Keyword Ranking Fluctuations
-
Hi Guys
I am currently working on a website where one of the keyword targets is fluctuating.
The keyword is fluctuating between page 2 and page 5.
What makes this strange is that we are not experiencing the issue with any other keyword targets.
They are all ranking fine. It is only 1 keyword.
The keyword target happens to be the main homepage keyword target - not sure if this makes a difference?
The homepage targets 2 keyword e.g. Business Offices & Accessories.
The homepage ranks perfectly fine for e.g. Business Accessories but is fluctuating for e.g. Business Offices! Very strange.
What makes it even stranger - the keyword variations of the fluctuating keyword e.g. office for business - these variations are all fine and not fluctuating. Its only 1 keyword.
If anyone has any ideas or feedback that would be great!
Thanks, Duncan
-
There are a few different things this could be, none of which are that much cause for concern, thankfully.
Some questions to ask:
- Where are you seeing the rankings fluctuate? In the Google interface? In a ranking tool? In multiple tools? Since Google is testing things all the time and results are more and more personalized, it's pretty common to see keyword fluctuations, especially in rank tracking tools. I would check the keyword in a second ranking tool, and also Google it in a private window, to see if you can duplicate the results - if not, it may be a quirk of the tool and not of the rankings.
- Along those same lines - do you see your organic traffic to that page fluctuate along with the fluctuations in ranking? Since you're on page 2, you may not be getting a ton of traffic from that specific term, but it's worth checking on.
- If that's not the case and the rankings really are fluctuating, what other changes can you note in the SERPs during the changes? One example from my own life: I had a client who was targeting a term that Google seemed to be trying to figure out whether or not it was appropriate to show local/localized results. The presence or absence of that local pack changed that SERP a lot.
Ranking fluctuations like this are pretty common, especially once you drop off the first page. If it's not seriously impacting your traffic or conversions, I wouldn't be too concerned about it. Your best defense here is a good offense - try to bolster that page's rankings and authority to get it on page 1. I know that's easier said than done, but it's a lot easier to deal with ranking fluctuations when they're between spot 4 and spot 7, instead of page 2 and page 5.
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
-
Targeting several keywords at once.
Curious how some of you are able to target several keywords on one same page, for instance for the page www.tutoroo.co/arabic-tutor-dubai we aim to rank first on Google for keywords such as "Arabic tutor" and "Arabic teacher" but also for "learn Arabic" or "learning Arabic". How do you rank up number 1 for several phrase keywords without jeopardizing current rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicolasvhe1 -
Page rank and menus
Hi, My client has a large website and has a navigation with main categories. However, they also have a hamburger type navigation in the top right. If you click it it opens to a massive menu with every category and page visible. Do you know if having a navigation like this bleeds page rank? So if all deep pages are visible from the hamburger navigation this means that page rank is not being conserved to the main categories. If you click a main category in the main navigation (not the hamburger) you can see the sub pages. I think this is the right structure but the client has installed this huge menu to make it easier for people to see what there is. From a technical SEO is this not bad?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AL123al0 -
How to get more keyword ideas
I am trying to get more keyword ideas for one of my project. For example the seed keyword is computer virus and the results which i get is keywords related to the phrase computer virus such as virus in computer , virus threats but actually i am trying to get search details on actual threat names or types of viruses and i expect output such as malware, trojan etc.. ( Currently using ad words keyword planner to fetch keyword data ) Is there any way to achieve this ? Even if i use "types of computer viruses" as seed keyword i am not getting the types of viruses people searching for instead i get keywords ideas such as computer viruses, computer threats etc... ? Can somebody suggest a solution ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NortonSupportSEO0 -
Why does some sites rank with no seo
Why is it that some site rank with zero efforts? I have been working on some seo for a while on my main site and i have been getting more info competition analysis with sem and moz. Looking at the states from this website which tends to popup often in the searches on page 1-2 before my site. This site is not keyword optimized, meaning they arent even trying to rank.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CooperStrzelecki
There is no content, articles etc.,
6 backlinks (nothing powerful just 2 directory links and 2 from developer)
Site really isnt even designed to get traffic as its a trade only ecommerce website
I doubt they are hiding anything as far as backlinks etc. as it will get them too many visitors they dont want
The city i am searching isnt even on the page (it is a city within a city so maybe google still relates it)
PA 24 DA 15 Now my site:
Optimized reasearched keywords
175 backlinks
All my main pages have content with images, alt tags, internal linking
full of content, blogs, videos, products (probably 4000, could a site being too big be an issue?)
Site gets regular updates
I probably have 200 citations
All the social media which gets done often
PA 32 DA 20 They do get a good bit of traffic but that is probably the only thing i would see but it would be direct traffic mostly i believe as it would be people going to order regularly since it is a print reseller. They may have some age on me 15 vs 8 years. Could it be some kind of penalty i am not sure about lingering? According to what i know to check everyything looks ok, no shady links accoding to sem. I am working more and more on all the pages but this competittion site really doesnt have crap going on probably 8 pages and 1 page does all the ordering. What the hell does google want from me exactly!0 -
Discrepancy in keyword ranking from webmasters and actual ranking.
I have been tracking ranks of some keywords important to my business since the last 2 months. Recently I have observed that, for one of my keywords, google webmasters is giving the avg position as 8 but when i search in google it comes in the 6th page. I know that webmasters tools gives the average position but i do not think there will be such big difference in the ranks. Please help.Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seomoz12320 -
Why isnt this site ranking?
I just took over for a site and noticed they have no presence for any keywords...not even low ranks. Their backlink profile is not the best, but webmaster tools says they have no manual actions. vonderhaar.com Thoughts on the matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Help - Lost Ranking - What did I screw up?!
Hi, We're working with a local service provider with a location specific keyword (not a real example: "orlando plumbing contractors"). Background:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AaronHenry
In recent history the client updated a new site design and upgraded from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 2.5. Of course there were duplicate content issues which have been resolved with the help of AceSEF. Duplicate content, title tags, and other content issues are handled as soon as they appear in GWT or MOZ. Additionally, a high number of backlinks were lost when the latest Google update hit. Many of these sites were of sites that no longer existed or were spammy and flushed out. Some were lost due to the previous SEO firm literally removing backlinks and switching them to their new client (seo firm was putting all of the work the client paid for under their name to control everything). Current Situation: The backlink loss seems to have been stopped (hopefully) because we are using a new strategy that relies solely on the quality of the links, surrounding text, varied anchor text, relevancy, etc.) However, we tried an experiment on just one of the clients keywords. That experiment seems to have blown up in our faces evidently. The landing page for the location specific keyword has dropped from the index completely (it seems), but only when searching broad. When using exact match with quotes like the example quoted above ("orlando plumbing contractors") the landing page appears, but several ranks lower. We were ranked yesterday 6/23/13, but as of today 6/24/13 are no longer ranked. On broad matches, non-relevant sites and even a site that shows only a broken server configuration is outranking the client (they appear for the broad search, but the client does not). What Was Done
We recently created a press release for and posted it on a press release site. We then created a link back to the landing page (exact match anchor text). We posted the PR article to several social sites (Google plus, folkd, delicious, twitter, stumble upon, diigo). We also created a blog article (on-site) on site for that, creating links back to the landing page (the links all had exact anchor text). We posted that blog article to social news sites (facebook, stumble, delicious) and included a ping. The PR article was manually rewritten and posted to the PR site (we had to make 2 versions of the PR; one for the blog and one for the PR site). The Result
The client ending up dropping off the broad search rankings, but only slipped a few for "exact match" (with quotes). The PR article that was created is now ranked on page 3 for the board keyword and is still beat by non working sites. We suspect that the exact anchor text could be causing this problem. Anyone else have an idea (we're scratching our heads and trying not to freak out at the same time).0 -
How can you rank for several cities ?
I have a website design client who wishes to rank for several cities they are willing to service locally. I have seen a competitor do this, Main-site.com/web-design content all about web design subcategories main-site.com/web-design/city-name-website-designer Content about web design plus content about the city itself and hiring a website designer in that city main-site.com/web-design/next-city-name-website-designer Content about web design plus content about the next city itself and hiring a website designer in that city Is this a great strategy, it seems to be working for them, or will Google eventually penalize this ? Or would you just put all 4 city names in the title and descriptions and content on one page ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlane90