Can anyone explain this SERP behavior

famalam

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OK, so last year, I put in a bunch of work for my website, and I got it ranking for all of the keywords I needed. I'm a commercial photographer, so I'm competing with other people who are making small attempts at SEO, along with people who have organic, high PR backlinks, just by way of their name and talent.

Up until last month, I was on the front page, and then suddenly I noticed myself dropping off. I started putting in a bit more effort, and now something very weird is happening. I know a bit of a dance is natural, but mine is going crazy.

One minute, I'm ranking at the top for single keywords, often beating Wikipedia (confirmed with people searching in other parts of the country, and even other continents), and then the next minute the same keyword will drop to page 5. I had one long tail drop to page 80 from page one, and then a day later it was back on page 2. This has been going on for over three weeks now, and it's starting to confuse me.

Strangely, two keywords seem to be sticking fast, but the others don't seem to have any particular logic to how much they're bouncing up and down the rankings.

Is there anyone who can explain this? Every time I've seen my SERP's dance, it hasn't lasted this long or been this erratic.

For a single keyword, I'll give you an example of SERP numbers over the last 14 days: 5, 13, 71, 51, 6, 5, 6, 54, 79, 53, 9, 9, 80, 60,

Any ideas? I thought Google Dance was a pretty short term affair.
 
You say that you're "putting in a bit more effort," what does that mean exactly?

I'm guessing that it may have triggered a velocity algorithm wherein you are buuilding more links than a site in your niche should... totally guessing though.
 
Need more info about the link strategy you are using when building links before I can comment...
 
yea that is not normal. There must be some sort of problem when you are checking. If you want send me a pm and I will figure out the problem. Does your traffic match the movements you are seeing in the serps. i.e. on the day you were ranked 80, was your traffic the lowest?
 
Link strategy is a subscription to Linkpushing.net, and mostly, just manual link building. I maintain a tumblr blog with real content as my tier 2.0, and I've mostly just gone through the entire site and optimised it. I've been doing blog updates about 3 times a week.

Traffic-wise, traffic graph is pretty spiky, but with general traffic increases on day of high SERPs.
 
OK, so last year, I put in a bunch of work for my website, and I got it ranking for all of the keywords I needed. I'm a commercial photographer, so I'm competing with other people who are making small attempts at SEO, along with people who have organic, high PR backlinks, just by way of their name and talent.

Up until last month, I was on the front page, and then suddenly I noticed myself dropping off. I started putting in a bit more effort, and now something very weird is happening. I know a bit of a dance is natural, but mine is going crazy.

One minute, I'm ranking at the top for single keywords, often beating Wikipedia (confirmed with people searching in other parts of the country, and even other continents), and then the next minute the same keyword will drop to page 5. I had one long tail drop to page 80 from page one, and then a day later it was back on page 2. This has been going on for over three weeks now, and it's starting to confuse me.

Strangely, two keywords seem to be sticking fast, but the others don't seem to have any particular logic to how much they're bouncing up and down the rankings.

Is there anyone who can explain this? Every time I've seen my SERP's dance, it hasn't lasted this long or been this erratic.

For a single keyword, I'll give you an example of SERP numbers over the last 14 days: 5, 13, 71, 51, 6, 5, 6, 54, 79, 53, 9, 9, 80, 60,

Any ideas? I thought Google Dance was a pretty short term affair.

You are not the one I had the same issue with one of my website. I also was having same ranking drops as you have.
I have changed some on-page and did anchor text diversification along with high PR backlinks. And now my website is ranking up and stick to the position.
 
For a single keyword, I'll give you an example of SERP numbers over the last 14 days: 5, 13, 71, 51, 6, 5, 6, 54, 79, 53, 9, 9, 80, 60,

OP, Let's see, I put your numbers in excel and make a chart:

See the trend? Know what that means? Sooner or later your site will RIP somewhere on 5+ page.
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Can you post your anchor text diversity based on % - this would be great to see.
eg
% of main keyord
% of variations of main keyword
% of secondary keywords
% of variations of secondary keywords
% of generic anchor texts
% of brand anchor texts
% of url type anchor texts

Also do you know your sites bounce rate? I find if your bounce rate is high you will loose rankings. If you can get your bounce rate to around 30-40% you can keep and increase your rankings.
 
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