4 month old website - Articles not ranking despite being indexed

[SupremeSauce]

I started a new website back in January and its a really great niche with not much competition at all. According to various keyword tools, it gets a lot of search volume too. Articles that I have had written for me recently have started ranking, some on the first page of google. However, the articles I wrote near the beginning onwards ranked for a while then dropped off the SERP completely. I checked GSC and everything is indexed and there are no penalties either. Is this just part of the sandbox period? I just find it a bit strange that some are ranking and others aren't.

Here's a screenshot from my serp tracker. As you can see, some did rank initially, but now dont at all.

 

[tazarbm]

some of those keywords are still ranking (assuming that this screenshot is current) so it's not sandbox... not the type that I know of anyway...

You could use some backlinks if you don't have them already. If you do have backlinks already (good ones I mean) and are still not ranking / being outranked you simply need more backlinks... or something about your site doesn't sit well with google, that could be too... Check your site's speed on mobile devices, check for 404 pages / broken links, check the number and quality of backlinks that your competition has and try to get the same, check your competition's content (number of words, keyword density, topics covered, etc) and try to replicate their content SEO as well... basically run some competition analysis and content audit for the sites ranking in top 5 in google and see what they do well that you can replicate, and also see what they don't do well and improve

 

[k2h2]

Now you need to add good backlinks. Add these gradually, so that it appears natural to Google.

 

[GoldenTouch]

What is your CTR and time on page for the articles that dropped in rankings?

When you don't have good numbers in these two metrics, your articles won't stand the test of time.

I see this all the time. Articles climb up to the first page but don't stay there very long.

You might want to check those two numbers and optimize the title and content to improve them.

 

[SupremeSauce]

What is your CTR and time on page for the articles that dropped in rankings?

When you don't have good numbers in these two metrics, your articles won't stand the test of time.

I see this all the time. Articles climb up to the first page but don't stay there very long.

You might want to check those two numbers and optimize the title and content to improve them.

Time on page is really good for the articles. Some of them above 10 minutes yet they are not visible on the SERP now. They showed up for a week or more then dropped off. I'm not sure if its because its a new site (4 months) or what, but its weird.