Keyword Phrases – Maintaining Long Term Ranking Positions

In a previous post over one year ago about how I maintain top ranking positions for keywords on my own websites, I talked about a keyword phrase I’d targeted – “Google search cheats” – and its SERP ranking. That post was back in May 2008.

The ranking was doing well at that time – #4 out of 389,000 result pages.

Well today out of curiosity, I checked the ranking position. And I found it has inched down a bit to #6, but now it is commanding the position out of 10,500,000 SERPs. Ummm … OK, perhaps Google’s results are a bit wild today as compared to the more realistic results back in May ’08, but nevertheless, I really don’t care how many oodles of results there are in the grand total – I just care where I stand in the midst of true competition.

Here’s a screenshot taken yesterday (November 2, 2009):

I’m not all shook up about moving two slots down for a keyword phrase that really isn’t one of major concern traffic-wise. After all, competition for that targeted term has changed a bit over time, as evidently there are other sites using it in an article, too. These sites are possibly older than mine, and/or have way more posts with quality content compared to the number of posts my blog currently has, and/or have more links, and/or carry more “authority” than mine, etc. Issues such as these do affect final ranking “scores” when computed by Google.

But the point is … that post of mine is STILL in the top ten! Not bad. And certainly no complaints on my part.

What’s the moral of this post? Rankings go up, and rankings go down in the world of search engines. But I will bet you that if I wrote another post or two on the same subject, I just might inch back up. But with all the other pressing projects that are currently on my plate to tackle, those posts will have to be put aside for another day.