Higher rank created a quick boost but it didn't last..
-
I made a few changes to my website which bumped it up to 3rd place for the main keyword and brought it up to the first page for some of the other keywords. I saw a spike in traffic and conversions for 2 days, but now it went down significantly again. How can I research the cause of this?
-
Great question....
SEOs must become comfortable with "dealing with uncertainty".
Search engines don't reveal how they rank websites so the best thing that you can do is to study what they do reveal, study the opinions of trusted SEOs (such as the guides and articles on SEOmoz), and ask questions in a forum like this one.
Most important, you must study continuously to stay up-to-date.
Keep in mind that much of the advice that you will receive will be wrong and don't trust advice that is very old.
Most of the decisions that I make on running my site are made with a level of uncertainty. However, before I make major moves I communicate with a few people that I trust to hear their opinions.
Remember, it is not how many people agree it is who you are listening to - and even they are wrong some of the time.
-
Take stats, dont panic and move too fast, let your results steady before you move again.
-
How do I know if what I'm doing is right or wrong then?
-
SEO work takes variable amounts of time to produce results.
PR7 links are followed daily... PR1 links are followed infrequently. Your site might not be crawled often.
So, SEO work could produce results within 48 hours or it could take a month or more.
Pay attention to your work and less to your rankings.
-
Thank you - so generally how long should I wait to see accurate results from the SEO work that I did? Also, are there test environments for keyword ranking? I'm always a little nervous making a change, fearing that its going to produce the opposite effect.
-
Sit tight.
Google has thousands of servers responding to queries and new data (rankings) can take time to propagate.
Also, Google usually has several percent of their servers returning experimental data.
By this time next week you should have a better idea of what is happening.
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
-
Seeing some really bad sites that ranked in my niche years ago reaching 1st page
It started after the update about 4 websites form the 1st page dropped to the 2nd and 4 of the other sites just popped back to the 1st page and the bad part is that the Da and inbound links of these sites are really bad, so my question is must we just wait this out till Google realises how bad these site are and some of them haven't been updated in years links broken i can go on and on. what these sites have is just the age of the domains, but can this really be the main focus of these results?
Algorithm Updates | | johan80 -
Should I document rankings from an Incognito Window?
Mozzers, what are your thoughts on documenting SEO results from an incognito window? Does anyone have any articles they can recommend that talk about this subject? Is it better to document results from the normal window or from an incognito window?
Algorithm Updates | | TaylorRHawkins1 -
Ranking For Synonyms Without Creating Duplicate Content.
We have 2 keywords that are synonyms we really need to rank for as they are pretty much interchangeable terms. We will refer to the terms as Synonym A and Synonym B. Our site ranks very well for Synonym A but not for Synonym B. Both of these terms carry the same meaning, but the search results are very different. We actively optimize for Synonym A because it has the higher search volume of the 2 terms. We had hoped that Synonym B would get similar rankings due to the fact that the terms are so similar, but that did not pan out for us. We have lots of content that uses Synonym A predominantly and some that uses Synonym B. We know that good content around Synonym B would help, but we fear that it may be seen as duplicate if we create a piece that’s “Top 10 Synonym B” because we already have that piece for Synonym A. We also don’t want to make too many changes to our existing content in fear we may lose our great ranking for Synonym A. Has anyone run into this issue before, or does anyone have any ideas of things we can do to increase our position for Synonym B?
Algorithm Updates | | Fuel0 -
Long term rankings drop after swapping primary domain
Hey...this is my first post on Moz so please go easy on me! I've recently been baffled by the ranking behavior of a domain I do SEO for. In short, the primary domain was "musashispicymayo.com". After several months of SEO efforts and a really solid PR run the site managed to run up to #1 for several target keywords. For the purposes of this question I'd like to focus on the term "spicy mayo". "Musashispicymayo.com" was steadily climbing for as far back as page 5 until it ultimately reached #1 rank on Google for "spicy mayo". We also had another domain "musashifoods.com" which was originally 301 redirecting to "Musashispicymayo.com". About 3 months ago (shortly after acquiring the top ranking) the client wanted to reverse the domains so we started using "musashifoods.com" as the primary and redirecting "musashispicymayo.com" to that. In summary:
Algorithm Updates | | Andy-Twizen
ORIGINALLY: musashifoods.com 301 redirect -> musashispicymayo.com
NOW: musashispicymayo.com 301 redirect -> musashifoods.com At the time of the swap I did the following: Redirected the domain using a 301 via htaccess (made sure "www" requests are forwarded too) Created a new Google analytics account / webmaster account for "musashifoods.com" Went into my old webmaster tools account and used the change of address tool In the new webmaster tools account i submitted a sitemap and requested a crawl of the new domain Ensured the new primary domain was properly configured and all pages had the correct urls in the source code Verified that Google has updated their index and "musashifoods.com" now shows in the results. Now of course musashispicymayo has the keyword in the domain but I find it hard to believe that that is what caused such a dramatic and swift drop in rankings. In fact a good portion of the backlinks actually point to "musashifoods.com"...Did I miss something else here? Does Google penalize you for reversing 301 redirects like that instead of just using a new domain altogether? Let me know if I can provide any additional info that would help clarify...any advice is greatly appreciated!0 -
Why some sites doesn't get ranked in Google but in Bing and Yahoo
Few of my sites e.g. Business-Training-Schools.com and Ultrasoundtechnicians.com doesnt get much visits from Google but these sites get top ranked in Bing and Yahoo. I have tried searching for answer to these question but i did not find anything convincing.
Algorithm Updates | | HQP2 -
Poor rankings in Bing/Yahoo
Hello, A site I'm working on ranks well in Google, but does poorly in Bing/Yahoo. Is there anything I should look at? Thanks,
Algorithm Updates | | PLP0 -
Dramatic ranking shifts
I’m starting to notice some interesting behavior in Google rankings. It seems like most days, rankings move around but movements are relatively small. Then, maybe once or twice a month, there are days (like today) where everything seems to shift around in more dramatic fashion. I don’t know if it’s algorithm updates, or maybe they do light crawls every day and heavy crawls a few times a month..?? anybody have any idea what is behind these big waves of ranking changes?
Algorithm Updates | | znotes0 -
Some rankings fluctuate dramatically
Hi guys, just a quick query this one. For one of our keywords, the rankings are fluctuating wildly. One week we went up 32 spots, then the next friday we were down 28. Nothing dramatic was being done to the site, I have not been trying to "force" any rankings instead focusing on just making our content better. It just seems odd that one week we're on page one, then a few days later we're down on page four. It seems impossible to actually maintain a reliable ranking. I know to expect some fluctuation but every week it's up 20/30, then down 20/30 the next. How can we try to give this keyword some stability? Ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | JetBookMike0
