Why my keyword rank fell down while I didn't do anything wrong?

[kirupa]

Hi! I just got ranking results for the past week, and I am a little bit confused about what I saw. Two weeks ago, I optimized one of my website's page for the keyword "viking appliance repair in Los Angeles" (was #43 before), and one week later I found it on the second page of Google (ranked #21). I continued working on other pages thinking that all I need to do for  "viking appliance repair in Los Angeles" to get it ranked even higher is to gain high quality inbound links. But for some reason updated ranking results I got today show this keyword fell down and now ranked #51. Could you please tell me why that might happened? What affected this keyword performance while I didn't do anything with it in between that much?

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

Week by week analysis is a great thing to have for keyword ranking but it's not something that you should be focused on. I would focus on month by month, or year over year rankings. Reason being - rankings are very volatile, they change a lot in short amounts of time due. What I would focus on is the following:

• Link build in a way that's natural and not spamming for keywords
• Develop content that's not spamming the keyword and is actually useful
• You say "Los Angeles" about 10 times, and also have sentences that make no sense: "This is why, when it comes to Viking Repair Los Angeles, only the best can be trusted to handle such high quality equipment. Luckily, iFix Appliance Repair happens to be one of those appliance repair providers who can take up the challenge of carrying out a wide variety of Viking Repair Los Angeles." - ...what?
• Build local citations / listings that help search engines target your services, location, and areas you serve

Remember, be natural as possible. It appears you're being borderline spammy. By the way you're focused on week to week rankings, it shows that you're not focused on the long term. Your strategy needs to be long term, and the resources / recommendations above will help you get farther.

Let me know if this helps! Good luck!
Patrick

[kirupa]

Hi Patrick,

Thank you very much for your response! Please take a look at my competitor's page: http://www.ez-appliancerepair.com/viking-appliance-repair-service
They have way more no sense sentences, but ranked #4 for the same keyword. They are really quite spammy at the same time. How come they benefit from spamming the keyword? Why doesn't Google see it?

[MattRoney]

Hi kirupa!

It's quite possible that spamming the keyword isn't what's helping them rank. Have you looked into their backlink profile?

[kirupa]

I have, their backlink profile is same way spammy. They use some black hat SEO methods like building a link providing wrong information. Here they used wrong zip code since business located in California are not being accepted by this marketplace: (http://www2.ljworld.com/marketplace/businesses/ez-appliance-repair/contact/)

They have 5 follow links and 22 no-follow completely irrelevant links (like those ones you acquire by posting a blog comment with a link to your company website). Nothing really impressive.

[evolvingSEO]

Just want to echo Patrick's answer. He's pretty much got the right idea. Most rankings not on page #1 will jump all around. I would only be really concerned if it dropped from page #1, down to page 4-5 etc. Also, I would also agree that you don't need to focus too much on rankings week to week - and in addition - I wouldn't focus on rankings for a single keyword too much.

To see if you have some sort of site-wide issue, I would check your Impressions in Google Console Search Analytics. See if your Impressions have dropped in the same timeframe.

I would also look to queries where you already rank page #1 - and be sure those are optimized for CTR with titles and descriptions, and then see if you can find out if users are happy with those pages - maybe with goal tracking or some sort of measurement to see if they are converting etc.

Then - really focus on "local SEO", here's some resources:

• https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors
• http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/
• http://www.evolvingseo.com/2016/03/29/005-local-seo-phil-rozek/ (disclaimer: that is my Podcast)
• https://moz.com/blog/category/local-seo
• http://blumenthals.com/blog/