Volatile SERPS?
-
I have a new client whose rank is jumping around a lot. I took over the account 7 weeks ago, but they'd been doing SEO with a decent provider. They switched to me because they thought he wasn't working very hard and he's not very nice.
I just took them on in December and they started out at #18. On Dec 24 they were at 9, Jan 1 at 12, Jan 2 at 14, Jan 3 at 24, Jan 12 at 19, Jan 15 at 28, Jan 16 at 25, Jan 19 at 28 and today at 24.
Some of the really bad black hattish providers have bounced up to the top. Any idea what's going on?
-
It's important to consider that competitors may frequently make changes that impact rankings. Even if the site you're managing has been optimized and remains unchanged, competitors may be implementing various strategies behind the scenes that can affect its ranking position.
-
If the serps are volatile, it's often because of a significant Google algorithm update.
Also, check if your business has incurred a Google manual penalty or not. An SEO agency can check this for you.
-
We're tracking 5 phrases. Two have improved and two are static, but this free-falling one is our most important.
They are very deficient in backlinks. The competition started years ago, and even the previous SEO guy, according to ahrefs, got only 36 links in a whole year. We can't beat the competition on total links, but I can beat them on higher quality. I'm a part of the local blogging community and have done a ton of work with local non-profits.
Even so, it seems more volatile than it should. A competitor jumped 8 positions whose top link is from a parked domain page advertising porn sites. Not a single quality link according to ahrefs.
Then I saw this thread in webmaster world talking about some glitchiness and wondered if anyone else had seen it. https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4880306.htm
-
Also keep in mind the competition may be changing things frequently. Even if the site you're managing has been optimized and it's just sitting there without additional changes, competitors may be doing all sorts of things in the background, affecting rank.
-
are you tracking one keyword?
if it's a competitive niche, then SERP fluctuations behind the first page are not uncommon.
tbh it looks more like the website is losing positions rather than jumping around.
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
-
Is anyone aware about a tool that can be used for tracking YouTube video ranking on SERP & YouTube?
I am looking for a tool that can track ranking position of a YouTube video on SERP and YouTube. An example would be, Suppose I have a video X. I want to know the position of the video for keywords A,B,C on SERP and YouTube. Do let me know your inputs.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SameerBhatia0 -
Author Byline in Page Title in SERP
I was exploring my company's visibility in Google News results, and I noticed the author byline in a recently published article was being pulled into the page title in the SERP. See the attached image for a screenshot. It makes it sound awkward: "How to Find the Best Cannabis Experience and High for You Patrick..." - as if we're explaining it to some guy named Patrick? We have the byline the same way in all other posts, but this is the first I've seen this happen. Has anyone seen/had this happen, and if so, have any ways to prevent it? Thanks in advance for any insights! Here's the post URL: https://www.leafly.com/news/cannabis-101/how-to-find-best-cannabis-experience-high csvmF
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davidkaralisjr0 -
Is it possible to get job pages in the SERPs to compete against the likes on Monster and Indeed?
Is it possible to get job pages in the SERPs to compete against the likes on Monster and Indeed? I'm looking to build specific pages for jobs that are posted on our website, but I feel it's a tough challenge for any site to compete? Are there better options?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hughescov0 -
Other domains hosted on same server showing up in SERP for 1st site's keywords
For the website in question, the first domain alphabetically on the shared hosting space, strange search results are appearing on the SERP for keywords associated with the site. Here is an example: A search for "unique company name" shows the results: www.uniquecompanyname.com as the top result. But on pages 2 and 3, we are getting results for the same content but for domains hosted on the same server. Here are some examples with the domain name replaced: UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Motava
ftp.DOMAIN2.com/?action=news&id=63
META DESCRIPTION TEXT UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
www.DOMAIN3.com/?action=news&id=120
META DESCRIPTION TEXT2 UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
www.DOMAIN4.com/?action=news&id=120
META DESCRIPTION TEXT2 UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 3
mail.DOMAIN5.com/?action=category&id=17
META DESCRIPTION TEXT3 ns5.DOMAIN6.com/?action=article&id=27 There are more but those are just some examples. These other domain names being listed are other customer domains on the same VPS shared server. When clicking the result the browser URL still shows the other customer domain name B but the content is usually the 404 page. The page title and meta description on that page is not displayed the same as on the SERP.As far as we can tell, this is the only domain this is occurring for.So far, no crawl errors detected in Webmaster Tools and moz crawl not completed yet.0 -
Schema markup in SERP in s ome languages but not in English. Any suggestions?
I have schema markup on a category page and on a product page on a website in 10 languages. Product page markup is showing in google SERP in all languages (both star rating, number of votes). Category page markup is showing very inconsistently. For English google SERP do not pick it up at all. For Spanish and German they are showing completely in SERP (votes, minimum price), for other languages, just part of makrup (minimum price) is shown in google SERP. In rich snippet tool they show up correctly in all languages. Any suggestion what can be done to get schema of category page picked up more consistently? Any experience of other markup formats than schema being picked up better? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0 -
Cross-linking domains dominate SERP?
Hi, I have been doing some keyword research and noticed two domains properly linking back to each other for almost every piece of content. I thought this was not working any longer but it looks like it works for them. For many competitive keywords, they rank in top 10, and even for some keywords, they rank #1 and #2. PA and DA not more than 36-38. With 3-4 linking root domains, these pages manage to rank in top 10. And the second strategy they have, is to create alternative text to rank for a number of different long-tail-keywords. Seperate pages targeting seperate keywords and the only difference between them is slightly modified text and images. Third is possibly the best, their second domain is an exact match domain name for most keywords linked to this industry. On some SERP's, they have 8-10 results in top 30. SEMRUSH shows %500 growth for both of these domains. So, I guess I should just sit and admire them.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gamer070 -
Old Redirecting Website Still Showing In SERPs
I have a client, a plumber, who bought another plumbing company (and that company's domain) at one point. This other company was very old and has a lot of name recognition so they created a dedicated page to this other company within their main website, and redirected the other company's old domain to that page. This has worked fine, in that this page on the main site is now #1 when you search for the other old company's name. But for some reason the old domain comes up #2 (despite the fact that it's redirecting). Now, I could understand if the redirect had only been set up recently, but I'm reasonably sure this happened about a year ago. Could it be due to the fact that there are many sites out there still linking to that old domain? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VTDesignWorks1 -
Help Needed - 301 a .co.uk to a .com Serp Questions
Hey, really need some help deciding what to do... I have a .co.uk site, its my oldest and best site of my network and accounts for maybe 30-40% of my income. Although its a .co.uk site, it actually makes most of its from from USA traffic and targets many terms for the US market - but the problem is that due to it being a .co.uk it doesnt rank as well in G .com and over the last few years Google has defiantly widened the gap as such for the ability for a .co.uk to rank in G .com. Many terms that I used to be #1 for in G .com, I now rank position 5-10 only, but in G .co.uk I'm #1 and often with a duo listing so I wouldnt put the loss of rankings in G .com down to just losing rankings naturally. Now many of my key pages are gradually losing rankings in G .com which is not good and really frustrating Feedback Needed So my dilemma is do I risk my best site and 301 it to a .com hosted in the US for potential at a guess 50% increase in revenues and more future potential (If the 301 worked well and got some US rankings back - Im sure longtail would increase lots too) ? If people with experience with 301ing sites to a new domain could let me know how they did or if you're an SEO and have done this many times, how many times on average has Serps remained stable / unchanged ? Trying to work out the reward to risk ratio, like on average if the transition is seamless 90% of the time it would seem worth the gamble, but if its 50% then I would say its not worth it.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | goody2shoes0