Good Google Ranking lost?

[cyan_corp]

Hello All

I used to have a no.2 ranking on Google for a very relevant keyword for our web site.
Now I see that our competitors have stolen that spot and we have simply disappeared completely from the search ranking results?
Its almost as if they have intuition as what do do to achieve a good Google ranking and simultaneously rid ourselvces of ours.

Interestingly enough one of our affiliates took the no.2 spot from us before our cometitors stole it and they use Wepposition Gold. Im beginning to think that this is a worthwhile program and think that the threats of penalization is a lot of hot air.

Can anyone share a similar experience or possible offer any advice.

THANKS

CYAN CORP

[korkus2000]

Keep optimizing. Look at what the other sites are doing to beat you out. Get more valueable links from high PR sites that are in your theme. I don't know about WPG.

[SlyGuy]

Its almost as if they have intuition as what do do to achieve a good Google ranking

They're probably members here at WebmasterWorld. ;)

Watch what they have done and learn from it. That's the best part about SEO, it's ever changing and you can always learn something new.

- Chad

[Marcia]

Well, they didn't actually steal anything, they happened to hit into the algo.

Its almost as if they have intuition

I'm beginning to think there is a degree of intuition involved, picking up on subtle nuances. The best advice I can think of is to spend a lot of time analyzing. When there's a big drop there's a reason. When there's a minor change made that's followed by a noticeable shift, even a small one, it gives clues.

There's a lot to be learned by digging to find out why, and software can't do it.

[soapystar]

i only see big swings like that....with keywords dropping from number one to nowhere when there value has come entirly from internal links. I.e no external inbound links carry these keywords but internally hundreds of links point to these pages. One month they rank, next they dont, sometime later they come back again.

[cyan_corp]

Hello All

Firstly, thanks for all the replies.

To SlyGuy: I am a member but do not spend enough time here. I endevour to change that!

To soapystar:

"external inbound links carry these keywords but internally hundreds of links point to these pages"

Does this mean that I was getting a high ranking for this keyword because there was a lot of my internal pages on our site increasing the value of this keyword. And that I was not receiving high quality linkage from external quality sites. (Although I dont think this is the case as we have a number of links pointing to us from quality sites but not many links going back to these particular sites?!)

Thanks again for your input.

CYAN CORP