Who Knows Why Rankings Bounce

I've been working on a site in the online dating niche, specifically about Mexican brides. It's based on Wordpress hosted on my own VPS. I launched the site in August of last year, 2010.

I created it based on keyword research I had been doing, poking around the "relationship" and "romance" topics. What I found was a couple of keyword phrases that looked reasonably good - decent search volume, without too much stiff competition.

I did what I would normally do for this type of project. I began by researching the topic and writing some original, high-quality articles on various related subjects. I launched the site, got it indexed, and began some basic link-building activities.

After about 5-6 weeks, I was able to achieve high Page 1 rankings on the main two keyword phrases. The site is monetized with pretty specific, well-targeted affiliate dating offers, specifically the Hispanic market.

Since the site was based around dating women or finding brides in Mexico, that's what all the content was about, with a few articles on general marriage and romance.

Well, I started getting good traffic, and clicks on the dating offers. Conversions were decent, and the site was earning good revenues.

About 3 months in, I stopped most of my backlinking activities. The site held stable with it's Page 1 rankings.

Then I noticed a drop-off in commissions from the affiliate offers. Upon closer inspection, I found the site had dropped off the map. A few weeks later it was back on Page 1. Then a few more weeks and it was gone again.

Since then, I've been fighting a battle trying to regain my good rankings. I've renewed my link-building, but have only seen sporadic improvements. The site would show back up on Page 1 for a few days, then disappear again.

At this time, I have no idea why it's having such trouble holding on to it's rankings. No clue. It's particularly annoying in that the sites that outrank it and have good positions aren't strong sites. Nor are they optimized either for "Mexican brides" or "Mexican mail order brides", the two main phrases I'm targeting.

Well, the only thing I can think of doing is sticking with my renewed link building efforts. Just yesterday, I saw it finally re-emerge, albeit at the bottom of Page 2.

Hopefully this is just an anomaly and I'll re-gain m my rankings, which at one time were in the top 3 positions.

What's the moral of the story? I don't know. If I get good positioning back, I'd have to say it is maintaining consistency in building backlinks, even once you achieve your desired position.

The Keys To Natural, or Organic Search Traffic

Depending on what your business model is, search engine traffic can be the life-blood of your business. If you are buying traffic, such as Pay-Per-Click, then you know pretty much exactly how much traffic you will get; the more you pay, the more you receive.

Natural, or organic traffic is a whole different situation. For those businesses that live off of search engine traffic, there are two factors that determine how many visitors you will get.

The first is the particular keyword phrase you are targeting, specifically how often it is searched. Obviously, you're never going to get 100 visitors per day for a keyword that only gets searched 10 times per day. On the other hand, you won't get 100 visitors even if it is searched that many times per day. Which brings us to the second factor determining your traffic volume.

Where you rank for your targeted phrase will determine what percentage of "available traffic" you get. Let's talk a minute about "available volume".

A given keyword phrase gets searched "x" times per day. How do you know what "x" is? You use one of the many available keyword research tools. Some of these tools require one-time or subscription payments, while some others are free. Two good free tools are Wordtracker (http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/), and Google's own keyword research tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal).

It's worth noting that you will often get different results for the same query with these tools. That is because they use different methods and different databases to determine search volume. Either way, you are seeing a rough estimate, but that's what we have to work with.

Suppose your target phrase gets searched 100 times each day. This is where your rank or position comes in. Depending on where you are in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page), you are only going to see a percentage of that volume. The closer to the top, or Position #1 that your web page appears, the larger the fraction of total search volume you will get.

Generally speaking, the top spot, Position #1, gets approximately 50% of the volume. This means that when a search is done, about half of the people searching will click on the first result. Positions #2 and #3 split about another 25%, giving the first three entries approximately 75% of the available volume.

The remaining 7 entries on the first page will split nearly all the remaining 50%, with each position seeing a lesser percentage than the one above it. In all, if you aren't on the first page, you don't see very much of the trafic, and in fact if you aren't near the top, the fraction you receive will be very low.

The keys to natural search engine traffic then are targeting keyword phrases that have decent daily search volume, and to get your web page to rank at or near the top of the SERPs for that keyword phrase.

It goes without saying that the higher the daily search volume, the stiffer the competition is likely to be. And so, your goals should be to target phrases that have good search volume, but not so much that reaching the top spots will be nearly impossible.

Back - And Blasting Out A New Experiment!

Well, after quite a long absence from marketing, I'm back with a renewed plan and internet marketing strategy.

I'm beginning with something of an experiment. Part of the experiment involves testing to see how long it takes to get a brand new site up, indexed, and ranking in the SERPS. I'm beginning the 'test' with five new domains and sites:


Homedics Back Massager
Pool Vacuum Cleaners
Gas Leaf Blowers
Portable Propane Heaters
Atomic Wall Clocks

Of these sites, there are two .com TLD's, two .org TLD's, and one .info TLD. I've gone through just the very basics of on-page SEO.

Off-page SEO - meaning back link building - has consisted of a very basic campaign. I've submitted the first page of each site to Digg, Blinklist, added it to StumbleUpon, and used Onlywire to tag them to about a dozen more social bookmarking sites.

In addition, each site has 1-3 articles submitted to article directories including Ezinearticles and Goarticles.

I'll be watching and tracking the progress, meaning how long it takes each web site to get indexed, where in the SERPS the initial ranking is, and how long it takes for the other backlinks to show up.

I'll post my results here as I get them.

SEO Tools & Resources

We all know how important SEO is. Well, I recently came across a truly exhaustive list of SEO resources and tools.

One of my favorite Internet Marketing sites has just posted a HUGE list of Search Engine Optimization tools, links, resources, etc. This is a MUST HAVE list if you are trying to improve your websites ranking, generate more organic search engine traffic, or just improve your site's search marketing potential.

You can see the full list here: SEO Tools & Resources.