What do you do when there is significant movement when checking a Ranking & Algorithm tracking tool?

[Jack_Jahan]

I've checked various Ranking & Algorithm tracking tools (SEMrush, Mozcast etc.) and since 12th Jan 18 there has been a lot of 'turbulence' in terms predicted Google algorithm changes.

This has been 'high' for the past 2 weeks.

Question is, would you 'hang tight and ride the wave' or 'act fast'?

Our actual rankings haven't really been affected positively or negatively - so I'm thinking I should just ride the wave to see what happens but keep a close eye on the rankings?

[EGOL]

I agree with Steve that there is a lot of flux in SEMrush lately.   My take on much of the flux is below.....

• SEMrush Position tracking is showing a lot of false flux lately for a couple of reasons.

  1)  They don't identify your position in the SERPs and report it as "not in top 100".  If you click to see the cache that they used to obtain the rankings your domain is there.

  2)  Google has been inserting and removing a link to the image results at the top of many SERPs.   "Images for [your query]"   When present, SEMrush is counting this link to the image results as position #1 and the result is all results below are pushed down one position.  When not present, all of the results below move up one position.  You don't notice this very much in your visibility score if you are on the second page.  However, if you have keywords that rank in the top three or four it can make a huge change in your visibility score.

  And...   Google does seem to be experimenting a bit and even losing track of a few pages for the keywords that they typically rank for.   So, yes there is a little more flux in Google, but the number changes in many of the tools are a result of contaminated data and bad data collection.

[tawnycase]

Hey there! Tawny from Moz's Help team here.

It looks like our community members have already offered some helpful advice here. I just wanted to add that we have the Mozscast (http://mozcast.com/), which is a measure of how turbulent things are in the SERPs. Looks like the "weather" lately has been pretty stormy, so lots of changes are taking place.

As others have already pointed out, it's hard to pinpoint WHY the rankings are changing, but there are a few things to keep in mind as you go along.

There are a ton of factors that go into ranking well, so your best bet is to be very diligent and attentive to the issues affecting your SEO. There are a few things to keep in mind as you go along:

• Competitive research is important, because it's usually your competitors that you're fighting for rankings. There is a really good post about it here. I would also suggest looking at this blog postabout which tools can help you defeat your competitors!
• Keyword research and keyword strategy are also very important. We've got some helpful Moz Academy videos on both of these hereand here!
• Your link metrics also have a lot of sway when it comes to ranking. There are some really good Moz Academy videos on this, but I like this one about how search engines value links to start!

I hope that helps you out a bit! If you've still got questions, feel free to reach out to us at help@moz.com. Cheers!

[Jack_Jahan]

Thanks, Steve - really appreciate your help and advice!

[slatronica]

The search volatility tools at the highest level will be impacted by one or more verticals that may see more dramatic movement. So if you're worried dig in a bit and see if your vertical seems to be seeing more volatility.

Be aware of updates to tools, SEMRush had a keyword update around 1/15 that might shake up some of your data. You could see an increase in keywords for your site which may give the illusion that your visiblity is stable ( - drop + keyword update = may show false gains)

So monitoring volatility with just external tools isn't the most reliable. If your site has been stable, check if your competitors seeing big shifts. As a safeguard keep an eye on things like crawl rates, impression levels and pages you know typically drive organic traffic in GSC. Keep an eye on your organic landing pages in GA too.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Well, what would you do when it's 'act fast'. Basically all of these tools give you insights into if rankings change but they don't give you any details on why the rankings are changing. That's the biggest opportunity in this whole area of tools. That's why honestly you can only go with: 'ride the wave' in my opinion as there's barely any data available in general for use cases like this.