Small decline- sign of bad future?

[lionstail]

Our website has held steady in the rankings for various keyterms for MONTHS, and suddenly I've noticed that we've lost a few spots here, and a few spots there, for nearly all of our sites.

Is this is a sign that we're about to hit a big decline? Is there anything I can do about it to head off the damage? We've kept our SEO policies constant for at least a year, and it's been fine until now.

Any suggestions or experience with a similar situation would be much appreciated.

[tedster]

There are definitely some changes in the ranking logic for Google recently. If all your sites have similar footprints and similar promotion, including the backlinks profiles, then seeing them all slide a bit would not be a sign of bigger trouble approaching. But it would be a good time to take stock of anything you do commonly on all those sites and see where you might be weak.

One thing to think about is that by devaluing or even penalizing sites suspected of selling or buying links that pass PR, Google is also removing all that PR from further circulation around the web. Even if you play no part in the link market yourself, sites that link to you may -- or their backlinks may, and so on. So your backlink "ancestors" may now be sending you less juice.

[g1smd]

Is everything in order in-house?

I would run Xenu LinkSleuth over the site and fix all issues found.

I would also check out Google WebmasterTools and see what it has to say about the site.

Are there any Duplicate Content issues?

[lionstail]

we definitely don't buy or sell links, and we rarely link offsite. as for duplicate content, we don't have any more than we had previously- ie, some of our widget product pages may be the same, but ALL of the real content (article pages, landing pages, etc.) are entirely unique to our site.

does that make it better or worse?

will run xenu now. but i haven't seen this type of decline in our other sites, so this is making me nervous....

[Robert Charlton]

This is oversimplifying greatly... but I've seen over at least a year and a half now, maybe longer, that Google appears to be systematically re-evaluating search results, starting with the most competitive phrases and working its way down.

This is consistent with the literature on certain algo quality filters, which were likely to work only if there were a critical mass of good quality pages satisfying a given query. I'm thinking in particular of Hilltop, commonly thought to have been adopted by Google in some form around the time of the Florida update...

Hilltop: A Search Engine based on Expert Documents
[cs.toronto.edu...]

I'd assumed that, as the web grew larger, that the application of Hilltop, or Hilltop-like refinements, would broaden into what were once smaller niches. I've been seeing this happen, and I've assumed that Google is getting fussier about the quality of inbound links supporting a page. If you're seeing your rankings gradually erode, this could be a factor.

You also need to layer on this all of the other changes that Google has been making over time.

Beyond that, of course, it's an ongoing horse race, so you're never standing still. If you are, you're effectively moving backwards.

[Lorel]

I wish they would provide that Hilltop search tool referenced in the link above.