Position of Website on Google SERP has been very volatile

[themagicclicks]

Hello All,
very new to Webmaster World and very new to SEO too, so please forgive me if this is not the appropriate forum to post this, or point me at the direction required if this is a duplicate post.

The point of concern that makes me post here is that a website of my client for whom I have been doing some SEO have so far seen pretty good results.

I started working on optimizing the site and submitting the site to top UK directories and develop as much quality content and good graphics as possible to make the site work with the target audience first. Things worked out well and we slowly moved up to page 2 of Google, within a month for the broad keyword "printed paper cups".

After that started working on the Google + and Facebook profile for the site, and we were moving upwards on page 2, and rose up to 15th position on Google.

But since then, despite what I do, ( NOTE: we do not do any black hat SEO, other than probably exchanging a few likes and +s, the rest comes from posting paintings of mine as the design team of the company to appropriate communities on Google, Pinterest etc. ) the position has become so volatile, last night suddenly we were thrown back to page 5, then gone completely missing, then finally settled back on page 2 again, but a couple spot down.

I'd like to share the links to the site and other domains that we have, older domains, specifically one that despite being old,unattended, ranks always on the top page for this major keyword. Please let me know if sharing links here is all right. Any guidance is appreciated.

regards,
Neelanjan

[mack]

First of all a very warn welcome to WebmasterWorld. Good to have you with us.

We generaly don't post links because this makes the question vert specific to your unique case. By keeping questions as generalized as possible we hope they may prove useful to other users who later come across your post.

You stated that you where on page 2 then began moving up and down the results pages, but you have settled back on page 2. Would be nice if it stayed that way :-)

One major pain with Google these days is personalized search. Basically this means different users will see a different set of results based on their own browsing habits. This makes it very tricky to know just where we really do rank.

One thing you can do is log out of all Google services, and delete all Google cookies. This will give you some idea of how other users may see you. I had a client recently who was always checking out the competitions website. Because if this he was seeing them doing a lot better in the results than they really where.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

Mack.

[themagicclicks]

Thanks a lot Mack,
missed the personalized results angle completely, will check it that way now. Yes, since I am doing the SEO for the client, have been checking the competitions myself a lot, and the client of course is checking too, so that might be a reason behind this ranking randomness. Today one competition tops the list, the very next day he's down to five, and another competition tops the list. This keeps on happening, hopefully this personalized search angle helps me understanding the situation.

[themagicclicks]

I'd like to update the status of this SEO struggle in an attempt at getting all and any wisdom I can glean from the experts out here.

I began the post with how personalization was confusing me, and Mack helped me understand the situation so beautifully. Since then that's not been a problem. And within the next few days by getting some FB page likes, shareing the site url by FB users on thier feeds, and FB likes for the Facebook page, or may be simply because of content, we rose to the bottom of page 1.

We were there for some days, organically and without any personal influence, tested by several people here in India and in UK, where the business is. Then as mentioned earlier, we have another domain that is a very good keyword domain, and that always ranked on page 1, despite having a very old HTML, highly non-optimized, archaic, MS Frontpage built website. We recently replaced that with a new website and in doing so, I added the Google Microformat for the site's business identity too, like I did for the other site I have started asking questions about first. BUT what I did was that I used the same Local Business schema and the business address for both sites are the same.

The very next day, coincidence or not, the site that I had started the thread for, dropped from bottom of page 1 to 13th i.e. 3rd on page 2! while the old domain with new site retained its position of 5th, no change there!

What could be the reason? anything to do with same business name?

[netmeg]

I started working on optimizing the site and submitting the site to top UK directories

This is always something to look out for.

Is your site technically sound? Do you have a GWT account set up so you can see if Google sees your site correctly? Do you have any issues with duplicate content? Is your navigation up to snuff?

More to the point, what have you done to deserve to rank higher? Are you noticeably better than your competition, and is that represented on the site? Who has jumped up to replace you?

Lots of things to look into.

[mack]

Adding your website to directories is a little bit of a grey area these days. Google is always looking at the kind of links pointing to our sites. They are looking for "signals" within these links that tell Google about the type of links we have.

The links that we really want are natural. This means a page has linked to us because it likes the content we offer. The opposite end of the extreme is unatural links. These are links that are in place, but have been done so as a direct result of our actions. Directory links fall within the scope of unatural links because it is a link we have, in effect asked for.

Not all directory links are bad, some may help. It comes down to the quality of the directory and how it is viewed by Google. Some directories may also use "no-follow" in this case the link will make no difference one way or the other.

Google views un natural links as an attempt to manipulate search results. This means we need to try and stay under the radar, and gain links that look natural.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

Mack.

[themagicclicks]

Thanks for the reply,

GWT,GA all saying good about it. No soft 404, missing links, keywords we are getting impressions for are what we want, ok, we don't get page 1, but for many we get page 2.

Site looks good and have been optimized practically and data highlighting and micro formatting for Google have been done too.

Regarding directories, most have not listed us yet, leaving a few good ones like Thomson Local, Yell etc.

I have been checking for bad or harmful back links, but nothing like that wither.

About duplicate content, only the names of products, which are very generic, all sites have them ( e.g. single wall paper cups etc. )and product images are same, description text and everything else are different between the two sites, and other competition sites of course.

Everything was ok and this is when we just slipped up to page 1 for one keyword, the most important one, "Printed Paper Cups" for UK results. We had been getting organic enquiries and pretty good organic enquiries too even before we were on page 1, converting to business easily, although since we were on page 2 almost all month, at spot 3 of page 2, we had been getting about say 3% CTR for about 400 impressions (this keyword Google Keyword research states has an average of about only 100 searches per month in UK, but is very important nonetheless )

But, then we re-created the other site, which was already one page 1 ( NOTE: although it has a different keyword domain, i.e. Branded Paper Cups, but has the Cups in plural where as our main domain matches the keyword but lacks the plural.)

This is when, coincidental or it was bound to happen for some other reason, not known to me, the Printed Paper Cup site slipped off to page 2 again.

I was wondering whether same company info as Local Business Microformat for Google has resulted in Google deciding against showing the same company's two different websites on page 1!

[themagicclicks]

Replying to Mack,
we have only submitted to the top UK authentic directories and the links haven't been activated yet for most of the directories. And yes, some major directories like Touch Local, Thomson Local, Yell, Yelp do not provide do-follow link unless you pay grand yearly fees.

The other links that are not wanted for any kind of SEO are those that come automatically from sites that do website comparisons, unsolicited but no-follow, so do not think they are a risk either.

[themagicclicks]

Missed answering this point...

More to the point, what have you done to deserve to rank higher? Are you noticeably better than your competition, and is that represented on the site? Who has jumped up to replace you?

The top 4 positions are held by the competitors, viz. two competitors, one with multiple sites.

5th is our old domain with new site, Branded Paper Cups... our new domain but the primary site I am concerned about , Printed Paper Cup, developed a couple months ago,has pretty good content, graphics and a blog in Wordpress to support it. Formatting and optimization is good too.

This is the one ( Printed Paper Cup ) that finally entered page 1 but fell back again, the moment the new site for old domain ( Branded Paper Cups ) was taken live, having the same local business identity submitted to Google as the other site, (Printed Paper Cup).

You can check using the above keywords as domains with ccTLD co.uk.

[netmeg]

Sounds like a lot of potential duplicate content to me.