Rankings Bouncing Weekly
-
I have a client who ranks well for a number of keywords. This week we have about 20 keywords in the top ten on Google that we're tracking. But every week it seems, the keywords bounce around quite a bit. This week, for example, we had at least 15 keywords out of the ~90 we're tracking jump between 30 to 40 spots. The most any keywords increased was 43, a few 42s and 41s, in one week. Next week, they'll go down a few, then bounce up again just like this. This has been happening for a while. I'm trying to figure out what the issue is.
-
Thanks Cyrus. I hear what you're saying, I'm just confused as to why Google would allow us on the first page for so many keywords every other week if we had so many bad links? My understanding was more that you have rankings, and you hold those rankings unless a competitor comes and overtakes you, or if you get penalized by Google. I guess this is technically the latter, but if I was getting penalized I wasn't expecting to be anywhere close to the first page for my targeted keywords. I suppose I will look into cleaning up the link profile. I am also planning on switching hosts to WP Engine from our HostGator VPS as it's just too slow. Perhaps changing hosts and speeding up the load time will help a bit as well.
I'll continue to tell the client to write more content. I personally don't do any black-hat stuff, especially link-building, so I'll have to go in and see what his old SEO people did.
-
Anything in the legal category is going to be highly competitive, and this is a vertical that's been subject to a lot of turn and burn practices in the past (and it's still probably going on today) so it doesn't suprise me to see the fluxation.
In part, the fluctuation may be coming from the site's own backlink profile. There's a number of highly-optimized money keywords in that anchor text that may not be 100% editorial.
Regardless, the only way to stabilize is to rise above the competition with superior content and ranking signals of your own. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts. This means having a clean backlink profile and disavowing any links that may be harming you, checking Webmaster Tools for errors and/or messaging, and building up high-authority editorial links to the site.
If you are on the board already, and it sounds like you are, then gaining a few positions and holding onto them shouldn't be as hard as someone just starting out. Best of luck!
-
The website is nytrafficticket.com and as I said we'll have a solid amount of keywords in the top ten, then the next week they'll drop out of the top 40, sometimes past the top 50, then the next week they'll come back to the top ten. It seems as if the Moz rankings just aren't picking up those keywords for the weeks where they drop off then come back. But if it isn't that, then I can't figure it out. If this is normal, then I suppose the next question is how do you keep your rankings in the top ten consistently, every week.
-
It's not uncommon for keywords in certain verticals to jump around a lot. Watch this video on Dave Naylor's blog: http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/google-secret-santa-search-results.html
But jumping around 30-40 spots seems like quite a bit. If this were happening I'd be suspicious of a couple of things:
- Are the keywords in an extremely competitive vertical with lots of competition and moving around? A jump of 30-40 in the "payday loan" category would be common.
- Are the backlinks on the edge of what would be considered white-hat? Sometimes Google rolls out an algorithm update and tweaks it for several weeks after. During this time its not uncommon to see sites rise up and down dramatically
- Is the vertical a news type site in which the queries are sometimes falling under the QDF (query deserves freshness) category? This could shake things up quite a bit.
Finally, I'd check to see what traffic was actually doing. If rankings were changing but overall search visibility stayed the same, it could be just Google trying to figure out the best results to serve, while recognizing the overall authority of the site.
Wish I had a more complete answer for you. Best of luck.
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
-
Blog not ranking for my name
Hi everyone. I'm new here so apologies if I'm not asking an appropriate question - just let me know! Can anyone help me figure out why my blog (https://www.jamescrowley.net/) isn't ranking at all for my name? I've run it through the standard Moz audit tools and it hasn't picked up any major issues. It ranks fine for my name plus " CTO", but doesn't appear anywhere in the top 50 without that qualifier. I realise there are many other 'James Crowley's to compete with but weirdly even my GitHub profile page appears to rank higher (https://github.com/jamescrowley) I moved the domain a while back (18 months+) and I used to rank highly, but it never seems to have recovered (all the standard redirects are in place, and told Google at the time about the move). Any suggestions would be very much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | james.crowley0 -
Lower Level Pages Being Ranked for Key Terms
Good Afternoon We've been having problems with a site for a little while now. It had a penalty (partial link) a few years ago and never really recovered back to it's full potential despite the fact that the penalty was eventually removed and we've since changed the domain completely as well as moving over to https and left behind / disavowed bad links. In the Moz ranking stats now, I'm seeing that some of our lower level pages are ranking for core terms and the erratic nature of the ranking graph seems to indicate that Google is confused and not knowing what page to pull. For example, the top level page would be Hotel in Spain but the page that is ranking for that term is one of the individual hotel information (lower level) pages lets say the Holiday Inn . The lower level page has info on the individual property but also makes reference to it being a "Cheap Hotel In Spain" My suggestion to resolve the problem is to scale back the references to the top level terms on the hotel pages and reintroduce breadcrumb links to help Google follow the structure of the site again Does this sound reasonable or would anyone be able to suggest anything else to try?
Technical SEO | | Ham19790 -
Bug in Competitor Rankings Report?
I am looking at the report called: Rankings Report for [Competitor XXX] For all keywords in the report, the rankings on the main page say "Not in Top 50"... however when I drill down I can see that this is not true... there is a graph with valid rankings which were gathered as recently as March 20, 2013 (2 days ago) is this a known bug? Regards Jim Donovan
Technical SEO | | wethink0 -
Choosing a company name to rank for with main keyword in it?
First question is in regard to the relevance of the main keyword in the company name when used in anchor texts for linkbuilding and also on the website on page seo title tags etc.. We used to call our selves "Isle Surfboards" but now call ourselves "Isle Surf & SUP" , sup is an acronym for "stand up paddle boards" as our core biz in now paddleboards If we are trying to target the main keyword of "paddle boards" should we reconsider and call ourselves on the web " Isle Surfboards & Paddle Boards" or "Isle Surf & Paddle" or does it even matter? Then when we link build should we be building links with our new name "Isle Surf & SUP" or just as "Isle Paddle Boards" or does it even matter? Any help out there? bottom line is we want to rank better for the phrase "paddle boards" & "stand up paddle boards" as those are the top keywords. And in closing since both above are the 2 most popular keywords and are very similar "stand up paddle boards" has "paddle boards" in the phrase should all my on page related seo target "stand up paddle boards" phrase since that would have both phrases or "paddle boards" or a combo of both?
Technical SEO | | isle_surf0 -
Does Google News Inclusion Affect Organic Rankings?
Hello SEO Gurus, Here's a question I've been unable to find an answer for: if you manage to get a publishing website or blog included in the Google News aggregate, can it negatively affect organic search visibility? I've never read anything that explicitly says so, but I have both read and experienced how e-commerce sites often have difficulty in ranking high for both organic and shopping searches. It seems that Google balances out visibility between the two. Has anyone had any experience with a website or blog that managed to rank high for the same high-value keyword on both organic search and news search? Thanks in advance! Mike
Technical SEO | | RCNOnlineMarketing0 -
Google India Rankings Drop Suddenly
Keyword: indian wedding planner page:www.hukamievent.com/indian-wedding-planner.php It didn't drop, it just disappeared. No, I didn't do anything to be penalized at all and I am still in there index. I know this question has been asked many times here, while I apply all the suggestions given to other people with similar problem, here's a quick question I need to ask, I made following changes recently, could either of these be the reason for ranking decline? In google webmasters' tools, I had changed geographic target from - india, to- nothing, few weeks ago. could this be the reason. Around 2 weeks ago I paid someone to submit articles to 500 article directories, same article spun many times, he did the job in around 6 days and got back to me with a list of around 150 submissions with as many backlinks, all with same anchor text, "indian wedding planner", one of my targeted keywords. Before the submissions I was on page 9, yes that was nine, and just after the submission I was at page 2 position 1, within a matter few days. I saw my the targeted page improve in ranking and jump on to page one position 10, for a short while, before it disappeared. is this something they call "google dance"? My website is fluctuating on google SERP for many other keywords too, in most cases, my ranking fell. P.S.:With the same keyword,"indian wedding planner" my rankings in google US improved, I am on position 6 page 1. please enlighten fellow mozzers!
Technical SEO | | virtualhandshake0 -
Non primary domain ranking higher in searches
Hey Guys, Hopefully I can explain this so that you can understand, let me know if you need me to clarify any particular points. I have a primary domain for my website, however someone has also pointed their domain at my server that has nothing to do with us or our website. Typing a keyword in a search engine will list our website as this has been crawled but it's listing the domain as their domain and not our primary. Is this because their domain has greater value then our primary? What's the best course of action to resolve the issue? The reason I ask is because the domain could potentially have a negative effect on business. If I setup hosting for this second domain and setup a redirect on it, all the traffic that is trying to reach us via respective search terms are then directed away from our site. I have been in contact with the domain administrator but they are yet to reply to my correspondence. Has anyone experienced something similar and come up with a good way to resolve it? Thanks guys, any help would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | digitalclubb0 -
Duplicate content domains ranking successfully
I have a project with 8 domains and each domain is showing the same content (including site structure) and still all sites do rank. When I search for a specific word-string in google it lists me all 8 domains. Do you have an explanation, why Google doesn't filter those URLs to just one URL instead of 8 with the same content?
Technical SEO | | kenbrother0