Why does a new page’s ranking change over time?
Posted on: March 9, 2015
Every website owner’s goal is to ensure that their website rank higher than their competitors. This is also the main reason why Search Engine Optimization is a must for all companies’ online marketing campaign. A question was recently sent to Google regarding page ranking.
Video Question
“When we create a new landing page with quality content. Google ranks that page on the top 30-50 for targeted keywords. Then why does the rank get decreased for the next 2-3 weeks? If pages didn’t have required quality, then why did it get ranked in the first week?”
Highlights of the Video:
Matt Cutts, head of Google web spam team took time off to highlight the following points.
- He explained how Google works when it comes to assessing which websites provide a more original sets of information compared to the other websites that probably offer the same data. This is similar to how news about an earthquake spreads throughout the world. 1 minute after an earthquake, a specific person posts breaking news about it, and a few minutes or hours after, more information about the same thing are posted. This makes it a bit difficult to figure out the origins of the information in just a matter of minutes.
- The same thing happens whenever Google ranks websites. For example you see something that initially ranks higher than the rest, and over a specific period of time, more and more information can be found about it – Google will then take their best guess and eventually incorporate other information that they have gathered. And once the inflow of information has mellowed and reached its steadier state, and then they could easily determine the relevance of that content.
- While some users suggest that Google should use a universal ranking process, Matt Cutts stressed out that there are different results to same queries depending on the location of the users.
- Google’s algorithms can change based on the idea of determining which results suit the users better. This means that rankings can definitely change over time.
In order to get higher Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking, you should:
- Have original content in your website: Google love original content, so make sure all your content are original to ensure that your website rank higher.
- Check for copied content in the web: If other websites copied your content, make sure they create a link back to your website. This helps Google to determine who is the original author of the article.
- Regular update on your website: This increase the number of pages in your website and also increase the number of keywords to rank.
