SERP jumping around

[catinhat]

Hi,

I started tracking keywords for my site using serpfox and I have seen some keywords that jump a lot up and down. Is it normal to see this kind of erratic behaviour, or is there something special going on for me?

A few examples below:

 

[DannyZhang]

If your site is new and you have just started building links. This is normal. It is the google dance. Google still doesn't know where to place your site on the serps. Usually it will stabilise once your site gets older.

Do not worry about it and keep building quality links. Helpful tip: don't monitor the rankings for 3 months as your rankings stabilise. The last thing you would want to do is to panic and stop building links completely.

DZ

 

[mahamad3]

If it's a new website that's very normal.

 

[letired]

How long does we have to wait for monitor performance changes ? im all excited to climb up the ladder naturally tho.

 

[catinhat]

Thanks. How long is a site generally considered "new"? Does the niche and volume (in terms of pages indexed) play into this? My site has been live in its current form for about half a year and traffic has fluctuated considerably over the period - Would you say that is normal or out of the ordinary?

 

[seomamta]

Google dances a lot when it sees new backlinks and all. But how is your backlink profile and what sorts of links are you building?

 

[SEO Power]

It's normal and it's called a Google dance. When Google notices a sudden influx of links to your site, your rankings become unstable as Google tries to deal with the influx of links and decide where to rank your site for what keywords.

 

[aussiejack]

I had the google dance going on for 9 months! Everything between page 2 and 9. Was really annoying. But now I won the battle and rank on 2. Stay patient...

 

[wizdorf]

Pretty standard for newer websites, and even at times older ones can see the same type of fluctuation. I have sites that are years old that have a similar ranking graph.

Just be sure everythings in order though as Panda keeps getting rolled out and Penguin is right around the corner.

 

[catinhat]

Google dances a lot when it sees new backlinks and all. But how is your backlink profile and what sorts of links are you building?

This is a "legit" site and most links a genuine whitehat backlinks - Some have quite high authority. I have been spicing them up a bit with a pbn I have been building, although I'm not even sure it matters much since we have good results through whitehat techniques. We may have been building links relatively fast, so as to trigger something with Google. Not sure about that.

 

[catinhat]

I had the google dance going on for 9 months! Everything between page 2 and 9. Was really annoying. But now I won the battle and rank on 2. Stay patient...

Pretty standard for newer websites, and even at times older ones can see the same type of fluctuation. I have sites that are years old that have a similar ranking graph.

Thanks - reassuring to hear that I'm not the only one then.

Just be sure everythings in order though as Panda keeps getting rolled out and Penguin is right around the corner.

Apart from the SERP's, our organic traffic to the site has been really strange, with some periods of a lot of traffic, alternating with periods of considerably less (difference between high and low being in the range of x8). This started back in June with the last "high" in July/Aug. Unfortunately I didn't track keywords during that period, but I know anecdotally that we ranked very high for some terms then. This makes me speculate that my site may have been pandafied already.