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Drops, Dips, Spikes and other SERP activities

Submitted by Ryan Caldwell on May 2, 2008 - 11:44am in

Let me tell you a couple things about the position of your website in Google's search engine results.

  • If you build lots of good links to a page on your site, and you notice a short-term spike in your SERP positioning, followed by a major, medium-term dip, don't fret. This is quite normal. Just wait while the new links build temporal equity*.
  • Have you noticed an old page dropping a bit in the search results? There are a few things you can do to help counter-act this drop. First, work to decrease the "bounce" rate of visitors to the page while increasing the PageViews per visitor. Post a relevant and interesting YouTube video on the page so that people stick around and watch. Include clear "calls to action" for visitors to move to another page on your site: Examples: "See more Boston Terrier videos here" or "Check out our Mustang gallery." Second, aim to add one strong, editorial link with relevant anchor text back to your page each month.

*Temporal equity is value that links to your website gain over time. Google often applies a buffering algorithm to young links. If you've acquired good links, just be patient... your reward is around the corner.


Thanks for the tips. I have

Thanks for the tips.

I have a new site that I am trying to get ranked in the search engines and will follow some of these tips.

How would I go about getting an editorial link?

I've written a much more

I've written a much more in-depth guide to linkbuilding and temporal equity in the Performancing Hive forums.

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