Question

Topic: SEO/SEM

Organic Ranking Improved Then Dropped Back?!

Posted by Anonymous on 6/3/2010 at 12:02 PM ET 25 Points
We've done some SEO on our homepage recently for our core keyword. some of the main things we did are:

- renaming images with the keyword in them (I don't think it's in a keyword stuffing way tho)
- adding more internal links
- changing some of the text to have our keyword (also not in a keyword stuffing kind of way)
- adding more descriptive title attribute to links where the text says "Learn More"

a few days after that we saw our ranking for that particular keyword went from page 6 to page 3 (early last week), but when I checked again yesterday it dropped back to what it was!!!

any ideas why it happened? our page rank's pretty good at 7...
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  • Posted by excellira on 6/6/2010 at 8:53 PM Accepted
    PR != rankings though I'm a bit surprised that with PR 7 that the page isn't doing better than page 6. Though, the bounce is a common occurrence when implementing changes. My take is that they may have run your site up to test the changes and found that the site didn't perform better (time on site, bouce, etc) and therefore pushed it back to its "rightful" position (from their perspective).

    So, the big question is, how have those metrics fared since the change? Also, is the content better aligned with the interests and intent of the searchers?
  • Posted on 6/6/2010 at 11:29 PM Accepted
    Can you post a link to the page your referencing? And tell us the keyword your going after? When did this happen? That would help me answer this much more effectively.

    Do you track your rankings regularly? It's not uncommon to bounce around from page to page when your on the lower side of the top 100, so it wouldn't be out of the ordinary to be on page 3 one day and back to page 6 the next.

    Some other things you may want to look at are what the competition did during this time... Was your site the only one that moved or did other sites bounce around as well?

    Also - Keep in mind that page rank does not always equal SERP rank... It helps, but relevant content and inbound links are much more important.

    Another question I would have is how much traffic are you driving from this keyword? Why is it so important? Did you see a difference in traffic on page 3 vs. page 6?

    Sorry... I know I have more questions than answers, but without seeing the site and knowing what keyword/phrase your targeting I can't provide a solid answer.

    Hope this help,
    Zack - Corporate Radical
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