Why do we temporarily rank for highly competitive words after writing a related blog post?
-
I write for a blog that Google probably "likes" at this point because we update so frequently and get a decent amount of traffic.
Sometimes this happens and it has always been puzzling to me:
Let's use an example. Say I write a blog called "How to eat spaghetti." For the next few days, we will get a ton of traffic for people who type "spaghetti." But when I check us on rank trackers we are nowhere to be found for that term. What is happening here? Sometimes the traffic will all be international and located in some random city in Africa or something.
Any thoughts? Super confused by this. We have gotten lots of traffic for extremely competitive words because of this, but it only lasts a couple days.
-
I figured it out. Looks like the corresponding image in that blog entry got indexed on Google Images and ranks #3 because that one hot word is in the alt tag. Crazy
-
Hey James. Thanks for the input.
Maybe I didn't explain myself correctly. In my example, I'm not trying to rank for the word "Spaghetti." But because I published one article with the word "Spaghetti" in the title, we get a ton of Google hits that week for that word, and then that traffic disappears shortly after. I honestly don't think it has much to do with social media because our blog gets very few shares....
-
I'd imagine it is more to do with subscribers, social media posts containing links, referrals and fans who have bookmarked your page etc rather than anything to do with SEO. If your rankings are not improving yet your traffic is, I'd suggest looking at your analytics to see where the traffic is actually coming from - referrals, direct traffic etc.
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
-
How to filter blog pageviews using segments with regex
I must be overcomplicating this. I have a website with a blog structure that includes year subfolders, so: website.com/2019/blog-title, website.com/2018/blog-title, website.com/2017/blog-title, etc. I want to create a segment that I can apply in Site Content > All Pages to get quick stats for all blogs, regardless of year. (Pageviews, time on site, etc.) Unfortunately, Content Drilldown doesn't work well here as it is grouping by each year. I have tried setting up a segment using regex, but am getting a mixture of all pages, not just blog pages. I have set up the segment the following way: Advanced > Conditions > Page, Matches Regex, /2019/(.*?)/ Advanced > Conditions > Page, Matches Regex, /2018/(.*?)/ Advanced > Conditions > Page, Matches Regex, /2017/(.*?)/ Am I going about this all wrong? Is my regex wrong? Any advice is appreciated! Side note: glaringly obvious that now is the time to clean up my URLs. But I'd still love to see the data in its current URL state. Thank you!
Reporting & Analytics | | SoleGraphics0 -
I am tracking my domain e.g www.xyz.com to an existing google analytics account . I want to track www.xyz.com/blog separately in the google analytics account. How can I do that?
I am tracking my domain e.g www.xyz.com to an existing google analytics account . I want to track www.xyz.com/blog separately in the google analytics account. How can I do that?
Reporting & Analytics | | Windlass0 -
Title Tag Capitalization Impact on SERP Rankings and Click Through Rates
My company made a branding decision to use lowercase for all of our title tags. This, of course, means that our titles on SERPs are all lower case. Overwhelmingly, it seems that websites use title case. This makes me wonder if we're shooting ourselves in the foot. Does using lower case titles negatively impact our rankings and/or click through rates? Is there any data out there suggesting that title case has a better click through rate than lower case? Thanks for reading!
Reporting & Analytics | | Solid_Gold0 -
Keyword Rank Dip - Estimated Wait Time to Return to Higher Spot?
The organic traffic to our site (fairly new) took a ~50% hit about a month ago due to the drop in our most important keyword. The numbers have come back up and are now exceeding the number before the dip. While this is all fine and dandy, we're still not ranking in the top 50 for our most valuable keyword. We've put out a number of guest post on reputable outside sites and are building a regular cadence of those posts, but my question is, what is the realistic wait time for those organic rankings to increase again?
Reporting & Analytics | | smf434340 -
Why would our client's site be receiving significant levels of organic traffic for a keyword they do not rank for?
We have a client that has received 100+ organic visits for the keyword 'airport transfers', yet the site does not rank in the top 100 search results for this keyword. We have checked that it is not untagged PPC traffic. Truly baffling. Can anybody help?
Reporting & Analytics | | mrdavidingram0 -
Can't seem to rank for keyword "home care grand rapids" - need some advice
I am trying to rank for "home care grand rapids" and am having a really difficult time. My site: http://healthcareassociates.net has better backlinks, keywords and other seo markers than my competitors but I still can't seem to rank. The keyword and associated keywords (home care grand rapids michigan, home health care grand rapids, etc.) are only 31-33% difficulty and my site/page rank is better than the leading sites. What gives? Todd
Reporting & Analytics | | t1kuslik0 -
Erratic movements on Rank Tracker-why is this?
I have been looking at 2 key words for my site & three other sites, I am refreshing daily to understand it movements and the movements have been really erratic - droping 8 places in one day, then back 7 places the next. There have not been any changes made to the site in question during this period other than I me starting to track them with SEOmoz - Can anyone explain what would be behind this? thanks, S
Reporting & Analytics | | girlie0 -
Why did I loose all my product page rankings (e-commerce site)
This friday I noticed that I'd lost pretty much all my product pages in the SERP and also their rankings for the product names. These are products I both have introduced to the market (sweden) and also some that I've been the only one selling. I've analyzed a couple of different ranking-faults. Examples: **"super mario väggdekaler" should rank **http://www.roligaprylar.se/Super-Mario-Vaeggdekaler.html as #1 and has done for several years. Instead this search in my internal search engine ranks #10-#15 with no relevance. www.roligaprylar.se/?q=mario%20v%E4g "jedi morgonrock" should rank www.roligaprylar.se/Jedi-Morgonrock.html as #1 or #2 but instead this url ranks as #12 www.roligaprylar.se/product_detail.php?pid=Jedi-Morgonrock "Charlie sheen bobblehead" (in the swedish serp this should be the most simple term to rank on. previously #1) my internal search engine ranks for #8 with this url <cite>www.roligaprylar.se/?q=Charlie%20Sheen%20Bobblehead</cite>J So I've drawn these conclusions and actions Products that don't rank well longer but still ranks with their alternative non-rewritten url has gotten deep links from affilliates (i track affilliate ids and stuff via this link) and have replaced the original url which is rewritten. Action: Canonical urls for these non-rewritten products to the rewritten version. For example on this product page www.roligaprylar.se/product_detail.php?pid=Jedi-Morgonrock I've placed a canonical for this url www.roligaprylar.se/Jedi-morgonrock.html With the products not ranking at all or when searches in my search engine shows up I suspect some kind of dup content punishment where Google thinks the search result is more important than the product page. Action: All search-pages are now noindex,follow I also increased product name density in terms of keywords on the product page. But I'm still owned and losing tons of money during the holidays (buying adwords at obscene amounts instead hehe). So just wanted to hear with you guys. Are my conclusions and actions correct? What have I missed, what more could I do to reverse this? Thanks Dan
Reporting & Analytics | | nuttinalle0