Making Second Change to a Page before Cache is Updated

[gouri]

I made a change to a page on one of my sites and I am seeing movement in the SERPS for some keywords.

I wanted to ask if it is good to wait until the cache version shows the change made or based on the movement that I see, if the rankings have decreased can I go back and undo the change?

[tedster]

The cache process at Google is independent of the ranking process. If you've seen a change in ranking that you feel sure is a result of changes you made (and that is the tricky part sometimes) then you can make a further change.

However, patience is a true virtue, especially if your ranking already improved and you hope to improve more. Frequent changes, on their own, can cause a ranking drop. And sometimes a small improvement may be followed by more improvement even without making another change. So giving a healthy amount time before another tweak is often wise.

If the ranking changes were clearly disastrous, then backing out quickly could be a wise thing.

[gouri]

Thank you for mentioning both possibilities.

I have seen an increase in the rankings followed by more improvement for some changes that I have made. For this one, specifically, after two days of making the change I have seen a drop in several long-tail searches. I have a feeling that the drops are because of the change that I made.

Being patient is definitely important. I will wait for a couple of days and if I don't see the long-tail searches go up in the rankings I will make another change and see if that helps.