Drastic changes in keyword rankings on a daily basis
-
Anybody ever seen keyword rankings for a site change drastically from day to day? I've got a client, a local furniture store, whose local keywords (furniture + city) rank consistently well without much change, but when it comes to broader keyword rankings (like "furniture" or "furniture store") in their zip code, they'll go from ranking at the top of Google one day to not being ranked at all the next (at least according to Raven Tools).
My best guess is that it's just a reflection of personalized results from Google, but such a dramatic change day in and day out makes me wonder.
-
Hi Marty,
I've seen a few reports like yours recently and was going to share a couple theories. But then it occurred to me I should check to be sure you are talking about local pack rankings, the pinned results? Because that's what my theories relate to.
The ranking fluctuations you are talking about, is that in pure organic or in the local pack results?
-
This behavior can be triggered by several things, for example query deserves freshness showing a blog or news post from the site, localized search playing a factor with out the localized term, personalization like you mention, etc...
The biggest give away is that the ranking + keyword doesn't deliver anywhere near the amount of visits you'd expect for ranking consistently on the broadly seen results. It's better to think of it not as the rankings changing dramatically day to day--you'd be getting big bursts of traffic when ranking across Google for "furniture" if that were the case--instead someone that was pretty highly personalized via means outside of just there search term, used "furniture" as a search and clicked through to the site.
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
-
Can High Traffic and Bounce Rate Hurt Local Rankings?
I just began working on a campaign for a dental office who happened to rank really well for some general search terms around post-op care. They received a ton of traffic for a small local site-- 26k organic visits YTD-- but since they focus on providing services locally, their conversion rate for organic search is pretty abysmal. On top of that, a couple of their high-traffic pages are contributing to a 90%+ average bounce rate on the site. Clearly the goal of the website doesn't involve attracting a national audience, but tons of traffic couldn't possibly be a bad thing... right? On the flip side of the coin, their local visibility is terrible. Their DA is comparable to their competitors, but in local SERPs they're nowhere to be found. Could one of these factors be affecting the other? Could their high visibility, but lack of conversions, from a bunch of organic traffic be hurting their visibility locally? I'd be interested hearing from other SEOs who may have faced similar situations in the past.
Local Website Optimization | | formandfunctionagency0 -
Keyword Tool Best Practices
VERY much a newbie with MOZ Pro (10 days into my 30-day trial), so for that, I apologize. I just want to get an idea of the time needed to accumulate data for keywords, and if I am doing all this right. I'm guessing this...use the tool and enter as many keyword possibilities as I can come up with for my website. Then wait a week or so. Then make a keyword decision. Is this the recommended or best practice? If it makes a difference, my website pertains to a local onsite service that I provide. Any web traffic more than 50 miles of my physical location would be a waste. My 1 on 1 session with Seun was great, but now I need to put it all together and make some traffic happen! Any other ideas, please throw them my way. If I'm completely off-base with this, feel free to send insults!
Local Website Optimization | | NewSEOguy0 -
Website ranking issues
Hi Moz, I have a question about one of our websites that has been ranking very poorly on it's current domain (fancydoorsedmonton.com) lately, but was ranked at #1 for the search term "Edmonton Doors" until last month. The main search terms we're targeting are "Edmonton Doors" and "Doors Edmonton". I made another post regarding the on-page SEO value and had some feedback from that, but there is another issue that seems more likely to cause an issue. There are 2 more domains set up to forward to their main domain: fancydoors.com was their old domain but was registered by someone else and had some questionable, X-rated content put on it. The domain has now been reacquired and redirected to their main domain. There isn't any more questionable content on there anymore. Would this domain's past affect it's current ranking? fancy-doors.com was another old domain of theirs now set up as a redirect. In the past they had another SEO provider work with this domain and did some bad SEO work for them with automated citations, etc. We changed the domain to fancydoorsedmonton.com to get away from that and also include Edmonton in the domain. If you have any ideas or feedback to provide based on this information it would definitely be a huge help to us. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | Web3Marketing870 -
Whats in a domain name in terms of SE ranking.
I'm curious. Whats in a domain name in terms of search engine ranking and keyword searches. Let me provide an example: If I sell umbrellas in New York City and my company name is Rainy Day Umbrellas am I wise to register both rainydayumbrellas.com and newyorkumbrellas.com as a way of targeting my customers and ranking better in a single search phrase for that subject? Second question. If it is a good idea do you just forward that domain to the primary site or have a second mirrored site? Or perhaps just a landing page?
Local Website Optimization | | Bvrettski0 -
Problem ranking page with a double name and an "&"
I have a client with a double name and a & like: Jones & Jones. I and using all in one SEO on a Wordpress site. Their home page is not ranking even though I have Jones, Jones & Jones and Jones and Jones listed in the keywords. Interestingly enough other pages where I did not list the home page rank when you do a serach for "Jones & Jones" I have not had this issue with other sites but have never had a name repeated and and & in between... any advice woild be appreciate.. I just signed up for a trial of MOZ...
Local Website Optimization | | ajgar0 -
Will subdomains with duplicate content hurt my SEO? (solutions to ranking in different areas)
My client has offices in various areas of the US, and we are working to have each location/area rank well in their specific geographical location. For example, the client has offices in Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas & St Louis. Would it be best to: Set up the site structure to have an individual page devoted to each location/area so there's unique content relevant to that particular office? This keeps everything under the same, universal domain & would allow us to tailor the content & all SEO components towards Chicago (or other location). ( example.com/chicago-office/ ; example.com/atlanta-office/ ; example.com/dallas-office/ ; etc. ) Set up subdomains for each location/area...using the basically the same content (due to same service, just different location)? But not sure if search engines consider this duplicate content from the same user...thus penalizing us. Furthermore, even if the subdomains are considered different users...what do search engines think of the duplicate content? ( chicago.example.com ; atlanta.example.com ; dallas.example.com ; etc. ) 3) Set up subdomains for each location/area...and draft unique content on each subdomain so search engines don't penalize the subdomains' pages for duplicate content? Does separating the site into subdomains dilute the overall site's quality score? Can anyone provide any thoughts on this subject? Are there any other solutions anyone would suggest?
Local Website Optimization | | SearchParty0 -
What's the best way to add phrase keywords to the URL?
Hi, Our keywords are all our service + a list of towns (for example, "carpet cleaning St. Louis"). The issue I'm having is that one particular site could be targeting "carpet cleaning St. Louis", "carpet cleaning Manchester", "carpet cleaning Ballwin", "carpet cleaning Kirkwood", etc. etc. etc... up to maybe 15 different towns. Is there a way to effectively add these keywords into the URL without making it look spammy? I'm having the same issue with adding the exact keywords to the page title, img alt tag, etc. Thanks for any advice/input!
Local Website Optimization | | nataliefwc0 -
Site does not rank on Google's country specific search engines.
My site shows up on the first page of 'google.com' but not on the other search engines like google.co.uk / google.co.in / google.com.au. It shows up on the 3rd or 4th page for the most part. My competitors' sites rank consistently across all geographical versions of Google. Is there something i am missing out on? My website is a web applicaton and not a business listing.
Local Website Optimization | | dlsound0