So first, can someone confirm if my rationale is correct?

I searched the term "music forum" for one of my sites and I found it on page 13. I saw the description and saw that it had 'music forum' in it as well as the title so I found where that description was on my forum and added 'music' and 'forum' twice more in that description area so maybe Google would increase the SERP because it's more relevant? I guess. Would that make sense for Google to do that?

But then after doing that, I searched again and it was still on page 13 but further down and Google chose a different part of my site as the description for the result. The part they chose had 'music' in it once and thats it. Is google penalizing me?

Thanks for the help.

O, and I by 'description' I mean the brief summary that shows up under the link to the site one the search result page in Google.

Adding the words music and forum one more time wasn't likely going to do much one way or the other. It could help and it could appear spammy, but in all likelihood one or two extra mentions wasn't going to change where the page ranked much if at all.

Google looks at a lot of different factors when deciding where to rank a page. Using the actual words in the query on your page is likely one of those factors, but since it can be easily abused it's possibly seen as a lesser signal of relevance and quality than other factors.

Ranking do go up and down regularly. You can find your page ranks in a different location from day to day without you making any changes. And there can be so many reasons why. Maybe a competing site did things so they now rank above you. Maybe a link to your site that was helping your page rank was devalued and so not helping as much as it had been. Maybe Google tweaked things on their end.

What your seeing isn't uncommon and it's not anything to worry about. You aren't being penalized.

As far as what showed under the link Google may grab the snippet from several places. It could come from your meta description. It could come from your description in either the DMOZ or Yahoo directory or it could come from random content on your page. Google is looking to display a snippet that contains some of the words searched for and depending on the full query used they may grab from any of the sources.

When you say you added more words to the description area do you mean your meta description tag or near content on the page that Google was using in the snippet below your link in the SERPs? I think you mean near the content Google was using, but thought I'd check.

As far as I know, Google pays quite a lot of attention to keyword density in a given piece of content and might penalize for saturating the text with many similar words or phrases. While ago read a very informative article about the foundation of ranking and major principles, which are publicly observed and summarized, cannot find the link unfortunately. But of course, there are way more aspects when it concerns search results ranks.

its not that easy, you would still base on its prominence and proximity. Lots of factor to consider is the keywords you choose are enough to get good position in the serp.

@vangogh: Yea, I meant near the context Google was displaying on the search result page. It wasn't a meta description. But, I might try that.

Thanks for the insight guys.

I don't think you are penalized. Getting a good rank on the SE depends on how competitive the keyword is. You need to consider many things and not just the title and the description. Link building for that particular keyword is really a must in order to attain your target.

you must get good and quality backlinks for your target keywords.

Originally Posted by vangogh

Maybe a link to your site that was helping your page rank was devalued and so not helping as much as it had been.

Is there a way to tell if a link has been devalued? It can be very frustrating to be building some links, seeing that they seem to be having a good effect, and then suspecting that they have been devalued.

Call Google and ask them how their various algorithms work.

Seriously unless you're only building a lot of garbage links this shouldn't be an issue. And whether your incoming links are devalued or not it shouldn't change anything in what you would do after.

Search the forum for info on what might make for a quality link and also search in general at your favorite search engine. There's plenty of info about what signals are generally considered quality.

Some likely sources to get quality links:

A site that has plenty of incoming links
A site that is generally considered an authority in its industry
A site related in topic to your site
A page related in topic to the page seeking the link
A site that gets a lot of traffic (can drive real people through the link)
A link from withing the actual content of the page rather than in the footer or sidebar or any part of the site template
A link with anchor text that includes some variation of your main keyword phrase

did the change already index by google? If not you need to wait to see whats the outcome of your analysis.

Originally Posted by amerie

you must get good and quality backlinks for your target keywords.

Yes I also think so.
anchor keyword is important when you exchange link with other.