Keyword Frequent On and Drop Off

[Kal-SEO]

Hi, I was wondering if anyone could help me.

I am currently doing SEO for a client’s site, over the past few weeks the keywords have gradually gone up steadily. One of the keywords however continues to jump on and off rankings. For a few days it will jump up to 23^rd in Google Rankings, but then it will completely drop of the radar, not even in the top 200 anymore.

I’ve gone through the site to check if there is anything wrong and stuck to guidelines offered here on SEO Moz but I’m stumped to figure it out. The Keyword has a page that helps target it, there is no stuffing, all I can think is if there are bad back-links coming in to us that Google that continues to push down the rankings.

Can anyone help shed some light on the situation for me?

[Chris.Menke]

For a page that historically been far down in the rankings and recently been optimized, that's not too unusual.  More links to the page or to the domain can help to steady it out and raise it higher in the rankings if the symptoms continue.

[Kal-SEO]

I've indexed the page and tried to naturally link it in where acceptable. But even so the page jumps up and down all over the place. Is it just a matter of time, seeing if it will stabilise or is there something I can do to try pin it in one spot (Preferable when its ranked high)? I'm really stuck at thinking what I can do to keep it from bungie jumping up and down.

[Chris.Menke]

It will just take time and patience--it can be a month or more.  Internal and external links to the page help most but they'll take a up to several months to affect the page.

[Kal-SEO]

Alright, thank you for the replies! I'll tell my clients to sit tight for now until things calm down.