Page 1 all of a sudden for two clients

[lfrazer]

Hello,

So, for many months, a couple of my clients have had a handful of terms that they were ranking for on Page 2. All of a sudden in the past month, both clients have moved up to Page 1, #2 for most of their terms. I have been working on some optimization tests and made minor changes, but I am concerned because the consistency of the #2 position for both clients for all of the previously Page 2 ranking keywords.

I have seen this type of Google increase for clients before, and my experience has shown that it is a test from Google-so, from Google's perspective: "we're going to move your rankings up to Page 1 and see what you do with this to prove to us that your site is worth the position". Anyone had any experience with this kind of movement?

Thanks so much in advance..

[BruceA]

I would doubt that this is a test, but this is driven by other metrics.

Positions rises and fall initially and then settle, so this could be the result of your hard work.  If this was me and I was unsure as to why this has happened, I would also stop any further tweaks until I have seen how static these positions become, otherwise you will not be able to see what environmental changes have effected any future change.

Keywords can be very volatile for many reasons, seasonality, competition, trend etc.  So it is worth doing more research on what theses results mean and find out as much as you can as what factors have influenced this positive change and be able to explain what has happened.

Positions change like the weather so nothing is permenant in site ranks, so work will still nee dto be done to maintain the positions, but knowing what why and how is key to this future maintenance

Bruce

[lfrazer]

Thanks so much Bruce.

[Rich_Coffman]

Its guesswork, I've seen algo updates raise client's website traffic and it sticks - other times it drops back after a week or two.

One of the recent patents purchased by Google was essentially to be able to change a websites' serp rank seemingly at random - specifically with SEOs in mind. Speculation says it's to possibly see how the SEO responds to the change - I would assume this is not the case and it's just minor updates that are jumping your ranks.

I'd consider it a bonus for being awesome but since it jumped up I would not be surprised if it fell back down - also for no particular reason.