What to check when rankings drop

[buildersweb]

I have a site that is Search engine optimized, has no duplicates but sudden we saw our site to drop from page 4 to page 12.

At this time we made a change at platform from joomla 1.5 to joomla 2.5. We found some duplicates and some 404 error pages at webmaster tools but we fixed everything. Now the site is still at this low position.

CAN someone help and advise what else i can check ?

It is very strange because i have checked everything!

[goodroi]

Checked everything?

Have you checked to see if you lost any backlinks?
Have you checked to see if you gained any backlinks?
Have you checked to see if any backlinks changed to nofollow?
Have you checked to see if any backlinks changed anchor text?
Have you checked to see if your website hosting was down?
Have you recently added any new content?
Have you checked for hacks/malware?
Did any of the joomla extensions change?

If you list all of the specific things you have checked, people will be better able to suggest things you may have overlooked or help you interpret the findings of what you have checked.

[buildersweb]

Have you checked to see if you lost any backlinks?

YES all is ok

Have you checked to see if you gained any backlinks?

YES from seomoz tool i see backlinks i had and some new that i know about them

Have you checked to see if any backlinks changed to nofollow?

YES no changes - I own the most sites

Have you checked to see if any backlinks changed anchor text?

YES no changes

Have you checked to see if your website hosting was down?

YES no downtime as i own the server too and i have tools to check it

Have you recently added any new content?

YES i have changed many pages content but that was done with care and i made all the 301 redirects needed

Have you checked for hacks/malware?

YES but i can not find anything.. Any suggestions on that in order to check better it would be appreciated

Did any of the joomla extensions change?

All of the extensions changed

I can not find the reason i am still at this position.

I only found a strange ns2.example.com as result in google so i thought that this will be treated as duplicate and i have delete it with 301 redirects now i have fixed that over a month but i am still treated as penalty site.

[Sand]

YES no changes - I own the most sites

Any common footprints between all the sites? For example, DNS? Analytics? WHOIS? IP? Same about page template?

[buildersweb]

Dns yes most of them are same
I have a dedicated Ip but at the same subnet mask for example i have 1.1.1.14 and my clients has 1.1.1.28. It is from the same datacenter.
Most of my sites are well contstructed sites of my clients with w3c standards and ofcourse with google guidelines h1, a few keywords not stuffing ect.

[phranque]

ns2.exmplle.com is a typical naming convention for a vanity nameserver.

if your server is configured to accept requests ffor wildcard subdomains, perhaps google discovered that hostname and made an exploratory http request and started crawling from there.

(i'm assuming from your description example.com is your domain)

[buildersweb]

yes my domain is like www.example.com

Google crawled ns2.example.com because that was serving my site (mistake at dns entries). I have fixed that and now at ns2.example.com there is a webserver page not my site as it was. Google now has deleted all those urls and there is a month passed but i am still over 100 position.

It must be an other problem

[jimbeetle]

One thing you haven't mentioned is traffic. Has the rankings drop you see affected the site's traffic?

And I find this a bit prolematic:

Have you checked to see if any backlinks changed to nofollow?

YES no changes - I own the most sites

I assume that means you own most of the sites that link to the affected site. If so, Google might have just caught up to your link scheme and given you a bit of a slap.

[netmeg]

That's where I'd look first.

[buildersweb]

I had low traffic and it has not changed a lot after the drop. Last year same month i was 350 now i am 256. I lost the traffic from the main keyword

I have not created any bad link scheme. I have added at the sites i created the webdesign by ... with my link. I saw many of my competitors use the same method and rank at first page.

It must be something else

[netmeg]

I have added at the sites i created the webdesign by ... with my link

Google has been cracking down on that sort of thing, here and there. I'd put rel=nofollow on all those links if I were you. If you don't, then they will likely be seen as trying to manipulate PageRank. Even if you weren't, or were unaware, that's the world we live in right now.

And don't fixate on what your competitors are doing or not doing - they may have other things going on that you're not aware of, or maybe Google just hasn't gotten around to them yet. Worry about getting your own house in order.

[buildersweb]

All my competitors use the same link scheme if i add no-follow on those then i will have no hope to rank. But i still believe it may be something else and not the links. How can i be sure ?

[Dymero]

builders: If you really think it's not a linking problem, make sure everything on site is good. Make sure Google can access the site. Make sure you're not inadvertently keywork stuffing, and are keeping duplicate content limited or non-existent.

If you do all that and find it to be unproblematic, you'll need to start looking at your backlinks. Luckily you're in an industry where there's pretty much a built-in readership base, so get starting writing guest posts, creating resources on your own site, and generally promoting the site.

[buildersweb]

I have searched with onpage tools and i get very good results 90% SEO.
Google can access the site, i have not used keyword stuffing and for the last month there is no duplicate content (i only have 3 pages at webmaster forum that i will fix this week).

Thanks for the advises to improve my position BUT the problem is that 100 is not the real position of this site. I must be penalized from google for some reason and i can not find why i am still there.

Is there a link to ask google to check my site and remove penalty ?

Thanks

[netmeg]

All my competitors use the same link scheme if i add no-follow on those then i will have no hope to rank. But i still believe it may be something else and not the links. How can i be sure ?

I'm afraid you don't really understand how nofollow or linking works. Adding nofollow is not going to cause you to LOSE rank.

You can request a reconsideration in your Google Webmaster Tools account. That's the only way.

Again, what your competitors are doing is totally irrelevant. Concentrate on what YOU are doing, if you want to get out of the penalty box.

[buildersweb]

Where is the reconsideration at google webmaster tools ? I can not find it .

Thanks for the nofollow tip i will search it more.

[netmeg]

[support.google.com...]

[jimbeetle]

Again, what your competitors are doing is totally irrelevant. Concentrate on what YOU are doing, if you want to get out of the penalty box.

Couldn't agree more. Just because you see stuff used by other sites doesn't mean that they are ranking as well as they should if they weren't, or that the tactic is in fact adding to their success, or that they just haven't been caught yet.

[Robert Charlton]

...if i add no-follow on those then i will have no hope to rank

Essentially, you are saying that you're depending on these client footer links to rank you, and that's essentially been your linking strategy.

Google at this point is looking for freely given editorial links from trusted, relevant sites, and that's what you need to build.

I recommend you take the advice given above and ask your clients to "nofollow" those footer links on their sites. Yes, you will lose the ranking effects of those links (assuming, ie, that there is any left to lose). What you gain by the nofollows, though, is avoiding any appearance of manipulating PageRank.

(An alternative approach, I suppose, might be to leave those links as they are and get editorial links to put those links in a minority. IMO, it's much to late to take this latter approach. You certainly won't be able to build enough editorial links naturally, and Google will surely spot any artificial approach for what it is.)

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Last year same month i was 350 now i am 256.

In my oipinion that's too low of a number per month to make any solid observations with. It's mighty hard to spot trends when you're working with ten visitors per day. I'd put the stats away and focus on creating better/more content right now.

Your loss of 100 visitors per month may very well be because others built pages better suited to the keywords you used to get traffic from, which happens over time if you're not actively improving the site.