Ranking fluctuation
-
According to Miles Rank tracking I have a keyword that is fluctuating by 5 or 6 positions in a 24-hour period every time it goes 10 down to 15 and back to 10 again with very little stopping point in between and keeps fluctuating like that.
As far as I know the website is stable it uses Magento 1.9 and is a fixed category page.
The page URL is relatively new as we migrated from an old site with a different URL structure I added 301s at server level from the old page URL to the new one.
There is only two things I can think that can be the problem -
1. Lack of links directly to the page (there is literally only one or two)
2. Loading speed problemBut I don't see any of these would cause a 5 position fluctuation regularly every day.
But do you have any thoughts?
Thanks in advance.
-
As Martin has said (and others in the helpful link he provided), it's perfectly normal for fluctuations to occur. Before you decide that it's a problem with your site or page, you should check to if your competition is experiencing similar fluctuations. Check out Mozcast too. There has been a lot of fluctuation in the SERPs lately.
-
Ranking fluctuations are quite common and there's not much you can do about it specifically. However, if it's every day like this, there could be some crawling issue every time Google tries to crawl the page. Try and look into it deeper in Google Search Console.
In general, the best way would be to build domain authority by creating quality content and acquiring backlinks to get your website to #1 position. It'll be more important to Google and won't be messing with your site as much as now.
You can also read more information in this thread (especially in the Takeshi's answer):
https://moz.com/community/q/why-keyword-ranking-fluctuate
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
-
Sudden Drop in Rankings
I manage a site and this past month have noticed some pretty significant drops in rankings for some of our main keywords. I'm trying to understand why and what I can do to correct it. We did do some 301 redirects a little over a month ago so I've been wondering if that has anything to do with it as Google indexes the new URLs. One thing I did notice in Moz is that it is showing that Google is indexing the new URLs but associating them with the wrong keywords in the wrong location. The company services three locations and each location has a service page on the site. But Moz is showing that in Atlanta, the indexed URL is the Nashville one, etc. Is there any way to affect that? Another thing to note is that organic search traffic is actually up so it doesn't appear to be affecting them which I find a bit strange. Just looking for any insight as to things I should be looking into to explain the sudden drops. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | maghanlinchpinsales0 -
Drop in keyword rankings with a multi-region website
Hi everyone, I know that variations if this question have been asked on this forum and have been answered by Google also. Google's response seems to be clear that "Websites that provide content for different regions and in different languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar but available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries." This was our approach when launching a new .co.nz website recently to coincide with us opening a new office in Auckland. Our original site is still our .com.au site. We went with a new domain name over a sub directory or sub domain for the reasons in the same Google article. After launching the NZ site in February and steadily growing some rankings, we've noticed in the last week or so a drastic drop in our keyword rankings (and traffic) for no apparent reason. There are no apparent issues in Search Console or with the Moz Site Crawl, so I'm wondering what's going on? I know rankings can fluctuate widely, especially when you're not on page 1 (which we're not) but the sudden and drastic drop did concern me. Currently, our AUS site's content is basically being replicated on the NZ site (e.g. blog posts, about us, company history, etc.). I just wanted to bounce it off you all to see whether you think it could be the "duplicate content" on the NZ site, or could it be something else? I'd really appreciate your input! Cheers, Nathan
Technical SEO | | reichey0 -
IT's Hurt My Rank?HELP!!!
hi,guys,john here, i just began use the MOZ service several days ago, recently i noticed one thing that one keyword on the first google search result page, but when i done some external links,the rank down from 1 to 8, i think may be the bad quality external links caused the rank down. so my question,should i delete the bad quality links or build more better quality links? which is better for me. easy to delete the bad links and hard to build high quality links. so what's your better opinion,guys? thanks John
Technical SEO | | smokstore0 -
Penguin 2.1 update, ranking dropped.
Hi, My website was hit by Google's new update like never before, first my ranking dropped back in May when Google rolled out with their second Penguin update, back then i was outsourcing my SEO since most of the time i was working on optimizing my local maps. As soon as noticed my traffic dropped i start doing SEO my self, I removed over optimized keywords on website ( title, meta description) then i analyzed my link profile and found that i had a lot of commercial anchor text linking from spammy websites, mostly blog comments. Its been over 4 months since I used Google's disavow tools in hoping that will help me get my raking back, but i still see these spammy links in my profile, 90% of them are nofollow anyways , so i'm not sure if disavow tool helped me at all. With this Penguin 2.1 update my website ended up on page 4-10 for 90% of my keywords http://screencast.com/t/3bcw8LUxpj Im not sure what would be the best way out this, should i buy a new domain and start fresh?Please let me know if you want to take a look on my link profile and give your opinion. Looking forward to your help!
Technical SEO | | mezozcorp0 -
Why did google pick this page to rank over another one?
I recently started working here and I have noticed that google is ranking some pages over other for the main key word. Example: We are ranking on page one for ATV tires for this url http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/43/81/165/723/ATV-Tires-All I thought google would pick http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/81/165/ATV-Tires since it is higher up in the folders. I Have a couple reasons why the are picking the other one. Mostly from link signals from one other site and footer link.. Any other thoughts. If we want google to rank the second url instead what would you suggest?
Technical SEO | | DoRM0 -
Rank tracker and Rankings report differs
Hi all Is this normal? I have set up a campaign for a site. Tracking a variety of keywords. For one of them, which is a quite important keyword I've been working on I've moved down one step in my rankings report. This is first of all weird because my on page optimization went from grade c to a, and even weirder beacuse if I run Rank Tracker tool on the keyword and the URL I see that I've moved up 6 steps, to 15 in Google. Kinda makes it hard to grasp if I'm on the right path or not! (I've checked and they are both results on google.dk, same URL and same keyword - exact)
Technical SEO | | Budskab0 -
Redirection based on country and impact on rankings
I have a website that ranks number 1 in google.co.uk for its main key term and ranks number 4 in google.com.au. However i would rather that visitors in australia see domain.com.au rather than domain.co.uk. Is there a way to achieve this using some clever 301s without impacting the rankings in australia and so that the .com.au starts to rank in place of the .co.uk OR Would you advise launching a .com.au version of the site hosted separately with unique / re-written content on it.?
Technical SEO | | thefresh0 -
Keyword ranking not moving
Hello, We have a very important keyword for our website (www.decorplanet.com) that hasn't moved in any direction in over a year. The keyword is "bathroom vanities". Our current SEO company has told us that the previous company has "over- optimized/linked" for this particular keyword and now Google is penalizing us for this. They told us that we need to leave it alone for a while and concentrate on other keywords and this one should naturally come back up (I should mention that at some point, we were much higher than where we are right now for that particular keyword). Many of our other high-profile keywords have been moving nicely to the first page. Keywords like "modern bathroom vanities", "antique bathroom vanities", "contemporary bathroom vanities", but the one that we really want ("bathroom vanities") hasn't budged at all. Does anyone have any thoughts on this. Is it possible that Google put us in some sort of a "sand-box" - I mean we are on page 2 so it doesn't sound like that's the case. It's just very bizarre that we can't seem to do anything with this keyword. Really appreciate any thoughts or input on this.
Technical SEO | | steven11330