Tracking keyword progress

[daxvirgo]

hello again

thanks v much for your answers last night - very enlightening!

this morning i've taken to my ritual of manually searching my keyword progress thru google - i know you can do it thru seomoz pro tools - but the rankings don't ever seem to be the right number (a good estimate tho)

my question - after a nice period of progress - i've lost some ground on keywords - can i track the loss in ground against my SEO endevours? ie - last week i didnt do as much social stuff as previous weeks - does google's algorithm work that quickly?

ie- daily/weekly etc?

cheers

[daxvirgo]

pretty competitive - the likes of

corporate video

video production

web video

and variations of the above

it seems to be the same pages (my home page in the main - most of my link building has been to my home page)

[DougRoberts]

How competitive are the keywords you're targeting? IS what you're seeing in the SERPS just the same pages fluctuating positions or are you seeing new pages appearing?

[daxvirgo]

appreciate the feedback Doug

it's a weekly rather than a daily ritual at the moment - but i get your point..

i noticed on another post on here for today that the UK might have had a Panda update over the weekend (that would help explain the dip i've seen this morning)

i'm starting to regard the fluctuations like the rising and falling tides - that what it feels like!

cheers

[DougRoberts]

When you're checking your ranking manually, are you ruling out things like personalisation?

I wouldn't get too hung up about small changes in your ranking reports. Remember that different people are likely to be seeing their SERPS differently anyway.

Manually checking the ranking position of email a small number of keywords can be hard work - something that is much better left to tools, and being consistent about the tool you use means your can identify trends better rather than being confused by variations in tools/methodology.

Remember there are lots of different factors that contibute to your ranking and it's more than likely that you'll experience some fluctuations while you're working to promote your pages against your chosen keywords.

Keep an activity diary and look for patterns/results in the SERPS, but remember that your actions are unlikely to result in an instant change in the SERPS.

One ranking factor is "freshness" and depending on the type of content this can cause some surpises if you're not looking out for it. I've seen "new" content rank highly for a few days before drifing down the SERPS. Of course someone else's fresh content can bump your slightly more stale content down the rankings for a while...

So, I wouldn't fall in the trap of checking your ranking daily, expect some fluctuation but focus on the trends over time and make sure you're keeping an eye on the traffic keywords are sending you vs. expected traffic.

Hope this helps.