My rankings are up and down like a Yo-Yo. Any ideas why?
-
One of the companies that I work for sells the latest smartphones.
It ranks fairly well for key terms in an extremely competitive field. Recently the rankings of one particular handset have been extremely erratic and do not follow the pattern of other products, I am wondering if anyone can offer some insight as to why this is happening?
When the handset was first announced, it ranked fairly well (20th). This is good when you bare in mind that it is an ecommerce site competing with top tech sites. Prior to release, the ranking gradually declined to 33rd. I believe this may be due to reviews being publsihed (as a result of review handsets being sent out prior to release) as Google has started to favour reviews and news updates.
I have seen a similar pattern with other handsets, reviews and news are favoured by Google prior to release, but once the product is available, my rankings rise and remain on the first page provided that links are still coming in.
However, the rankings of this handset dropped from 27th to below 50th upon launch. The next week the ranking rose from >50th to 7th, dropped to below 50th again the following week, rose back to 9th the week after and has now dropped again to below 50th. These are by far the biggest changes in rankings I have seen on a week to week basis.
The page has a strong link profile in order to achieve such a high ranking in the first place. With this being the case I have no idea why ranking can drop off so much in the space of a week?
Update: I forgot to mention initially that I have the variant listed twice, one for each colour variant. All content is the same apart from the colour being altered in the appropriate places. This has not been a problem in the past, but perhaps it is due to recent changes to Google algorithm?
-
No I don't have more than one variant...
-
That sounds similar to my experience. I have just realised that what is in fact happening is that it is picking up a different variant each week.
So one week it picks up the black handset in the top 10 results, the next week the black handset has dropped to below 50, but it is picking the white up on the 4th page.
Have you got more than one variant of your product listed at all?
-
I have had exactly the same experience- my ranking report on SEO moz report said I dropped >45 places; from 6th to somewhere outside the top 50 for a search term that I had been doing well on- I made no changes to that page, when I look in google now though I am back to 6th where I had been last week. So the question is; was SEOmoz report wrong or for the date in question 23rd of March or did Google drop my ranking down 45+ places and bring it back in less than 4 days?
Any help grately appreciated.
thanks,
Sinead
-
Thanks for your response Vinod.
I have been adding back links over time so I'm not sure why it is so erratic.
-
In general, when there are frequent ups and down then backlinks made over time helps getting stable ranks.
Not sure if backlinks will help you, still you can try it. No harm.
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
-
My website has been declining in rankings!
Hello everyone, I have been doing the SEO on the following site: www.painters-decorators-london.co.uk for the past few years and the rankings are slowly declining since last year. (not the recent Google update). I can't seem to figure out what exactly is causing this to happen The page authority and domain authority is higher than my competitors. The on page SEO I believe is done appropriately but I'm not sure whats causing this decline. How can I find out exactly using the MOZ Pro account that I have. I don't think I'm totally aware of the important metrics that one can use on this site to determine the problem. Please advise!
Reporting & Analytics | | Ready2Paint0 -
Losing keyword rankings and sessions.
I had removed /en from end of each page ( www.mydomain.com/en become www.mydomain.com) Could it be the reason of losing keyword rankings and sessions?
Reporting & Analytics | | Jason2250 -
Time For New Website To Rank?
We've been working on a site for the past couple months and going to be launching in a couple weeks. How long does it take for Google to establish a "stabilized" ranking for the site and various pages? The main homepage will have its targeted keywords and each product page will have its own targeted keywords. We have about 100 total pages for the site. I know rankings may fluctuate initially but trying to get an idea of when the rankings are stabilized before we start working on the ongoing SEO like earning backlinks, changing on-page optimization, etc to be able to track changes in rankings over time.
Reporting & Analytics | | vikasnwu0 -
Non ranking keywords driving traffic !?
Moz Analytics and Google analytics is saying some keywords are driving organic search traffic & hence MA suggesting them as keyword opportunities, yet theres no rank for any of them so how can that be so ? cheers dan
Reporting & Analytics | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Can 500 errors hurt rankings for an entire site or just the pages with the errors?
I'm working with a site that had over 700 500 errors after a redesign in april. Most of them were fixed in June, but there are still about 200. Can 500 errors affect rankings sitewide, or just the pages with the errors? Thanks for reading!
Reporting & Analytics | | DA20130 -
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 -
How Do You Determine The Value/Worth of A #1 Ranking?
There are many articles out there, some outdated, and I am confused as to how to determine the value/worth (in terms of estimated revenue and traffic percentage) when you achieve a #1 ranking in google. I am also looking for a way to estimate the value, say, if a lower ranked keyword jumped to a better position--what that increase might be. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | JCorp0 -
Distribution of SEOMOZ Ranking Metrics across all Monitored Websites
Hi, I'm looking into building a tool which would incorporate SEOMOZ ranking metrics and I have a few questions with regard to the ranking data which will help me develop it correctly. I have done a few searches, for the information but haven't found an answer to these questions on seomoz - if they exist somewhere then I would be grateful if you could point me in the right direction. 1/. When looking at the values of metrics such as MozRank and DA, is there any information on how this values are distributed amongst the ranked website - EG The mean / median values of DA and MozRank etc of all websites monitored is X & Y . If there were any distribution graphs for these values then even better. 2/. Along the lines of the above - are there any online resources showing similar information for google PR? 3/. What is the calcuation used in the scale of MozRank and DA - ie We have a scale of 1-10 for these values - be we also know the scale in not linear but logrithmic - ie Double the Links of a DA 5 website and you would not end up with a DA 10 website - so what is the calculation which defines the scale. A WBF about google PR by Rand indicated that a value of between 8-9 is used in Google PR - but what about the values used for DA and MozRank etc? Many thanks for your help
Reporting & Analytics | | James770