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Updated a top ranking blog post on our site and it’s position tanked?
Hi all,
Hoping to get some insights into what might be causing this problem I am experiencing.
We had a blog post that had been doing fairly well for us, and growing nicely over the last 6 months. And as of October 3rd it’s avg position was 2.6.
As a result of that we decided to expand on that specific blog post, since it was called “everything you need to know about”. We almost doubled the word count, adding more essential things to know about “x”, thinking that it would help us climb closer to position 2.
We published the update to the blog post on October 3rd and on October 4th, the position tanked completely to \~26.
I had not expected this to happen at all, and I am not even sure where to start in trying to figure out why the update has had that effect? Should I just republish the old post, or how should I go about this?
Thanks so much for your help. And sorry if I missed out any crucial details!
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1 Reply
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I guess you changed the nature of your post quite a bit, assuming that people would love to read twice as much. Pretty drastic change, I’d go step by step.
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Google released an algorithm update around that time, and it was aimed in this general vicinity, of content that tackles a number of topics on one page, as well as multiple pages that each target specific topics. It sounds to me like you are on the right side of that update. If possible, I wonder if you wait a bit to see if the rankings are in flux, while indexation is in flux following the algorithm update.
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I usually refrain from updating posts that are currently ranking top 3 on targeted or ancillary high-intent keywords. It’s impossible to understand exactly why people love something. I’d renovate stuff that was ranked top 3 and has slipped to 10-20th.
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Yes, roll back
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I’d wait. It hasn’t been very long yet.
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