Why Does New Blog Post Ranking Changes Over the time

Keyword ranking up’s and down’s are nothing new, but one confusion which most of the webmasters have is about ranking fluctuation for a new blog post. Usually, when you publish a new blog post, you will see it in first 4-5 pages of Google search, but over the time ranking usually drops vanishes or increases. This also bring up a question about: If the quality of the page was not that great, why at the first place such blog post/pages got ranked in Google search, and why a ranking dropped over the time.

In a recent video, Matt Cutts answered this question, and after you watch this video, I will explain how you could retain your ranking even after Google honeymoon period. So let’s check out the video first:

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Let me first throw some lights on Matt’s explanation:

Years back Google rolled out Caffeine web indexing, which helped Google to index the web faster and helped Google search to show recently published post.

Based on Caffeine, Google rolled out an algorithm tweak to show latest/recent updates in Google search. This means, when you publish a new post, Google will show it at the top first few hours or day, because it’s more recent.  That makes more sense when you are searching for any current event like Earthquake, Sports results and so on. As Google always value quality, over time based on other signals Google will improve or decline your ranking, in comparison to other existing pages, to show more relevant results.

This is one reason, sometime you might see a scrapped content outranking your original content.  And if I’m not wrong, when Google indexes the web, it already filters out known spam websites to show in Google search results or even being a part of the index, to maintain a clean web eco-system.

So even if your new content ranking drops for a while, don’t panic and rather keep working, as with time if you have written quality content, you will get back your ranking. If your blog is already a quality blog (high-quality blog), you might not see much of ranking drop, but for a new blog or mid-level blog, such ranking dance is normal.  Now, here are few tips to improve your ranking over time.

How to maintain your Google ranking:

Here I’m sharing some tips which will help you improve your Google ranking. As I mentioned above, it’s very normal that your ranking might drop, so even if it’s dropping for a few weeks, you have all the chances to get it back to a higher position. Here I’m sharing few tips which will be helpful:

Content quality:

This is the foremost requirement and basis of your high-ranking. If you have been just writing for Search engines, change the way you write. You should write for human users, and then improve your content SEO score. Which is fairly easy:

  • Place the keyword in H1 Tag
  • Place the Keyword in h2 Tag
  • Maintain a decent keyword density.
  • Add LSI keywords
  • Bold and italics important part along with keyword – The idea here is to make your content scannable. This will not only help search engine bots to identify strong keyword in your post, but will also be useful for readers to scan the content quickly.
  • Length of the article – This is one known factor for better ranking. Along with quality content, do keep a check on length of the article. Article with good length, usually rank better.
  • Add Videos, Slides and other rich-media to make your content more interactive and useful.
  • Make sure page load time is not too high, as Google penalizes slow loading pages.
  • Use Google authorship.
  • If writing review articles, take advantage of star rating in search.

A good strategy is, analyze the top 10 results about the topic you are writing, and try to write something better than already in the first 10 Google results. Also, maintain the niche of your blog, else with time, niche blogs covering a similar topic will outrank you.

Social media share:

Social media share and bookmarking is another known signal for Google ranking. Make sure you have proper call to action social bookmarking and sharing buttons on your blog posts. If you are using WordPress, you can use a plugin like SocialSnap to add such buttons. You should also keep promoting your old posts on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, as it will help you to get more re-share, and this better social ranking.

Backlinks:

You should keep building links to your individual posts. Don’t use any spam method or an unnatural way to get links to your posts. A good idea is to write a guest post on a niche based blog, and get a back link within the article’s context.

Here is a quick tip:

Make sure your guest post should be on the same topic. For example, if you are building a link to an article talking about Bluehost discount, instead of writing a post about the fishing tip to get such link, write a post about hosting. This will ensure that your link is relevant, and you get maximum advantage of the backlink.

Also, if you are not getting direct anchor match backlink with this strategy, that is also fine. If you want to learn more about it, look at Keyword cocitation, and there are many articles on the web, which proves about the existence of co-citation over direct anchor text match. Make sure, you are publishing a guest post on any niche based quality blog.

For ex: Since you are trying to get a link back to hosting discount page, guest post on a blog covering similar topics, and not on a random blog.

Create more content on a similar topic:

This is more like asking you to stick to your niche. Try to develop more content based on topic that you are writing. For example, if I’m writing about how to maintain Google keyword ranking, I will also be writing about how to check Keyword ranking or how to get in Google search. Since users are more likely to search for a similar article, and also this helps search engine to understand that your domain is covering an article on similar topics.

Pretty much, this will ensure that even after Google dance, you will get back your lost ranking. So now, if you see a new blog post losing ranking in Google search, instead of worrying much about it, keep working naturally, and focus on above points to ensure, once Google will determine actual ranking after a while, you will be ranked really high.

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

7 thoughts on “Why Does New Blog Post Ranking Changes Over the time”

  1. Shivam Rana

    Hi Harsh, I agree with all points you mentioned in this post. I have noticed that when ever I post a new article on my blog traffic increases, but that change is always temporary.

  2. Mahaveer

    I have been noticing the same thing with my last few posts and I was wondering why did my rankings get so high just at the time of writing the post and why does it get low after a day.

    And here is the reason!

    Thanks for helping me out Harsh. Great informative article 🙂

  3. Prem Krishnan P

    Very informative tips for new bie bloggers 🙂 Social Media plays an important role becoz people usually share the post with their friends and you will get traffic through them.

  4. Edson Hale

    It is wrong to assume that after Google Panda, SEO has lost its significance in achieving Google ranking; it does have the same importance level but now one cannot play tricks or become oversmart while doing SEO; now the focus has been shifted from quantity to quality it means now you don’t have to engage in number game but the most relevant quality work would do well now

  5. Abhinav Jain

    I have even watched a post move to first page of google with in a day and it stayed there for few days. How that happened all because the post got viral on social media platforms like facebook, twitter. So even social signals do help in ranking high

  6. Koj Tajo

    Hello Harsh, I am back again. very informative tips as always. Yes, I too have experienced that couple of my new posted post were on 3rd page of Google and then suddenly it was pheeew… vanished. Your explanation gives the perfect reasons, so thanks.

    I have seen many, when they say write a post in good length. So what is your take on it. How would you define perfect length considering the topics?
    Regards – Koj

  7. Nikhil Bille

    Ya, Writing similar content is most perfect trick to keep your visitor rotating on your blog. Because visitor comes with some search and if he got much more related information then he will read all content.
    Anchor text backlink is important to build your natural backlinks.

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