Search Engine Rankings Can Go Up … And They Can Go Down

Rankings … It’s All Up To Google’s Ranking Algorithms

It’s been almost a month since I posted about rankings on my own sites, and after taking a look at some of the keyword phrases I’ve previously shared with you here, I am not jumping up and down for joy as to how there appears to be a little slippage going on in my Google rankings for a few of the keyword phrases used on one of my sites – The-Artistic-Garden.com. Grrrr …

But I have to practice what I preach to my clients about ranking fluctuations, and so I won’t really get alarmed about this current situation. I’ve been through this a few times over the past few years, and I will go through the “Google dance” many more times in years to come. It’s all part of the SEO ranking “game” (it’s really not a game, of course, but sometimes it feels like it is!).

If Top Rankings Fluctuate … Do You Sit Tight or Start to Tweak Content, Your Tags, or What?

This is the million dollar question: “To Tweak or Sit Tight?” through Google’s, or any other search engine’s re-determination, and lowering of your keyword ranking positions. This is not a cut and dry question to answer. There can be one or more factors affecting a drop.

Very simply put, the major reasons seem to be:

• A Change in the Search Engine Ranking Algorithm: you and I have no control over this situation!
• Loss of PageRank/Link Popularity: did one or more high ranking sites yank a link pointing to your site off their site? (as but one example)
• Duplicate Content: did you add a new page(s) that too closely mirrors the content in an existng page for the keyword phrase that has dropped?
• A Penalty Has Been Imposed Due to an Abuse of One Sort or Another: black-hat SEO techniqes; keyword stuffing; invisible keyword focused text; link stuffing; to name a few.
• Broken Links on a Key Navigation Page: you need to always make sure internal and out-pointing links are all in working order on all the pages on your site.
• Server Problems: too much downtime which would keep the spiders from being able to enter your site.
• Or … the competition is finally beginning to out-rank you! (Oh-oh!)

To be honest, I don’t think I’m dealing with any of the above reasons. However … I do think I might know what the trouble is. I think that my ranking drops are due to a bit of erratic site accessiblity that really wasn’t a server problem, nor was it due to a goof-up on my part. Let’s just say there was a bit of a bumpy ride for about 48 hours a few days back, and I think that might be the reason.

But now, on the technical side of things, all has returned to normal for The-Artistic-Garden.com and I will patiently sit back and see what happens. In this situation, I am NOT going to start frantically trying to rewrite Title tags or Description tags for the webpages and keyword phrases in question.

Yes, sometimes it is necessary to reword, or reposition the keyword phrase in the Title tag and/or meta tags, and even to go back into the page of content and decide if you need to improve upon it in some way. Yes … sometimes competing websites for various reasons just start to stomp on your top rankings and thusly you may have to do a little freshening up of things in an SEO sense.

In addition, it may not just be keyword usage. You may have slipped due to other sites gaining more quality in-pointing links; they’ve added more quality pages of content; etc. Like I said, there are many different angles to consider when determining what is best to do if keyword rankings start to fluctuate.

But for now, I’m sitting back, taking a deep breath, and will wait a bit to see if my rankings go back to where they were before.