Why has my keyword dropped and risen so much in only 7 days?
-
Sorry if this question is really obvious (or unanswerable) but my client asked me for an explanation and as a relative SEO 'noob' I couldn't really answer them.
The client's site http://www.solentlep.org.uk/ dropped 29 places for the keyword LEP last week (all the other keywords had small rises and falls) and then this week has jumped back up the same 29 places. I made no changes to the site in the 7 period (as I hadn't worked out what to change) and although everything is fine now I'd still like to let the client know what caused the blip, or is it one of those things that 'nobody knows'.
-
Thanks Mark.
-
Thanks Mark
-
Make sure you check out Dr. Pete's post on the blog here - it's not just you experiencing it
-
As the other people already responded, there is a lot of fluctuation in the SERPs on a regular basis.
A few things come to mind
- Google could be trying out different landing pages for the term - it may be your homepage was blocked and so they showed an inner page, but much further down.
- This fluctuation seems to be happening every few months, where the site gets downgraded temporarily and then recovers - see the attached image
- Have you been having site connectivity issues - any messages in webmaster tools?
Hope this helps,
Mark
-
I also have notices sporadic jumps in search traffic, not just daily but hourly. One keyword keeps going back and forth 3-5 search position.
-
im getting a lot of daily movement on a couple of my sites. up and down all the time, not seen the rankings change so frequently before.
-
I can't answer this, but exactly the same thing has happened to me, last week... over 100 keywords improved significantly, now... roughly 100 keywords have plummeted and are no longer in the 'Top 50' - nothing has changed, we've never used spammy link practices, we just rely on insightful news and good PR.
I have to say, I'm worried.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Drop in traffic, spike in indexed pages
Hi, We've noticed a drop in traffic compared to the previous month and the same period last year. We've also noticed a sharp spike in indexed pages (almost doubled) as reported by Search Console. The two seemed to be linked, as the drop in traffic is related to the spike in indexed pages. The only change we made to our site during this period is we reskinned out blog. One of these changes is that we've enable 'normal' (not ajax) pagination. Our blog has a lot of content on, and we have about 550 odd pages of posts. My question is, would this impact the number of pages indexed by Google, and if so could this negatively impact organic traffic? Many thanks, Jason
Technical SEO | | Clickmetrics0 -
Sitemap indexed pages dropping
About a month ago I noticed my pages indexed from my sitemap are dropping.There are 134 pages in my sitemap and only 11 are indexed. It used to be 117 pages and just died off quickly. I still seem to be getting consistant search traffic but I'm just not sure whats causing this. There are no warnings or manual actions required in GWT that I can find.
Technical SEO | | zenstorageunits0 -
Keyword domain usage
Hi I have a client who wants some advice on the following and I haven't come up with anything decent yet. So wanted to throw it out here. They own a domain like soccershoes.com which also houses their web site. They have now bought ussoccershoes.com because this US based search term is more popular than simply soccer shoes. How can they utilise this new domain effectively to drive traffic to their main web site? Thanks for any input.
Technical SEO | | yolkcreative0 -
One Keyword Penalty
Hi There, Quick question for everyone. Is it possible to get penalized a keyword level not page level. I have a site that only seems to be penalized on one keyword which is currently at page 22, whilst the rest are on page 1 or page 2. I came to the site late so I have no idea when the site lost its ranking for this keyword after a site redesign but the onpage is almost the same. Kind Regards Neil
Technical SEO | | nezona0 -
Watermarking Keywords
I've been viewing an seo companies website that claims to get small business websites to Google Page 1 for free or starting at $150/mo. I'v noticed that on all the website this company has done work on they include in the footer (usually as a watermark) all the keyword phrases. There don't apprear to be any sites that have been penalized. Isn't this poor SEO practice? I've included a screen shot of what I'm talking about. I just want to be clear. Thank you for your input. XnQUc.png
Technical SEO | | JulB0 -
Estimating local or long tail keywords
Google data show little or no traffic for some local and long tail keywords. Do they just have a cut off that anything say under 50 keywords does not show up? Is this data 100% accurate? Are there other methods or tools for measuring this better? Thanks much!
Technical SEO | | BrandonWentland0 -
Strange Top URLs for Keywords in Google Webmaster Tools
When we click on one of our keywords under the keywords section of Google Webmaster Tools it shows our top URLs for that keyword. The problem is that it is giving us some very strange URLs that we have searched high and low to try to find but we don't know where they came from. Here is a screenshot: http://bit.ly/pl6mB3 Do you know where this type of URL string could have originated and how to fix it?
Technical SEO | | Hakkasan0 -
One Keyword Rank Inexplicably Blasted Into Oblivion
Okay, so I'm working on my site, minding my own business and everything is just great. Many different terms on pages 1 -4, all inching ever upward. When suddenly, one term that got all the way to #11 gets blasted to oblivion... #75! Is there some kind of landmine one could step on that would cause that? All the other terms are fine.Nothing on the page changed since it first went up two months ago. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | 945011