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
-
Website ranking declined after connecting to CDN
Hi! We are trying to rank https://windowmart.ca for various local search terms. Our head office is in Edmonton where we try to rank https://windowmart.ca/edmonton-windows-doors/ for such terms as "windows Edmonton", "replacement windows Edmonton", "windows and doors Edmonton" as well as others. The website was the leader in its niche for around 2 years. Then we've got some server related issues, moved to a new server and connected CDN Nitropack that really improved our google speed test results. Recently we noticed that our rankings started to drop. Do you know if Nitropack can negatively effect local SEO rankings? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | vaskrupp0 -
Frustrating Drop in Rankings Despite Good DA
The page below
Technical SEO | | Jayblue
http://www.carefundraisingsupplies.co.uk/fundraising-products/Charity-Collection-Buckets seems unable to budge from a position of near 100 despite previously been around 16 and moving up. We cannot seem to find any issues that are obvious and even some quality link building has moved it down further. Any idease from anyone? The search phrase we are targetting is Charity Collection Buckets0 -
Ranking dropped after domain change
Dear Moz Community, first of all excuse my bad english, i am from europe and my english is not the best 😉
Technical SEO | | domiji
I use Moz Analytics for several days and try to figure out why our "main keyword" totally dropped after our domain change. We started this year with a new company name and a new domain. Our old domain was dp-hochzeitsfotograf.de and the main keyword we try to rank for was "hochzeitsfotograf" which means "wedding photographer" here in Germany. Last summer we reached position 1 and short before our domain change we still ranked on position 6. We register the domain change in google webmaster tools and redirect all urls via 301 redirect to the new domain. Our new domain name is yourheyday.de and all rankings adopted pretty good except our main keyword (now position 62) which could break our neck the next few month. I would be so so happy and really appreciate if anyone of you have an advise for us. Thanks and many greetings from europe
Dominik0 -
Large Companies Taking Over Rankings
Recently many large companies. (lowes, bed bath and beyond, walmart, target, ace hardware, etc.), have taken over the rankings of keywords we used to rank high in. Is there any way to improve our rankings and compete with these large companies? Is this due to recent Google changes? Sample keywords are: electrolux vacuum bags, oreck vacuum bags, vacuum cleaner bag, vacuum cleaner filter
Technical SEO | | totalvac0 -
Home Page Not Ranking... Need an EXPERT
Hi, for about a year now, our home page seems to have been "removed" from Google (except for our branded keywords). The home page is clearly indexed, but none of the keywords for the home page rank in the top 500 (again, except for our brand, trophycentral). Other pages in the site are fine and we rank in the top 10 positions for hundreds of keywords. We are also okay on Yahoo and Bing. So the issue is the home page from non-branded words. There have been no manual penalties, but since the words, such as trophies and trophies and awards are all but gone, something is going on. It has been almost exactly a year now and I have tried everything from removing backlinks (although I still can't tell which are "bad links", to changing titles, to improving speed and structure. I have had quite a few really nice people try to help, but their suggestions don't seem to work or are too vague. I really need an expert as the impact to the business of not having a home page performing is very damaging. Thank you!!!
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
When will seomoz rank my website?
Hi all, I am really excited to be here. I joined seo moz three weeks ago. Seo moz crawled my website twice and still under competitive domain analysis my domain authority is 1 and everything else underneath is zero. I fixed some errors and warning after first crawl but still nothing in root domain metrics. Can anyone please explain whats happening? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | proaspirant0 -
Ranking with a .nu TLD
Hi everyone, A few weeks ago i purchased a .nu TLD, it's a really nice domainname but i'm wondering if it's possible to rank with this domain in Google? I've heard several times that it doesn't matter for Google which TLD a site has, but i normally never see .nu's high in the SERP's, what are your opinions about this? Is it possible for me to get this site high in google with good links and quality content? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | iwebdevnl0 -
Google Pake Rank of Zero?
Hi! We've been running our website www.opzeggen.nl for a while now, but we still have a google page rank of 0. Searching for a keyword like 'opzeggen' does give us good ranking however. Should I be worried about this? And if so, is there a way to fix this? Best Regards, Pieter
Technical SEO | | greenonline0