THINK before you "think" you rank...

[bhuff85]

While the title may sound like something from Dr. Suess, this is something far from it. I just wanted to touch on something real quick that I've been seeing a lot of lately.

Recently, there are a lot of threads starting up with something like:

"Ranked #2 for keyword in 1 day - Can you check to see if you see the same?"

"I'm ranking #2 for keyword with x amount of searches in two days!"

And so on....

Then, when people check to verify, they find out this person is nowhere near to be found ranking for what they thought. In fact, most of those searches are due to personalized search settings and people not clearing their browser's cache.

Here's my thing though - why not check out your traffic stats first?

Trust me - if you think your ranking #1 for a keyword like "how to lose weight fast" (135,000 exact local monthly searches) and you're not seeing a huge spike in traffic coming through, it's your personalized search results taking over. If you were truly ranking for a keyword like that, you would see a large spike in traffic that would be almost impossible not to recognize.

All I'm saying here is to think before you think you're ranking. Check the stats and the traffic. If you see serious numbers coming through, chances are those results are real. If not, use other rank checkers to see where you sit (RankChecker from SEOTools, Scroogle, etc).

Hopefully this will clear up some confusion on rankings. I'm not saying that it's not possible to obtain rankings fast on tough keywords, but if you see yourself ranking for a keyword that has a high volume of searches with high buying intent and no traffic, the fairy tale isn't real.