As many of you know, I've been trying my best to get one of my sites ranked higher in Google for the short-tail term 'property' - and it's quite erratic. A few weeks ago it was ranking in the low-mid 30's after climbing for a couple of months. The last couple of weeks it dropped right down to about 60. Today it was back up to about 40. A few hours later and we're back to 61. Is this normal? Is Google having trouble making up its mind?
Is Google bonkers?
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RedCardinal
New Member
Unfortunately yes. But the good news is that the higher you go the more stable it becomes... usually 
Redfly
New Member
Unfortunately yes. But the good news is that the higher you go the more stable it becomes... usually
Yup, I agree. The higher you climb the less you'll fall with Google. I am targeting the "Short Tail" (I love that BTW) "Web Design" just for fun actually and was all over the place for it for months at 40-60. In the top 15 now and it's a lot more stable.
Do you really need to target such a broad term?
Yes, unfortunately. I've been testing the response and pages per visit for various key PPC keywords and visitors seem to get a lot more value out of the site when searching for the phrase 'property' - as they should. It'll probably take a while to get a decent rank but it's going to be quite important down the line.
Yo Ken, G seems to be showing your H1 tag rather than the description for a lot of your pages, I'd remove the tag and give each page an individual description. May be affecting the number of indexed pages G is showing.. site:www.huntforproperty.ie - Google Search
RedCardinal
New Member
I've seen a lot of people wonder about what metrics Google might be using to do some 'tweaking' to the SERPs. Are you by any chance using the conversion measuring tool from Google?
And BTW, it's curious that you find short tail queries more valuable. General theory would have it that long tail phrases are more targeted and searchers are more likely to find what they are looking for. Odd. And no localisation of the phrase, e.g. 'property dublin'?
I've already done this on a good few of the pages as advised on a previous thread (i.e. diverse meta descriptions aren't just SERP bait for users!)
I'll be implementing it site-wide ASAP.
Well I guess 'property', 'property dublin' and phrases like that. But from my analysis of reports, anyone searching for property seems to spend more time on the site!
I would have to respectfully disagree with two points brought up here namely that short-tail phrases are more effective than long-tail phrases and that high rankings = stability:
- IMO "Long-tail" phrases are more valuable to a site. They are answers to more specific queries which are likely to convert better. For example "property tallaght dublin" is more likely to convert than just "property dublin" if the searcher has their heart set on Tallaght and nowhere else. And the great thing is that long-tail phrases are also easier to rank for. I view most short-tail phrase obsessions are more trophy phrases i.e. one word queries
- High rankings definitely do not guarantee stability in themselves. I found that out recently as my previously high ranking site was in the doghouse for the whole of December. What does affect stability however is trust. If you have trust in your niche then you will be a king on Google and as stable as a giant rock. For instance eBay, Wikipedia, Amazon have bucketloads of trust (ok major examples but you get the idea). Trust is hard to acquire but once you have it you will outrank sites that actually deserve to be above you.
- IMO "Long-tail" phrases are more valuable to a site. They are answers to more specific queries which are likely to convert better. For example "property tallaght dublin" is more likely to convert than just "property dublin" if the searcher has their heart set on Tallaght and nowhere else. And the great thing is that long-tail phrases are also easier to rank for. I view most short-tail phrase obsessions are more trophy phrases i.e. one word queries
- High rankings definitely do not guarantee stability in themselves. I found that out recently as my previously high ranking site was in the doghouse for the whole of December. What does affect stability however is trust. If you have trust in your niche then you will be a king on Google and as stable as a giant rock. For instance eBay, Wikipedia, Amazon have bucketloads of trust (ok major examples but you get the idea). Trust is hard to acquire but once you have it you will outrank sites that actually deserve to be above you.
RedCardinal
New Member
frankilk I agree 100% with you, I perhaps incorrectly used high rankings as a proxy of trust without stating that.
Very good point you make.
Very good point you make.
RedCardinal
New Member
Depends on the competitiveness of the niche I suppose. Also a new niche would obviously not require any trust to rank for (e.g. a new brand or toy...)
Redfly
New Member
Yea, but we're talking about the stability here.
Oh yes very much so. Some factors I would say build trust are amongst others:
- Backlinks from other trusted domains (#1 factor)
- Natural link growth
- Domain age
- Site uptime
- Links working, no 404s, 302 redirects set up correctly (run Xenu)
Just ask yourself if you were a search engine looking at your site and all of the data it has up until collected about it would you trust it to be a quality resource?
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