Why has my keyword dropped and risen so much in only 7 days?

[bendyman]

Sorry if this question is really obvious (or unanswerable) but my client asked me for an explanation and as a relative SEO 'noob' I couldn't really answer them.

The client's site http://www.solentlep.org.uk/ dropped 29 places for the keyword LEP last week (all the other keywords had small rises and falls) and then this week has jumped back up the same 29 places. I made no changes to the site in the 7 period (as I hadn't worked out what to change) and although everything is fine now I'd still like to let the client know what caused the blip, or is it one of those things that 'nobody knows'.

[bendyman]

Thanks Mark.

[Martin_Harris]

Thanks Mark

[Mark_Ginsberg]

Make sure you check out Dr. Pete's post on the blog here - it's not just you experiencing it

[Mark_Ginsberg]

As the other people already responded, there is a lot of fluctuation in the SERPs on a regular basis.

A few things come to mind

1. Google could be trying out different landing pages for the term - it may be your homepage was blocked and so they showed an inner page, but much further down.
2. This fluctuation seems to be happening every few months, where the site gets downgraded temporarily and then recovers - see the attached image
3. Have you been having site connectivity issues - any messages in webmaster tools?

Hope this helps,

Mark

3Ulbs.png

[Martin_Harris]

I also have notices sporadic jumps in search traffic, not just daily but hourly. One keyword keeps going back and forth 3-5 search position.

[lethal0r]

im getting a lot of daily movement on a couple of my sites. up and down all the time, not seen the rankings change so frequently before.

[Muhammad-Isap]

I can't answer this, but exactly the same thing has happened to me, last week... over 100 keywords improved significantly, now... roughly 100 keywords have plummeted and are no longer in the 'Top 50' - nothing has changed, we've never used spammy link practices, we just rely on insightful news and good PR.

I have to say, I'm worried.