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Strange Google SERPs Results for One Keyword

by danparks
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I've had keywords the rise in SERPs, then fall. And I've had keywords that linger around low, then jump up. But until now, I've never had a keyword that, almost on a daily basis, for *weeks*, jumps between #2 and #200+ in ranking.



I don't feel like revealing the website or the keyword, but let's just say it's a fairly competitive keyword (but not a real high competition keyword). From the image, you can see this keyword has been jumping up and down for 6 weeks!

The site isn't a new one, and it has a couple of other keywords that have been ranking between #2 - #4 in Google for months. Steady. It's just this one keyword that's strange.

The backlinks to this one keyword are pretty much the same as the backlinks to the other keywords for the site. Links are in contextual articles on PR1 - PR4 pages, some exact match anchors, some that just rely on LSI of the article the link is in, and the site has many non-keyword anchors as well (the site name, the site URL, etc.).

Probably not enough information for someone to say definitely what might be going on, but I'm hoping that perhaps someone else encountered this situation and has a thought on it.
#google #keyword #results #serps #strange
  • Profile picture of the author seekdefo
    Come on you can't always expect google to be perfecat?
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    Brevity is the soul of wit

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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      Tougher keywords always seem to fluctuate a lot more.

      I feel that site issue's play a fairly large role here so make sure you bring the amount of duplicate content to an absolute minimum and also try to get rid of thin pages.

      Poor back links also seem to have a negative effect on it so disavow them.

      I did both of these things as I had the same issue with certain very tough keywords and nowadays they are not 100% stable but at least a lot more stable then what it used to be.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    I built a test page on one of my money sites just to see how far I could push an irrelevant page that has nothing to do with my well established niche site. The page has a handful of PR4 backlinks where the backlink pages are also unrelated to this one test page.

    The first couple of days the test page hovered around position #50 in Google SERPs, then bounced around the SERPs all the way down to the mid #200's (lol), currently sitting at position #92, the test page is around two weeks old. This is a very competitive keyword.

    It's funny to watch this test page bounce so much because If I had built a relevant page on this domain it usually doesn't have much of a problem landing on the first page for related niche keywords.

    OP, try building a few more internal pages based on variations of the target keyword that's currently bouncing around the SERPs, link all the relevant internal pages back to the target page.
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    • Profile picture of the author danparks
      nik0 and yukon, thanks for your suggestions. I don't know if they'll be helpful or not, but they make sense and I have nothing to lose by trying them.

      The keyword seems to be caught in an "infinite loop" of up and down, so who knows, maybe making *any* change might be enough to break it out of the cycle. I'm not claiming the keyword deserves to be at #2, or at #250, but I think any keyword should eventually somewhat "settle in" *somewhere*!
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