How to regain your SERP rank

Hi All,

This trick works if you have already succeeded in ranking high in the SERPs and have lost it over time, due to degradation of freshness factor. I'm going to outline the steps for a wordpress blog, but this can be used in any CMS/website.

1. Edit the article that had ranked. Change the Permalink. You can keep the keywords in the permalink, just make sure it is different from what it was
2. Install a redirect plugin like "Quick Page/Post Redirect Plugin"
3. Setup a quick 301 redirect using the plugin so that the Old URL goes to the new URL.
4. Wait for it. This takes a couple of days to start showing results in the SERPs.

How this works: Search engines gives every URL a freshness booster that degrades over time. They do this so that new articles find their way into the SERPs. You will notice the effect of this when an article you publish reaches high in the rankings within a month of being posted and then looses the ranking over time. These articles also have dates shown in the SERPs. The freshness factor degrades over time (around 6 months according to my estimates). When you change the URL and redirect the old URL to new URL, the freshness factor is reset and hence you regain your rank.

Niki

Of course this will work for authority sites that have ranked higher before, after changing the url, have some bookmarks or social signals to boost it up. For new site posts to rank, we need to have quality backlinks along with social signals.

what if my homepage was the only ranking?
Thanks

watsonovedades said:

what if my homepage was the only ranking?
Thanks

Click to expand...

Then you're shit out of luck...? Just a wild guess.

DamageX said:

Then you're shit out of luck...? Just a wild guess.

Click to expand...

Haha.. your statement is godlike.

linksmaster said:

Of course this will work for authority sites that have ranked higher before, after changing the url, have some bookmarks or social signals to boost it up. For new site posts to rank, we need to have quality backlinks along with social signals.

Click to expand...

This need not be an authority site, but a page that has ranked before. The freshness algorithm was created to bring into view non-authority sites (for a short while), which otherwise users would never see.

You do not need to add any links to boost it up. With my tests this works perfectly fine without any boosts (Not that its a bad idea to boost it up)

Niki

watsonovedades said:

what if my homepage was the only ranking?
Thanks

Click to expand...

You could potentially create a new post and then redirect your homepage to the new post. I have not tried this so do not really know for sure whether it will work the same.