Showing For Long Tail Keywords - Not Targeted?

[TP_Marketing]

Hello,

Is it normal for Organic traffic to show for keywords or phrases that I am not even targeting? All of this traffic spiked within a couple days and I cant figure out why? I ve been building backlinks, doing all the correct things. Just took me by surprise. Typically when you begin showing organically is it usually a slow progression?

Thanks so much!

[NakulGoyal]

It's usually a combination of both. Sometimes you see gradual movements in SERPS, but then what you may be seeing is something like a "Getting out of the Sandbox" effect. It's what used to happen very very widely and to some extent, still does. Brand new site tend not to rank for a considerable amount of time, often referred to as the Sandbox period and then once they get out of sandbox (after attaining some domain authority), you'd technically see a spike in traffic and rankings and your situation might be something similar to that.

[TP_Marketing]

When we begin to start ranking organically is it usually a slow gradual process? Or if we've been doing everything correctly, would we see a big traffic spike?

Thanks again

[NakulGoyal]

Well, the copy on your pages and any other content often leads to combinations of keywords, long tail that you end up ranking for that you did not / could not even target, because a lot of times, you don't even know those keywords exist.

So yes, when you have SEO optimized content or any content for that matter, as the pages/domain gain strength and authority, they tend to start ranking for a lot of keyword combinations.

I hope that helps.