Rankings Up and Down Every Single Week
-
This is so insanely frustrating. One week my client's rankings will be great, working up the second page and on our way to the first. The next week those rankings will drop (according to SEOMoz Rankings) to well below 50. The very next week those rankings will be back up on the second page.
It's like a pinball machine with a different rank every week. I'm doing absolutely nothing from week to week, and am not understanding why it's bouncing back and forth so much. I've never seen anything like it, actually. I've never had a client bounce up and down so frequently and in such huge numbers.
Any ideas? (http://erasedisease.com) Thanks
-
I see this is a Wordpress site.
Running a Web Page Test your real problem is the Time To First Byte - generally a poor figure here points directly at bottle necks with your server .
I see that you are using a number of jQuery scripts locally instead of through CDN. The first thing I would do would be to go into the function.php file and deregister those scripts and then register them so that they access the google depository for jQuery scripts and others.
This will help by decreasing wait time on parallel http request and that you will find some of the vistiors will have those scripts already cached. All this sounds complex, but it is really simple to do.
You can use the add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'your_function_name') to wp_dergister_scripts and wp_register_scripts . You just have to look for the name space that the theme registered the script to de_register it correctly. (lol this sounds hard)
easiest one is the jquery most themes use the 'jquery' for the namespace so it would be like this i:
add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'new_scripts');
function new_scripts() {
wp_deregister_script('jquery');
wp_register_script('jquery', 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.1/jquery.min.js', false, '17.1');
wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
}
Because of the issue with TTFB, I would look into is a relatively new WordPress Centric hosting. I've just started using them and they are very good .... WP Engine they can help with the TTFB issues as they are running varnish cache and supposedly have something even faster in the works called TachyCache.
-
I feel you on that one, however it's completely out of my hands. The client had this site completely redesigned before I came along. It is what it is. Actually with some farther research I found that the load time on the Home Page was over 200 seconds...something is definitely wrong here.
-
All I can say is WOW!
If not for the rankings, change this for the users!
I can virtually guarantee that your bounce rates will go down and sales will go up if you get that load time down.
Hopefully that load time is with a slow dial up connection. Nobody with a modem waits that long. After 10-15 seconds the assumption is that the website is broken, and they leave....
-
Right, right...I mean that's basic, beginner SEO stuff. These are personalized search results, but search results based on SEOMoz Rankings Reports.
-
Google is not Google these days.
In addition to personalized search there are many variations of the SERPs that you can see when logged out of any Google service.
Your location can change the rankings.
Your browser can change your rankings.
Your previous searches can change your rankings.
I also believe that if you have two sites in the same SERP that one might be demoted significantly.
Soon they will be able to display different rankings to right-handed people and left-handed people.
-
Yes that could be the ONE issue causing the problem.
-
4. Their should be There!
NIce you could just copy and paste next time... lol
Fact is it can be ONE of these things most likely unnatural link building.
-
Their is no ONE problem....
ALL the issues brought up need to be addressed:
1. Get more varied anchor text links, get text links that reflect the other ingredients in your product as well as supplements, pills, and the like...
2. Get that load time down!!!!
3. Clean up the clutter, MAKE your client get it done.
ALL these things will help with bounce rate & customers buying.
-
PS - Load time on the site was at over 140 seconds...perhaps this is the root of the problem.
-
Interesting. It goes from 16 and 18 for "l-arginine supplements' (the exact keyword we want to rank for) to below 50. This happens week by week for the past 5 or six weeks.
The site has been live for quite some time now, but we recently redesigned about 7 months ago. It's never ranked well, but since I've come on board we've been working slowly up the rankings to the second page. Then, ever since we've managed to get on page two this bounce back and forth has been happening.
I consistently check webmaster tools and everything seems to be good as far as that's concerned. I mean it's crazy when you look at the overall traffic from week to week. One week we will have wonderful and consistent traffic, the next week we'll have absolutely nothing, almost as if we've been flagged, then the flag is removed, then flagged again. It's so very strange.
I agree about the look of the site, but that part is out of my hands. Bounce rate is consistently 55% to 66% every week.
-
This can really be one of many reasons.
This may be a case of unnatural link building. You have 617 links of which 594 are anchored "<a class="clickable title link-pivot" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text">l arginine". Its best practice to use variations of your keywords when linking in.</a>
<a class="clickable title link-pivot" style="background-color: initial;" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text">Also the home page looks very very busy. Too many colors and graphics, user interaction might be the issue, maybe people get to your site and leave because of the clutter.</a>
How long has this site been live? was it ranking well in the past (statically) and now its starting to lose ranking (de-indexing)?
Have you checked your webmaster tools?
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
-
Remove sitemap, effect ranking?
We are considering to remove our sitemap because it doesn't display the right structure. Will it affect current rankings if we remove the sitemap en continuing without a sitemap? Thanks
Technical SEO | | rijwielcashencarry0400 -
Amazing results even after 1 week!
Have to say, I'm pretty impressed with Moz, this is now my first full week of membership and wow have I seen some great increases in my site stats! Hopefully this isn't just a blip and that it wil continue for weeks and months to come. Authority has jumped from 27 to 34 Google page one results jumped from 7 to 13 Trafffic increased by 12% Solved duplicate content issues Started a proactive social media campaign I could go on and on, but can't say enough positive things about the services that are provided here, an investment well worth paying and already paying for itself. The goal for the next few weeks is to improve domain authority from 34 to 40+, I've been using long tail phrases for my articles, which has been tremendously beneficial. One query is that even though the domain authority has moved from 27 - 34, I don't appear to have gained any extra backlinks - perhaps I'm misunderstand this metric? The other query is that there are 100's of backlinks pointing to my domain (I provide an open source cms so I know the links are there), but none of these lnks appear to be counting towards my authority. Is there a way I can submit these pages to the index on their behalf? Cheers, Lee
Technical SEO | | LeeC0 -
IP address changed and some rankings drop
I changed my hosting company coz better server hardware and results (google). My website was perfectly for every queries on google but after changing company and ip address some results dropped to second page. What can i do now? These drops caused by changing ip address?
Technical SEO | | umutege0 -
Is micro data on every page over kill?
Hi Rand & Team, I am using microdata for the company address in the footer of all pages. This shows up as over 3000 pages on the "Structured Data" in Google WMT. Is this overkill? Should I have the microdata only on the home page? Please advice. Mash
Technical SEO | | MashBonigala0 -
Two pages exactlt the same but 1 ranks the other doesnt :-(
Buonjorno from 13 degress C heavily overcast wet Wetherby UK... When you enter term "Ramsdens York" this page is visible in the serps:
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
https://www.ramsdensforcash.co.uk/buy-it/find-your-nearest-branch/york/#results When you enter term "Ramsens arbroath" the following page is not visible:
https://www.ramsdensforcash.co.uk/buy-it/find-your-nearest-branch/arbroath/#results So my question is please why when both pages have equally bad mark up & equally bad internal linking does one page rank & the other is invisible? Any insights welcome 🙂0 -
Sites Copying my Content Ranking Higher
A number of sites are copying - either 100% word for word, paragraphs, or sentences of my content and are ranking higher. Some sites are doing this with permission/properly and are linking back to my article Others are not linking back or giving credit. Some of these sites, in some cases are ranking higher than me in Google results. What can I do?
Technical SEO | | ben10000 -
How to rank lower, fast....
Probably the complete opposite to all the questions asked on here before hehe One of my online stores is ranking in Google at no2 for a service we used to offer but no longer do as we do not have the contract anymore.We need to derank the listing as fast as we can we do not offer this service now. Normally we could just get google to deindex the page but it's the homepage we are ranking. It is ranking due to a good collection of exact match backlinks on. Have been trying to get our page off the first page for a couple of months but it appears that we did too good a job of getting it up there...it's not moving! Anyone have a suggestion please on how we can get off page one asap for this keyword without deindexing the homepage for our store? note: the keyword in question has not appeared on the site for a couple of months, removing that has had no impact on the ranking Thanks
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl1 -
Ranking via partial match
If I wanted to rank for "red hot widgets" and my domain was redhot.com, would it be better to obtain backlinks (via "red hot widgets" anchor text) pointing to: A) redhot.com (homepage) or B) redhot.com/widgets Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | martyc0