UNDERSTANDING YOUR GOOGLE RANKING SEO
The key to implementing a successful SEO strategy is patience.
It might be frustrating to hear, but SEO takes time. You cannot expect results overnight regarding your business’s Google rankings.
Sometimes, a company may shoot to the top of the SERPs almost immediately using black hat SEO tactics (ones that cheat the system!), but this isn’t feasible. They will drop back down into the abyss of Google just as quickly as they came.
Focusing on putting into action an effective and high-quality on-page and off-page strategy is the best way to go. It may take your business a few weeks to reach the first page of search results, or it may take months, but you cannot rush the process.
There are many reasons why some sites may rank better than others, like the strength of a domain, the backlink profile of a domain and the domain name’s relevancy. These are all valuable things to consider when buying domains; however, once your business starts to rank and you see the results you have dreamed of, rankings can still fluctuate daily. You are, essentially, at Google’s mercy.
Many panics when their SERP positions drop, but this shouldn’t be your initial reaction. We will outline why your rankings may chop and change to emphasise that ranking fluctuations are not something to fret about daily.
Ranking factors are entirely out of your control, so don’t let them rule your life!
Why are your rankings fluctuating?
- Positioning in SERPs
If your business hasn’t yet reached the first page or one of the top positions for your desired search terms, you should be prepared for more fluctuation in where you appear in the search results. Sites that appear lower than around the fourth position are not as stable as those in the first few results.
As a result of this, any minor changes that you make to your site and/or SEO strategy at this stage will have a much more significant impact on your rankings. For this reason, it is arguably more important to keep your site updated with fresh and high-quality content when ranking in the teens or even further down to increase your chances of shooting further up.
Therefore, conversely, if your site has reached one of the top few positions and has maintained its ranking for a prolonged period (congratulations), the small changes you make to your site will have far less of an impact.
If your business reaches one of the top rankings but drops again shortly after, don’t panic – it isn’t easy to compete with companies that have consistently appeared in the top three. You will get there eventually with time, hard work and patience. We would say that if you have held a leading position for several months, but you are still fluctuating regularly, that would be the time to take a closer look at the potential cause of the movement.
- Topics
As well as your current rankings affecting the regularity of your fluctuations, your content’s topic(s) and your business type can also influence you.
When it comes to business type, the product/service that you offer may be somewhat temporal. For example, a professional gardening service would naturally receive far more website traffic during the warmer seasons, like spring and summer. Hence, their rankings may reflect this. Google aims to show people exactly what they want to see regarding relevancy and accessibility – significantly fewer people will be browsing for gardeners when it is freezing outside.
If you make sure that you are aware of your business’ potential peak and off-peak times of the year, you can be mentally and practically prepared for the changes to your Google rankings.
Even if your business’ products/services are in demand all year round, the topics of the content published on your site may affect your rankings. There are always new trends going on, and whilst it is impossible to keep up with them all, if your business posts relevant content relating to a current trend, it can affect your rankings to a significant extent. It is easy to identify the search results affected by popularity and current events as Google will include a time and date of publication next to these. If one of your pages has a date/time next to it, you should expect it to fluctuate more than others due to the nature of the content.
- Google Algorithms
Sometimes, changes in rankings have nothing to do with your actions. Google makes minor changes to their algorithms practically every day for improvements, so these will affect your position in the SERPs at some point. Due to the nature of Google’s ever-changing algorithms, we highly recommend monitoring your rankings weekly rather than daily. This way, you can identify any significant drops or improvements that have stayed consistent rather than getting caught up on daily small fluctuations.
As well as Google making small regular changes, they will implement a large-scale update every now and then. You may have heard of their Panda, Penguin or Hummingbird updates, which rock the boat once they are put into play. When this happens, you shouldn’t throw your existing SEO strategy out the window – take the time to understand any new ranking factors and update your site accordingly. It is impossible to avoid some fluctuations due to these Google updates.
- Content and links
Your site’s content is what Google uses to deem whether you are legitimate and offer browsers quality information. Therefore, regularly uploading fresh and valuable content is a great way to boost your rankings. When new content is added, Google bots will crawl it to determine its relevance and where your site deserves to rank. On the flip side, if you upload poor, un-optimised content, the overall quality of your site and rankings will suffer. Don’t upload any content you aren’t proud of to your site.
As much as the uploading of new content affects your current rankings, removing old content also plays a role. It is a great idea to audit all the content on your site to identify any that may need updating. You should never rush into removing old content, though; even if it’s not up to your current standard, it may rank due to age. We would suggest identifying all the pages on your site ranking. Once you’ve done this, edit them so they are fully optimised and reflect your business goals.
The same goes for links – if you add quality links to your site and remove broken links, your rankings will most likely improve.
- Competitors
Occasionally, your site’s rankings may be pushed further up or down the SERPs due to one of your competitors doing the opposite. We can’t all take first place – understanding this will help you to keep a level head when you are kicked from your top spot temporarily.
Fluctuations may be due to existing competitors moving up or down or result from a new keyword competitor making an appearance. There will always be competition – your business should stick to your effective ongoing SEO strategy rather than panicking and trying to change things in a hurry to compete.
Although competitors for your desired search terms may frustrate you regarding their rankings, they can give you peace of mind when you see your rankings change suddenly. If your close competitors are experiencing fluctuations too, you know the changes result from external factors and not your actions.
You can also learn from your competitors by analysing their ranking pages and updating your pages to go above and beyond what they offer. As well as doing some on-page competitor analysis, don’t forget to delve into the backlink profile of your competitors to see which types of links you are missing and build them accordingly!
Although this is not an exhaustive list of reasons why your rankings can regularly fluctuate, hopefully, it has shown that moving up and down the SERPs is not always a bad thing. Any small or big change you make to your site or Google’s algorithm will have an effect, so panicking when you see changes is, quite frankly, a waste of time.
We recommend taking a closer look at your site if many of your pages drop simultaneously over a prolonged period and calling us if you have any queries.
