Rankings UP, rankings DOWN - why?
-
Last week, I had 14 keywords go up and less than 5 go down. I was so thrilled!
Except this week, I had 10 go up and 14 go down!
How can I figure out what is going on? I am up and down 30+ spots with Google. I'd really like to stay up. My site is pretty new, just a few months. I am still fiddling around with settings trying to follow all the advice I read. (robot meta tags, title tag)
I didn't change any content in the last week. Does SEOmoz analyze the ranking data?
-
Hey There
First thing you might want to do is supplement weekly Moz rankings by using Webmaster Tools position data (under search queries) and you can filter by keyword - and you'll get you're average daily position straight from Google's data. You can also supplement Moz rankings data with something like AuthorityLabs. There's a list of rank checkers I put together here.
This is because it can be tricky to see what's going on with weekly data.
If/when you have that - it sounds like this is the "Google Dance" (when rankings jump all around). This can be common for new sites, especially as Google is just figuring it out etc.
Has traffic changed much?
I honestly would focus mostly on continuing to create the best site possible. Make sure each page is only targeting one main keyword.
-Dan
-
It means for my site (APQC.org) for example if a site links to one of our pages the anchor text for the link is American Productivity & Quality Center and not 'site focused on productivity and benchmarking'
Branded keyword anchor text is Coca-Cola regular keyword anchor text is soda.
Get it? Believe me I know all these SEO terms and stuff can make your head spin. Hope this helps.
-
Sorry what do you mean by branded? I am new to this.
The anchor text was my website's name.
-
I have no evidence to prove this theory but here goes: I think Google is beginning to weight brand centered anchor text higher and so it's really helping a site like mine whose links have brand anchor text.
If your anchor text on high value links isn't branded text that could be issue. Once again it's just my theory and feel free to punch holes in it if you like.
-
I rank better with bing and yahoo but I don't get many CLICKS.
I have no idea why I went up so much last week because I hadn't done much. I thought maybe because I got two quality backlinks on related blog with a PR of 5. But then why would they drop this week?
It is just frustrating not knowing!
-
Since your site is new that could be a reason for rankings swing. If you did something with title tags that could be an issue. In my experience Title tags have been a huge problem and a huge area for gain once we got them fixed and well done.
Also are your Bing/Yahoo rankings very different from your google rankings? Our yahoo/Bing rankings are all over the place the last 4 months while google has been stable but I've had the opposite as well.
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
-
Image ranking plummet help
Hi Moz Community, I need help understanding why my site is dropping rankings and traffic significantly. We were hit the hardest with doing a image query filter ~6/2-6/3 (image attached). We also had a site migration on this exact date, but didn't change URL structure or domain names, just switched hosting sites. I'm assuming this plummet is from the migration, but can't figure out why. I may also not be understanding this filter clearly so let me know. Shoot any questions my way that could help your understanding of the problem be more clear. Thanks,
Reporting & Analytics | | IceIcebaby
-Reed yVzQRTK0 -
Improved keyword ranking but less traffic
Hello fellow mozzers! My collegue and I are a bit puzzled in regards to our recent website statistics. In november 2013, we upgraded the technological platform of our website to be fully HTML5 coded, and implemented the schema.org Products scheme to systematically tag all our products on the site. To prevent too much loss of visitors, we created a 301-redirect table from almost all our old URL's to the specific new ones, as we implemented a new URL structure as well. The first few months were bumpy as expected, making a huge drop in rankings before rising up again. Our keyword rankings are better then ever (60% of the keywords in top 3, average competition, 25% more on first SERP) but our number of visits dropped by about 10%. Our bounce rate went down from 20% to 14%, our returning visits are stable, but our new visitors stats dropped by 25% as well. This comparison was made between equal periods in the current year and last year, using organic data stats. (new technical platform vs. the old one) What could be the reason that our number of visits dropped 10% while our keyword ranking is better then ever? We don't have any manual penalties in GWT and can't understand why visits would drop so much while ranking improved. May it be so easy that there's just less search volume on our ranked content or does anyone have other ideas? Thank you all in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | EconostoNL0 -
Lost rankings after disavowing links
About two months ago, I received an unnatural inbound links message from Google. Then I disavowed 58 (the worst ones) and now I can see that right after the date I submitted my disavow file I'm losing rankings. What would you suggest? I don't really want to revoke my disavow file because it has totally bad links. I have this idea to build 58 links from high quality sites (instead of the 58 I disavowed). Do you think it'll work faster (if at all) or I just need to remove my disavow file?
Reporting & Analytics | | VinceWicks0 -
More Traffic From Lower Rankings?
I have access to analytics for two different sites that rank for the same keyword. Strangely, the site that ranks on page 3 gets three times as much traffic as the site that ranks on page 1 (rankings according to multiple SEO tools as well as my own browser). How is this possible?
Reporting & Analytics | | JABacchetta0 -
Can't figure this ranking out..
Hi, This is puzzling me. I've been in the second/third position for a week or so for my best keyword. That is for Google US unpersonalized, which is the one that brings more traffic, as far as I understand. It can't get MUCH better. Well, I can be first, but second and third position is really awesome in my case (highly competitive keyword according to SEOMOZ PRO). Then, why on earth my traffic for that keyword was 8 times better a year ago?? I mean, a year ago I received an average of 800 visits per day and now I can barely reach 90 visits per day being in the second / third place. Visits can't increase from 90 to 800 just for increasing one spot. I've never seen in my stats such drop in my rankings. I thought that due to google updates my site was sent below the 20th position or something. But my I was shocked today when I saw that I still have the second/third position Am I crazy or this looks wrong? The page title and description that shows in google hasn't changed, so people looking for that keyword are seeing the same as one year ago. It is not a seasonal or time sensitive keyword. My best guess is that people are now always logged in and results are personalized. Don't know much about personalized results but I don't think you can optimize much for those. If that's the case, then how on earth can we optimize a page if everybody is using personalized results? Is there a way to improve your rankings in those cases? Thanks, Enrique
Reporting & Analytics | | enriquef0 -
Woes in organic ranking... Post Penguin issue?
Hello all, First post here. Site:http://www.symbolphoto.com I'd done a ton of work to get my SEO where it needs to be, however, after looking at my traffic post April 15-22nd, it's gone completely downhill. I don't rank organically, which i'd like for one single term 'b*ston wedding photographer'. What am i missing? I'm assuming Penguin may be a part of this, but i haven't participated in any link schemes... am i being penalized and if so, is it evident why? Help is much appreciated! replace * with o.
Reporting & Analytics | | symbolphoto0 -
Info webinar Ranking Factors 2011
Yesterday i've followed your webinar with regards to Ranking Factors 2011. As a PRO-member where can I find all the info? Thanks in advance, Stanley at Linkbuilding-Specialist.nl
Reporting & Analytics | | JFKMarketing0