A rankings pattern?

[goodbyedee]

Hello,

I'm working on a very competitive keyword and trying to rank my page well for almost 9 months now. At the beginning the page was nowhere to be found and it first appeared on results on page 40+ (400th place). Since then lots of work has taken place: on site (titles, tags, etc), we created a blog and kept on adding unique quality content, and also we started a link campaign to gain links from relevant sites.

For the last 4-5 months the site's position on Google is following a strange pattern i have never encountered before.
1. The site stays at the same position for about 3-4 weeks.
2. The site loses about 10 positions for 3-7 days.
3. After that it gains about 30-40 places.

For example, since mid November my site was on page 7. Last week it moved down to page 8, and today I'm seeing it on page 4.

Not sure if this pattern is of any importance or meaning, i just thought it would be useful to share it.

[aristotle]

I've seen this pattern many times. A page will make a sudden upward jump in the rankings, then it will drift downward for a while, then make another sudden jump up to a newer high, etc. As long as the overall long-term trend is upward, that's what you want.

[xnavigator]

put ur keyword in a subdomain..

oh wait u already made a link comapaign too bad =/

[Jane_Doe]

Can you go after long tail variations of your keyword? Sometimes it is easier to go after 100 terms instead of just one. Then each individual ranking variation really doesn't matter much as they tend to net out over time.

[cls_wired]

The reason that this may happen is that Google takes into account a lot of factors, including the user’s behavior on the results page. Among other things Google analyses are: CTR of the snippet, the first and the only click, how often and when the user returns to the SERP after visiting your site. All those factors must be collected from the SERP, and sometimes Google gives a boost to some sites for some keywords just to collect more user behavior statistics.

[goodbyedee]

@cls_wired:

I never heard that before! Can anyone else confirm this info?

[tangor]

Some times it is as simple as your keyword (product) is generic, as in common, and there's not a lot you can do with all the fish in the sea, unless you are not just tuna, but albacore, too. Refine the long tail keywords in a logical manner, and up your "content is king" if at all possible.

[BenFox]

I think this type of growth is typical of page specific link building.

I ran a linkbuilding campaign on KeywordA and KeywordB and saw both pages go through the same pattern. At the same time KeywordC, KeywordD and KeywordE all increased in rankings (probably due to improved domain wide metrics from the link building done on KeywordA and KeywordB) but did so without the seemingly erratic pattern.

I would imagine that this type of thing is more common in less competitive niches where smaller, time sensitive signals can provide a noticable boost.

[goodbyedee]

@BenFox

That's a good observation. I also see this pattern only for 1 keyword, whereas others follow a more normal course.

I would imagine that this type of thing is more common in less competitive niches where smaller, time sensitive signals can provide a noticable boost.

Not true, at least in my case. The pattern applies to the most competitive keyword