Lisa13 - 2:08 pm on Jan 26, 2013 (gmt 0)

Hi :) I found this discussion through Google search LOL ;)

Just wanted to add my experience. So far I've had wonderful success seo wise and none of the updates (Penguin nor Panda) affected any sites, until this one.

For example, one site has 7 keywords I'm optimizing for. Out of those 7, all but 2 (and variations of the 2 - one word vs long-tail) completely tanked. These keywords were all on page 2 or 3. One of the two survivors never budged from page 2 (it's a brand keyword so I was very happy to finally get it to page 2) So we're talking spot #10 (because Google only has 7 results on page 1 for the term....) and spot #12

Now when I check rankings, the other terms show up in the 200-400 spots, but NOT for the URL I was optimizing for (category page) but instead for random products in the category.

The only thing I've done differently with the 2 keywords that are still doing well, was more focus - we did more link-building for those, but not an extreme amount. Never over-optimize. This is why I really don't "think" it's a back-links thing...

My question is, how did 2 survive and 5 are still floating up and down. Last night I saw one go up 122 spots, now today down 87. I'm really struggling with this. All are in the 100-400 spot range when they were all on page 2 or 3!

No critical warnings/messages in WMT either.