When the keyword rankings trend south…?
-
So for the past 3 or 4 weeks or so I’ve been making some on page tweaks for keywords that we should rank for, implementing all the keyword recommendations, and getting “A’s” in the report card for page optimization in the Pro tool, and also doing things like fixing a bunch of 404’s that I found ….so I thought I was doing a bang up job…
My rankings for some keywords were generally trending (slowly) in the right direction, but this morning I see that 2 important keywords that I had been working hard on, and which had trended from around 40 to in the high 20’s in rankings, has now dropped out of top 50 altogether….
I’m a little dispirited, and now wondering if I did something wrong? Any thoughts or recommendations? Is it normal just to drop out of top 50 when you were in the 20's or 30's?
Thanks!
-
Normal. Don't be surprised if you are 15 tomorrow and in the 60's next week. Think of your rankings as being like the weather. Right now the trend is weather getting warmer, but some days it will be really hot and some days it will storm and get cold. Overall these are just flukes in the general pattern. Your rankings will do the same types of fluctuations. Only get concerned if your rankings drop and they stay there for over a month.
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
-
Can lost pages be redirected with a 301 in order to do not lost keyword rankings?
Hi, I have got a website and some posts rank well, but I am not so interested in keep them for branding reasons. So I planned to do 301 redirects to home and remove those contents. Is it ok? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | patrizia_h0 -
Microsite and main website alternate in rankings
Hi all, I just noticed a potential issue with our websites. We have two ecommerce websites, one is a very large one selling all sorts of products, while the microsite focuses on a small segment of products. All products sold on the microsite are also sold on the main website. In the beginning of September, we upgraded the microsite to the same script that the main website uses to make it mobile friendly and update the design. They now look very similar. Before, both websites used to rank on page 1 for a specific keyword. I have noticed that since we upgraded the microsite, the two websites have been taking turns ranking for the keyword. For a few weeks the microsite ranks and the main website doesn't rank for the keyword. Then for a few weeks only the main website ranks and the microsite doesn't. I think the reason this is happening is that Google understands that the content is the same and the websites are both owned by the same company. Fair enough. I remember reading an article about this phenomenon before but can't remember where. Does anyone know which article I'm talking about (it would have been on an SEO blog/website, e.g. Moz, SEJ, SE Roundtable etc)? I'm not even sure what this phenomenon is called. If we can only have one of the pages rank, we would prefer it to be the microsite at all times. Would a canonical tag on the main website referring to the URL on the microsite fix this? I think at the moment the product descriptions are either very similar or identical. Would it help to make them more different to get both to rank again if that is what we wanted to do? In the end it is still the same product being sold by the same company - after Google has already sort of merged the two, would they "un-merge" them if the content was more different? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | ViviCa10 -
Word count and ranking/traffic
Hello All, Recently, a client of ours enlisted another firm to redesign their website, www.thepodhotel.com. The new site went live on February 20th. Since that date, we have seen a 30% drop in Google Organic traffic, year-over-year. Even a cursory glance at the site will tell you that there was quite a bit left on the table, from an SEO point of view. However, my question pertains to word count. The word count on the new site is quite a bit lower than the old site. How much value do you feel this has on rankings? Do you feel that, among the many other items that need to be addressed, we should be focusing on creating more copy? I appreciate all of your input. Frank
On-Page Optimization | | FrankSweeney0 -
How on earth does this rank?
Hi Everyone, Im speaking to someone about doing decent SEO, follwing the basics and not doing dodgy stuff for the short term. He is a driving instructor trying to rank for driving lessons peterborough (this is in the uk) and one of the websites coming out towards the top of serps is ian-rayner.com/index.htm. Its got no links, no social signs, has a page labelled SEO Stuff with a whole list of keywords and internal links back to his home page. It has a Domain authority of 11 and page authority of 1 !!! Is it because no one is following the basics and uncompetitive that its ranking or is he doing something other than a few keywords in the content, meta title and description, and a internal links that im missing?
On-Page Optimization | | Ant710 -
Are Meta-keywords coming back?
I'm currently doing some benchmarking for a big realtor site here in México, while looking at the biggest players in the US I noticed most if not all are using the Keywords meta tag in their detail listings. I've been really open to my client about not using this tag at all given the current common knowledge but when sites like: Trulia.com, Realtor.com, appartments.com and the like, are using them I'm second guessing their utility. Does anyone have any insights on this? Should or should not we use meta-keywords? On a side note, there is some interesting microdata going on, in those sites.
On-Page Optimization | | makote1 -
Do pages with fewer headings rank higher?
I've found several good quality, high ranking pages with excellent content, 500 to 1000 words. These pages are made by people who obviously know what they're doing. These pages only have one headline the h1 at the top of the page. Some of the sites use CSS div boxes and other things to make text look like a heading but do not have h2 or h3 tags or bigger font size. Could it be that a single headline tells Google that this page is about a single topic and that several sub headings muddy the water and so reduce page rank. Do multiple headings or subheadings affect page rank or is it just a personal style choice?
On-Page Optimization | | PhilipGledhill0 -
Content Tabs and Keyword Stuffing
I am in the process of drawing up content templates to guide my company's marketing team in creating SEO optimized content as we move over our retail website to a new platform. On each product page, we will have multiple tabs that are crawl-able, each one containing different chunks of information on the products. Within each tab, I was thinking of breaking up the content and adding SEO value by using headers (h2 or h3) that have a keyword included. So, for example: "How The PRODUCT NAME Works" and "User Manuals for your PRODUCT NAME." Between the multiple tabs, in headers alone, the main keyword for the product (which will usually be the product name) will be on the page 7 times. Between this and the keywords that are part of the actual content (ex: product description), is this too many keyword instances? I know headers are often skimmed or skipped when used to simply break up the content, so I don't think they will impact user experience too much. However, I would love some feedback on if you agree with that and if you think I should cut down on the number of keywords or if I am headed in the right direction. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Marketing.SCG0 -
Keyword use in meta description
Anyone know if its important that the target keyword is used AT THE START of the meta description, or is it enough that it is anywhere in the description...? I have a few big ones that are at the end of the description and I was wondering if I should move them up to the front... Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0