One of my websites has been in existence for about 10 years and has progressively increased its traffic to about 800 unique visitors per day and a page rank of 4. Over the last month page rank dropped to 3 and in the last 4 days visitors dropped to about 80 per day. I have featured in the top 5 for my main keywords for years now but this position has slipped beyond position 40 which is clearly the reason for loss of traffic. Yahoo positions have not changed.

What could possibly have caused this and how can I sort it out?

Please help, there are many smart and clever people out there who must have experienced something similar.

Regards

Tim

Have you purchased or sold any links? Maybe google has penalized you

Any of a number of things could have happened. We'd really need more details and to know the site in question, what the keywords are, which pages were the ones ranking and drawing traffic, etc.

There are many reason to lost Google position you need regularly updation on your site and concentrate on both on page and off page technique. its very tough task to maintain site always on top so regularly focus on your site because many seo work on this field

Hi Bobo99

Ours is a travel and holiday site and we have not sold or bought links all we have been doing over the last few months is optimising some of our destination pages for high KEI keywords and including valid links to top tour operators and other service providers. The most alarming thing is that our top keywords have been performing for years and we seem to have lost a lot of back links. Admittedly the site is getting old and needs a re-build but we are aware of the wrong things to do and have been very careful to make sure we do not do anything Google would frown upon.

Hi Vangogh

Thanks for answering this post. I am just doing an indepth analysis of the top pages and keywords but I can say that the best performing keywords to date have been 'Holiday Brochures' ' Top Holiday destinations' and 'Tour Operators'. The site is www.holidaynet.com and is a recognised leader in delivery of holiday brochures and tour operator/destination information. Whilst we recognise the need to update the site and include more opportunities for selling rather than giving away information I don't see that is reason to lose position so suddenly.

Hi JimWilfred

Thanks for answering this post. Yes I have to admit we have only really started optimisation work in the last few months and this has been focussed on SEO work on a few (40) holiday destination pages which arguably should have improved position if anything. As we are in the early stages of improving the site we have not really looked into off-page optimisation although we did have more than 900 quality back links until recently and just assumed these would back us up. We are just embarking on an email marketing campaign to increase traffic and sales and this drop is a major blow to us. We have been careful not to do anything to upset the Google police but if we have and we don't know it how do we find out. One thing I have noticed is that we do not have a strong sitemap - would this have contributed?

Regards


Tim

See also ->
http://www.webmaster-talk.com/seo-ta...tml#post777254

Google penalized u carefull u did something wrong like duplicate content , Sold link etc

JUST STOP!!! with this penalised STUPIDITY!!!

You have ABSOLUTELY no idea if the site is under some kind of penalty or NOT!

So! If you can't come up with something constructive.

DON'T POST AT ALL!!

It could have something to do with those external links you added recently (few months or so), section booking partners in your right column. There could be a loss of some backlinks. And you have changed your site structure (removed many links and content from your homepage). All this can influence your rankings. I didn't go deep into your site, I hope this gives some light on your question. Good luck!

This happens to me all the time, wait a couple more days you will get back to your position.

If I do a lot of optimizing, I do notice that our serps drop for a week or so afterwards. However, our drop is not normally to the extent that yours is, so I don't know if that is of any help at all.

Good luck, though!

Hi Djura

Yes this need looking at. We have made some changes to the homepage and I personally don't like the partner links in the right hand column. We have lost a lot of back links recently, dont know why, and I am concerned that the homepage is not cutting the mustard from the customer point of view which of course affects SERPS.

Your comments have been helpful.

Regards


Tim