Slooooow motion SEO impact

[SteveOllington]

I could do with some help if anyone's got a minute.

We've got this one client, no matter what we did (and we worked very hard on this site), nothing would really move. You'd get the usual fluctuations, and maybe some very small progress at times. This went on for an age... much, much longer than usual (and it wasn't even that competitive for keywords).

Then suddenly, "Bam!" it shot up like a rocket for all it's main keywords and has stayed there since... more or less (and this was over a year ago). It was as if all the work we'd been doing was building up behind a door and then the door flew open so it could take affect.

Anyway... it seems to be happening again, just to a different client with a different website (at least I hope that's what's happening or it might just stay non-affected by anything we do forever).

We've checked everything. There's no crawling problems, again it's not all that competitive, the site already has some pretty good trust and authority, and it already ranks well for a bunch of stuff. The site and pages have plenty of age behind them too.

Any ideas?

[CraigAddyman]

Well done first of all, result!

What was the age of the domain?

Otherwise was it around the time of any major updates? It could have been one of the many minor changes to the algo that could have just tipped the balance for you?

[SteveOllington]

Well it was a while back but no I'm pretty sure there was no major updates.

Both domains, the first one it happened to, and this one date back to around 2000.

I just need to figure something out because I hate having to send reports to the client that make it look like we're doing nothing.

There's just got to be something... it's so weird, like a kink in the hosepipe or something lol

[EGOL]

Once something becomes predictable it can be manipulated.

Google is getting tired of being manipulated         

If I was Google I would be adding a random delay on the impact of any possible SEO action that is used to promote the rankings of a website.

It would shut down a lot of the bragging that SEOs are inclined to indulge in.

[CraigAddyman]

Yea strange one although I have seen it take month myself with very little improvement and then rapid growth.

At least you can use this as an example to the new client

Good luck man.

[SteveOllington]

Hmm, I hadn't thought of that. You think there might be something in the algorithm to literally target sites at random? Seems a bit unethical of Google as it affects business but I guess there's not a lot we could ever do about it... and they're probably right to do it in the sense that it's for the greater good.

Would you say it is likely that it is another delay like the first one then?

I mean, have you ever SEO'd something for 3 months and seen literally nothing happen from it. It's really been that long now. All other clients have been fine, just this one and the one a year ago. Do you think there could be a chance that it will never move?

[CraigAddyman]

Erm well I guess it depends on how dominant and broad the keywords your going after are.

Are you tracking long tail and still seeing no results?

Comparing to a pre seo report you'd expect to see at least something.

[SteveOllington]

Yeah it's hardly competitive at all, that's what's so strange about it. Maybe I just have to wait it out... I hope so anyway.

[bemcapaz]

Im currently working on two sites. One in a very low competitive keyword and other in a mid competitive keyword.

Whats hapenning is, in the mid competitive keyword site, everything SEO related that I do end up taking effect really quick, the longer I have to wait to see new links showing up or see my changes taking effect is 24 hours.

However in the low competitive keyword site the opposite seems to happen. I change things, create links, but those changes seem to not take any effect.

Maybe those slow motion SEO would be related to the keyword in question, at least, If i were google I would focus my computacional power on the more searched keywords since this is what will reach the biggest ammount of users and so, what will make Google be seen as a good or bad search engine, also would let the keywords with few searchs have their rank updated once a month (or more).

[SteveOllington]

That makes some good sense too. Thanks Bemcapaz. I'll dig around a bit and see if I can find anything on that