really pinging any sites with the posts.
I'm not really sure where most of my backlinks are pointing. How can I check?

The whole reason I'm puzzled is because my blog has still been in the top results up until the last few days. The blog has been in the root for over a month and has been indexed just fine... so why the problem now?

Those are good plugins, when your making post are you customizing the title and description via the plugin?

This is a good site to check backlinks
Link popularity - Free link popularity check

and this site has a good list of sites to ping
Blog and Ping Tool - Use Pingler.com to Drive Traffic your Blogs and Websites

1-2 post a week is good, I'm lucky to get one post every two weeks

google moves around a lot, give it another week and see if it moves back for you.

**Nick R** · 05-02-2009, 06:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brandon Sheley

Those are good plugins, when your making post are you customizing the title and description via the plugin?

This is a good site to check backlinks
Link popularity - Free link popularity check

and this site has a good list of sites to ping
Blog and Ping Tool - Use Pingler.com to Drive Traffic your Blogs and Websites

1-2 post a week is good, I'm lucky to get one post every two weeks

google moves around a lot, give it another week and see if it moves back for you.

About half the time, I do customize the title, description, keywords etc. with the plugin. It's on my to-do list to go through and do it to them all. I think now is a good time to do that.

Thanks for the resources; I'm checking them out now.

And I'm glad to hear that it isn't really below the norm to make so few posts. But I'm certainly still going to make an effort to get more posted, more frequently.

Thanks for the help. I'll keep an eye out and see what happens.

**Nick R** · 05-02-2009, 06:53 PM

Okay, now I'm puzzled. Why do I have so few backlinks (or whatever that number is) with Google but quite a bit with Yahoo, AV and ATW?

**Brandon Sheley** · 05-02-2009, 08:47 PM

this is common
99% of the time, yahoo will show up with many more
how many do you see in your google webmaster tools

**Nick R** · 05-03-2009, 04:56 AM

Here's my Webmaster Tools screens. The first one is for my root domain and the second is for /forums: (These are the "Pages with External Links" views)

**Nick R** · 07-01-2009, 07:30 AM

Update:

Just checked and I see that my site is back to #2 for my search term, "lineolated parakeet"!

This is exciting; I hope it stays this way.

Since last time we all saw different results, would you guys mind checking it out (search for: lineolated parakeet) and tell me what position my site is in (lineolatedparakeet.net).

Thanks!

**Brandon Sheley** · 07-01-2009, 07:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nick R

Update:

Just checked and I see that my site is back to #2 for my search term, "lineolated parakeet"!

This is exciting; I hope it stays this way.

Since last time we all saw different results, would you guys mind checking it out (search for: lineolated parakeet) and tell me what position my site is in (lineolatedparakeet.net).

Thanks!

it's #2 for me
and I clicked the link, maybe it'll help

**Cerberus** · 07-01-2009, 12:19 PM

Very nice job. I too have noticed some ups and downs in google for a couple site. I think they were doing something or at least cleaning up some clutter. In 4 days we went from 3000+ indexed to less than 2000. Then I logged into webmaster tools today and back up to almost 4000. So who knows what they are doing

**ArnyVee** · 07-01-2009, 04:34 PM

Congrats Nick!

I actually noticed a certain keyword that I was hoping to rank well in (Disney forum) had me on page 3 and 4 a month or two ago. Then, lately I had been getting some nice traffic through those keywords and I checked....first page!

So, I'm happy too

**tryfuhl** · 07-02-2009, 10:46 PM

Good job on getting back up to it bro.