Rankings Bouncing Weekly

[Millermore]

I have a client who ranks well for a number of keywords. This week we have about 20 keywords in the top ten on Google that we're tracking. But every week it seems, the keywords bounce around quite a bit. This week, for example, we had at least 15 keywords out of the ~90 we're tracking jump between 30 to 40 spots. The most any keywords increased was 43, a few 42s and 41s, in one week. Next week, they'll go down a few, then bounce up again just like this. This has been happening for a while. I'm trying to figure out what the issue is.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

It's not uncommon for keywords in certain verticals to jump around a lot. Watch this video on Dave Naylor's blog: http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/google-secret-santa-search-results.html

But jumping around 30-40 spots seems like quite a bit. If this were happening I'd be suspicious of a couple of things:

• Are the keywords in an extremely competitive vertical with lots of competition and moving around? A jump of 30-40 in the "payday loan" category would be common.
• Are the backlinks on the edge of what would be considered white-hat? Sometimes Google rolls out an algorithm update and tweaks it for several weeks after. During this time its not uncommon to see sites rise up and down dramatically
• Is the vertical a news type site in which the queries are sometimes falling under the QDF (query deserves freshness) category? This could shake things up quite a bit.

Finally, I'd check to see what traffic was actually doing. If rankings were changing but overall search visibility stayed the same, it could be just Google trying to figure out the best results to serve, while recognizing the overall authority of the site.

Wish I had a more complete answer for you. Best of luck.

[Millermore]

The website is nytrafficticket.com and as I said we'll have a solid amount of keywords in the top ten, then the next week they'll drop out of the top 40, sometimes past the top 50, then the next week they'll come back to the top ten. It seems as if the Moz rankings just aren't picking up those keywords for the weeks where they drop off then come back. But if it isn't that, then I can't figure it out. If this is normal, then I suppose the next question is how do you keep your rankings in the top ten consistently, every week.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Anything in the legal category is going to be highly competitive, and this is a vertical that's been subject to a lot of turn and burn practices in the past (and it's still probably going on today) so it doesn't suprise me to see the fluxation.

In part, the fluctuation may be coming from the site's own backlink profile. There's a number of highly-optimized money keywords in that anchor text that may not be 100% editorial.

Regardless, the only way to stabilize is to rise above the competition with superior content and ranking signals of your own. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts. This means having a clean backlink profile and disavowing any links that may be harming you, checking Webmaster Tools for errors and/or messaging, and building up high-authority editorial links  to the site.

If you are on the board already, and it sounds like you are, then gaining a few positions and holding onto them shouldn't be as hard as someone just starting out. Best of luck!

[Millermore]

Thanks Cyrus. I hear what you're saying, I'm just confused as to why Google would allow us on the first page for so many keywords every other week if we had so many bad links? My understanding was more that you have rankings, and you hold those rankings unless a competitor comes and overtakes you, or if you get penalized by Google. I guess this is technically the latter, but if I was getting penalized I wasn't expecting to be anywhere close to the first page for my targeted keywords. I suppose I will look into cleaning up the link profile. I am also planning on switching hosts to WP Engine from our HostGator VPS as it's just too slow. Perhaps changing hosts and speeding up the load time will help a bit as well.

I'll continue to tell the client to write more content. I personally don't do any black-hat stuff, especially link-building, so I'll have to go in and see what his old SEO people did.