Ranking fluctuations from week to week
-
Over the past couple of months I have seen a couple of my campaigns have key phrases that change from week to week from being in the top 3 to being >51. I worked pretty hard on the sites to get them mostly #1 for their preferred key phrases, and haven't been working that hard lately, but not sure what to make of it. It looks as though those keyphrases that dropped this week to >51 will probably be back in the top 3. Makes it diffuclt when you are trying to prepare a report for your client.
Any suggestions are welcomed, and Happy New Year!
-
It does. I was sceptical when I was told that it had something to do with Moz Local. I'll take a look at the video - thanks for the suggestion!
-
So I want to suggest checking out the webinar we had yesterday on speeding up your website.
I also wanted to address your comment about your crawlers and localized rankings possibly messing up your rankings. This is not the case. The crawler that looks at your site in Moz Analytics is different from our rankings crawlers. They do not connect. They do not influence rankings as the bots only record the information in the SERPs based on your keywords; they don't click into your site. Does that make sense?
-
I went to a meetup last night that specifically talked about SEO, and although I wasn't given a good answer to this problem - and yes it continues - last week I had 30+ keywords improve by 48+ positions to #1 and this week I had 10+ drop to higher than 51, I'm told that this is not unusual (not convinced of that either) especially with the new "localized" feature of Moz.com, and that ranking scans might be run from anywhere in the country causing the fluctuations. This is the only site I'm seeing such dramatic swings so I'm sceptical. I just discovered that I still have a .png as my header image (discovered last night, and have been working to improve server response speed.
I'm hoping that I can get a good streamlined configuration for a caching plugin that will work "generally" for all my sites. I'm still open to suggestions and thanks for this one.
-
I can do that with my clients that are on shared service accounts for free, but not for my VPS clients - this one is shared, so good idea. I think I probably have some images that can be resized as well. I have the load speed on the home page down to 3 seconds, so getting there.
-
you may want to try out www.Cloudflare.com - They provide a free CDN which may give you a big boost in page speed with very little effort and it's free.
-
I have a client that has been trying a different plugin with huge success - compared directly to W3TC. I just haven't been convinced yet will try it and see.
-
I do think it's worth exploring other plug-ins and working in the nuts-and-bolts of site speed. Even though WP plug-ins are very helpful, it's always good to know the details of what's happening as much as possible. I'm not exactly sure how W3TC works -- I've never used it or any other site speed plug-ins personally for WP -- but it's possible it can't optimize everything or that it's working the best it or any plug-in can.
-
Thanks - I have been working to configure W3TC to improve page speed - only recently started working on it. And yeah - I overoptimized in the beginning and have started rethinking the content based upon what I've been reading lately. Will do - you think that page speed might be part of the problem? W3TC is one of the most highly recommended performance plugins, but I don't think it is as good as some of the new plugins recently released. Will search for a different one.
I appreciate the feedback - I'll see how things go next week.
-
Looking at your site, I noticed a couple things:
Your site speed is pretty slow. You can use pingdom.com to check your site speed. This is a great study by Jon Colman about site speed and how much it actually affects your site. I noticed that you're running WordPress, and here's some tips on how to speed up your WP site. Google definitely factors in speed, and this could be affecting how the bots reach your site (or don't reach it) and account for the flux week-to-week. You are correct in that it shouldn't be that dramatic of a change week-to-week.
I also noticed that your homepage was a little overly optimized for keywords. As search engines start getting more semantic, you want to optimize more for the user. Definitely don't kill all the keywords, but balance is the key. Read through the copy as a visitor, not just the SEO and industry expert.
-
The website is oztruckingandrigging.com. I've attached a link to the keyphrases that show a big drop - but I have just as many that went up by a significant amount. And it seems to be a weekly thing now. Very weird.
-
It would be great if you could leave your site URL and some examples of what you're looking to rank for so we could dig in.
Did you do any recent changes to your site that may account for ranking changes?
-
Good idea - I'll take a look. Yeah, seems like the last 3 months or so. I don't send my client reports every week, but still - weird they are bouncing so dramatically from week to week. If they dropped and then stayed there then I'd probably have more to go on.
-
What does the 'lately' time frame look include? It's important to note that Google has had a lot of algo. updates in the past 3 months. You could be witnessing SERP fluctuation due to any of these.
Have you checked out Google Webmaster Tools? See if those keyword terms are in the GWT reports and if the same fluctuation is present.
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
-
Mobile SEO Rank Tracker - Hourly
Hello folks! Does anyone have a suggestion for a rank tracker that can track high-profile keywords, in mobile specifically, on an hourly basis? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | rvseo0 -
How do you get your web site recrawled with Moz without waiting for a week?
My initial crawl was screwed up because of a no follow that needed to be removed. I would like Moz to recrawl the site right away so I can find any other errors.
Moz Pro | | Ron_McCabe0 -
Yo-Yo-ing rankings - what's going on?
I'm getting a little fed up and exasperated - if I'm honest! Our seoMoz rankings are yo-yoing on a weekly basis - extremely. One week we're in the top 3, the next week, we're not in the top 50. The week after that, we're back in the top 3. Then we're outside the top 50 again. I understand rankings go up and down sometimes - but this is every week, without fail. Not only that, but I also check my rankings with cuteRank and Firefox's Rank Checker and while those rankings are consistent with each other - seoMoz's rankings are always different and the only ones that Yoyo. Further, it's not just our rankings that Yoyo - it's those of our competitors too. They follow the same pattern except that when we go up, they go down, and vice versa, I'm just a little lost and unsure what to do, and I can't believe really that this is a true reflection of what is happening to us on Google every week. I know rankings change but surely Google aren't throwing us around like this? It is making doing any SEO on the site impossible because I never know where I stand. Any ideas or help would be wonderful. Thanks.
Moz Pro | | JetBookMike0 -
Is the SEOMoz Rank Tracker still accurate?
I monitor several keywords on several domains and i have found that rank tracker gives me one result yet when searching via Google myself (on different machines) i get a different result. I've tried several devices on different networks so there is no chance that Google is remembering my searches as such and i ensure that i am always signed out of my account. All devices provide the same results yet Rank Tracker provides a completely different result. It's as though Rank Tracker is a day ahead or something. Can anyone shed any light for me please?
Moz Pro | | MarkHincks0 -
Is there a tool to upload multiple URLs and gather statistics and page rank?
I was wondering if there is a tool out there where you can compile a list of URL resources, upload them in a CSV and run a report to gather and index each individual page. Does anyone know of a tool that can do this or do we need to create one?
Moz Pro | | Brother220 -
How Long For New Keyword Rank Data?
I have a PRO account and added the initial keywords and got the immediate rankings for those. Then I added new keywords and those have not been updated. How long do I have to wait to get Keyword Ranking data on those keywords. I know it says they are updated every Friday, but does that mean I have to wait until next Friday for my first run of data on new keywords?? I ask because I have to present to a client before then and I require the data for that meeting. Any insight is appreciated.
Moz Pro | | mc418720 -
Strange Ranking On 1st Page Of Google For Competitive Keyword
Hey all, So, I've noticed a site ranking on the first page in Google for a keyword that I have been targeting for years. The keyword is "mixtapes" and pretty competitive. The site, http://www.newyorkmixtapes.com is ranking around #4 in Google. It seemed odd to me so I looked into the site using some of the tools here. Open Explorer showed that they have minimal links. The actual site is pretty spammy also. Does anyone have any idea how this site ranked so high so fast? Is it ranking because I am located in New York? Does Google still put lots of weight on exact match domains? It's just been bothering me because it's a keyword that I put a lot of work into and then the site rolls around an ranks well for it with barely any backlinks. I just wanted to put it out there and see if I'm missing something obvious. Thanks everyone!
Moz Pro | | getrightmusic0 -
Why does SEOMoz Pro only do Rankings Once a Week?
Not sure I understand why the SEOMoz PRO report of rankings only occurs once a week? Any ideas? Seems like it would be easy to just pull that ranking report at any time.
Moz Pro | | findachristianjob0