Rankings Bouncing Weekly
-
I have a client who ranks well for a number of keywords. This week we have about 20 keywords in the top ten on Google that we're tracking. But every week it seems, the keywords bounce around quite a bit. This week, for example, we had at least 15 keywords out of the ~90 we're tracking jump between 30 to 40 spots. The most any keywords increased was 43, a few 42s and 41s, in one week. Next week, they'll go down a few, then bounce up again just like this. This has been happening for a while. I'm trying to figure out what the issue is.
-
Thanks Cyrus. I hear what you're saying, I'm just confused as to why Google would allow us on the first page for so many keywords every other week if we had so many bad links? My understanding was more that you have rankings, and you hold those rankings unless a competitor comes and overtakes you, or if you get penalized by Google. I guess this is technically the latter, but if I was getting penalized I wasn't expecting to be anywhere close to the first page for my targeted keywords. I suppose I will look into cleaning up the link profile. I am also planning on switching hosts to WP Engine from our HostGator VPS as it's just too slow. Perhaps changing hosts and speeding up the load time will help a bit as well.
I'll continue to tell the client to write more content. I personally don't do any black-hat stuff, especially link-building, so I'll have to go in and see what his old SEO people did.
-
Anything in the legal category is going to be highly competitive, and this is a vertical that's been subject to a lot of turn and burn practices in the past (and it's still probably going on today) so it doesn't suprise me to see the fluxation.
In part, the fluctuation may be coming from the site's own backlink profile. There's a number of highly-optimized money keywords in that anchor text that may not be 100% editorial.
Regardless, the only way to stabilize is to rise above the competition with superior content and ranking signals of your own. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts. This means having a clean backlink profile and disavowing any links that may be harming you, checking Webmaster Tools for errors and/or messaging, and building up high-authority editorial links to the site.
If you are on the board already, and it sounds like you are, then gaining a few positions and holding onto them shouldn't be as hard as someone just starting out. Best of luck!
-
The website is nytrafficticket.com and as I said we'll have a solid amount of keywords in the top ten, then the next week they'll drop out of the top 40, sometimes past the top 50, then the next week they'll come back to the top ten. It seems as if the Moz rankings just aren't picking up those keywords for the weeks where they drop off then come back. But if it isn't that, then I can't figure it out. If this is normal, then I suppose the next question is how do you keep your rankings in the top ten consistently, every week.
-
It's not uncommon for keywords in certain verticals to jump around a lot. Watch this video on Dave Naylor's blog: http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/google-secret-santa-search-results.html
But jumping around 30-40 spots seems like quite a bit. If this were happening I'd be suspicious of a couple of things:
- Are the keywords in an extremely competitive vertical with lots of competition and moving around? A jump of 30-40 in the "payday loan" category would be common.
- Are the backlinks on the edge of what would be considered white-hat? Sometimes Google rolls out an algorithm update and tweaks it for several weeks after. During this time its not uncommon to see sites rise up and down dramatically
- Is the vertical a news type site in which the queries are sometimes falling under the QDF (query deserves freshness) category? This could shake things up quite a bit.
Finally, I'd check to see what traffic was actually doing. If rankings were changing but overall search visibility stayed the same, it could be just Google trying to figure out the best results to serve, while recognizing the overall authority of the site.
Wish I had a more complete answer for you. Best of luck.
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
-
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 -
Ranking for multiple locations for the same service
I'm currently developing my brothers new website and taking care of the SEO. He provides roofing services and uPVC fascias, soffits & guttering service. He is looking to target multiple towns and cities within a region (Yorkshire). Each service has its own page but I'm wondering if it would be better to create a service page for each town with different content? It's quite difficult to re-write the service content for each town and not repeat yourself. For example, we're looking to target "roofer in leeds" "roofer in sheffield" "roofing services wakefield" etc etc Obviously it's more difficult to rank outside your physical town as the registered address is on Google maps but with content and link building we should see some results. I look forward to hearing some feedback.
Technical SEO | | Jseddon920 -
Wrong page ranked in Google, specific example
Hi All, I've searched for previous questions and many talk about the same problem but do not post an actual example. I am also thinking to do a blog post and a series of experiments once there is a theory. My target keyword is "Exhibition Stand Hire" and this is the target page on our site http://goo.gl/qt54lb Site appears on page 6 of SERPS (google.co.uk), but instead of this page a homepage is listed. But if I'm searching for the term using quotes, ie "Exhibition Stand Hire" the right page appears on page 4 of the SERPs. Our home page only uses the keyword in the body text, while target page is very optimised. Could it be over-optimised? I've tried mixing up words in the title tag to not offer an exact match, also i've varied the anchor text of all incoming links but that didn't fix the problem. (Hence why at the moment they all use different terms to point to this page) None of this helped alter what page is chosen to appear. Is it simply the matter of page not being strong enough compared to other less relevant pages on the site? How come many other sites rank better with much less effort? (i'm using OSE to determine competition) Thank you.
Technical SEO | | georgexx0 -
Page has Noindex, nofollow, still ranks #1
Hi there, I have a question about a few pages on our site, whom has a no index, nofollow meta tag but they are still indexed and even rank number one in our market for the term. How is that possible or is it that Google just ignores the tags when they think it´s an error from our side? The url is www.drogisterij.net/kilo_killer and the keyword is kilo killer. We rank number 1 if you search from Google.nl Anyone have seen it before and know why this might be? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | JaapWillemDrogisterij0 -
How well do .ltd.uk domain names rank?
Hi all, do .ltd.uk domain names rank well? How well do they stack up against a .com or .co.uk? I'd really appreciate any feedback from people with any experience with these domains. Thanks John
Technical SEO | | john251810100 -
Choosing a company name to rank for with main keyword in it?
First question is in regard to the relevance of the main keyword in the company name when used in anchor texts for linkbuilding and also on the website on page seo title tags etc.. We used to call our selves "Isle Surfboards" but now call ourselves "Isle Surf & SUP" , sup is an acronym for "stand up paddle boards" as our core biz in now paddleboards If we are trying to target the main keyword of "paddle boards" should we reconsider and call ourselves on the web " Isle Surfboards & Paddle Boards" or "Isle Surf & Paddle" or does it even matter? Then when we link build should we be building links with our new name "Isle Surf & SUP" or just as "Isle Paddle Boards" or does it even matter? Any help out there? bottom line is we want to rank better for the phrase "paddle boards" & "stand up paddle boards" as those are the top keywords. And in closing since both above are the 2 most popular keywords and are very similar "stand up paddle boards" has "paddle boards" in the phrase should all my on page related seo target "stand up paddle boards" phrase since that would have both phrases or "paddle boards" or a combo of both?
Technical SEO | | isle_surf0 -
Are multiple sites needed to rank one website?
My SEO guy for a mortgage website says that we should have 30 websites, with about 250 pages each on each site plus 50 blogs in order to even think of ranking for mortgage keywords. Is that correct?
Technical SEO | | simermeet0 -
Google PR Rank Question (s)
Hi
Technical SEO | | damientown
My Google PR rank is still 1/10 (www.abouttownmarketing.com) after 12 weeks of daily SEO work building what I thought were quality back links. Does anyone know how often Google updates its PR rank? Also is it a linear measure or link adwords quality score is it exponential?
Many thanks
Damien0