Rank down in some, up in others - General SEO help needed.

[AstoundingDesigns]

I own a forum called CbrNation. It's listed on our title as CbrNation Honda Cbr Forum. The forum is a community of Honda Cbr Sportbike Owners. We used to get a bunch of traffic from Google for the search terms:

1. Honda Cbr Forum
2. Cbr Forum
3. Honda Sportbike Forum
4. Honda 600rr Forum
5. Honda 1000rr Forum

I looked up my statistics on the forum and I went from hundreds of hits for each of those 5 terms, but not I get a few, not even close to the hundreds we were getting before.

Especially with "Honda Cbr Forum". I've updated the site to a new template, but the title and description in my meta tags are completely the same. The same members, posts, titles, pages, etc. But now when I search for "Honda Cbr Forum" on google, we went from being 2nd, 3rd, or at the worst 4th place on the page to not being there at all. In yahoo, "Honda Cbr Forum" brings CbrNation up on the 3rd or 4th space.

A design friend of mine told me I would have better chances if I changed my Site Title to "CBRnation Honda Cbr Forum - Honda Cbr Sportbike Owner Forum" From "CBRnation Honda Cbr Forum". Would that work? Is it just the title?

Any idea what I can do to help my rankings on google, or get them back to what they were a few months ago? I know we're not blocked or banned by google in anyway, because if you type in "CbrNation" we have tons of results and pages indexed in google.

I know a little about SEO, but not much. And instead of just changing things, I figured i'd come here and ask you guys, so I can actually learn rather than using the try, fail, replace method, which just takes too much time, and cups of coffee.

Thank you for your help in advance.
-George

 

[AstoundingDesigns]

The site is here, by the way: Honda Cbr Forum

 

[yilduz]

I've been reading a lot about SEO lately, as it's something I'm very interested in.

A longer, more descriptive title will be more appealing to search engines. However, if you make it too long, Google will just truncate it for their indexing - and with forums, generally the category, board, thread, etc that you're in gets tacked onto the end of the main title. So, if you make it too long, Google will never notice your category, board, thread names in the title, which will make it so all your titles are the same - which can hurt. Normally, I'd say increase it, but because it's a forum I'd say leave it as is, or increase it only a little bit.

I also notice that you say you've recently changed your template. I've been reading a lot about the coding of a website affecting SEO. If your site was coded well before and it was easy for the search engines to crawl your site, then you change it to something with broken code, it can negatively affect your ranking. Also, new coding can change the order of things. The higher in the code your content is, the more effect it has on the SEO. So for instance, if your code has it so the best content is at the top of your code, and then you change it so that the sidebars appear before the main content in the code, it can negatively affect your SEO.

Just remember, though, that I'm still learning. I may not be 100% accurate.

edit: I've asked someone smarter than me to look over my post for accuracy. The template likely had little-to-nothing to do with SEO. He also said that as long as the forum software is decent, the title thing shouldn't matter much either. My recommendations: wait for someone else to reply. ;D

 

[AstoundingDesigns]

Thanks for the help so far. I'm trying to figure out what to do next. Thanks for your post.

 

[AstoundingDesigns]

bump

---------- Post added at 10:32 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:30 AM ----------

My recommendations: wait for someone else to reply. ;D

LOL. Thanks for your help anyway. I'm still learning as well. Always good to help, and it's appreciated.

 

[angilina]

I own a forum called CbrNation. It's listed on our title as CbrNation Honda Cbr Forum. The forum is a community of Honda Cbr Sportbike Owners. We used to get a bunch of traffic from Google for the search terms:

1. Honda Cbr Forum
2. Cbr Forum
3. Honda Sportbike Forum
4. Honda 600rr Forum
5. Honda 1000rr Forum

I looked up my statistics on the forum and I went from hundreds of hits for each of those 5 terms, but not I get a few, not even close to the hundreds we were getting before.

Especially with "Honda Cbr Forum". I've updated the site to a new template, but the title and description in my meta tags are completely the same. The same members, posts, titles, pages, etc. But now when I search for "Honda Cbr Forum" on google, we went from being 2nd, 3rd, or at the worst 4th place on the page to not being there at all. In yahoo, "Honda Cbr Forum" brings CbrNation up on the 3rd or 4th space.

A design friend of mine told me I would have better chances if I changed my Site Title to "CBRnation Honda Cbr Forum - Honda Cbr Sportbike Owner Forum" From "CBRnation Honda Cbr Forum". Would that work? Is it just the title?

Any idea what I can do to help my rankings on google, or get them back to what they were a few months ago? I know we're not blocked or banned by google in anyway, because if you type in "CbrNation" we have tons of results and pages indexed in google.

I know a little about SEO, but not much. And instead of just changing things, I figured i'd come here and ask you guys, so I can actually learn rather than using the try, fail, replace method, which just takes too much time, and cups of coffee.

Thank you for your help in advance.
-George

I have multiple sites and I have changed their templates few times. I have observed that if a site do not have a solid ranking in SERPs, then changing its template/design/meta-tags can make that site drop in SERPs. The site, most probably, will come back in SERPs after sometime.

But if a site has solid ranking: and few good backlinks, then making the said changes may not change its ranking in SERPs.

I suggest you try to get some solid/trusted backlinks; this will help your site to get a solid/stable place in SERPs.

 

[AstoundingDesigns]

I'm working on backlinks now. Actually we just showed up for many of our search terms again. Hmm, this is progress. Now to try and beat everyone else, lol.

 

[thebutler]

Two things to consider

If you changed your template that likely changed your ranking. Did the number of indexed pages change?

Also do not ignore the fact that other sites might be doing some SEO work on their sites so even if you do not really change anything your ranking can take a hit.

Sign up for Google webmasters tools and it can give you some more information about your website.

 

[faizanali0]

Well if you are loosing your Previous SE Ranking then it have Some Reasons behind this, One your Competitors are doing very good job on them Site rather then You, Second you lost some back links pointing to your site, And third one is normal thing Its Call Google Dance, If Fast Two things happening with your site, Then you have to start building links for your site, But if Your site just disappear From Google, Then wait and See, After one week or so your site will be back at previous Position but if it Doesn't Came back, Then Build More High Quality back links for your site

 

[AbsoluteKC]

Hi George,

I would suggest you to start implementing Google analytics and Google webmaster tool (sign up for an account) if you have not. A webmaster account will help you to identify possible issues with your site especially after a revamp. Analytics will tell you what are the keywords that have experienced a drop in traffic. These are ways that I check whenever I experience some changes in traffic.

Until you have these data, it is pretty useless for us to comment on what you can do.. Regardless, I have taken a look at your site and please find my comments below on link building.

On backlinks, you have pretty much backlinks from a particular forum (I will try to avoid that) and besides that, there are no quality links from elsewhere.. You may want to diversify for example, one way is to encourage your forum members to do a posting in their blogs instead. This will help you to build up strength in your link popularity as well.

All the best in link baiting!

 

[webmatrix1]

hummm"
Any idea what I can do to help my rankings on google, or get them back to what they were a few months ago? I know we're not blocked or banned by google in anyway, because if you type in "CbrNation" we have tons of results and pages indexed in google.