Undoubtedly, when you’re checking your rankings, you’ll find some interesting things happening with your content. I personally believe the activity of checking your rankings every day is a waste of time.
Why you may ask? It is simply not an income generating activity. Your time will be better spent creating more content, networking, and keeping your eyes focused on your goals. Having said that, your content may initially rank well or have a decent SERP placement, but then after a few weeks it plummets.
This has long been a question many SEOs have wanted the answer to. Today Matt Cutts released a new video that helps to explain why this may be happening to your content. Here’s the video:
Video notes:
Matt Cutts uses the analogy of an earthquake to explain why this may be happening. When an earthquake hits, the news is pretty broad, but as time goes on we learn more and more about the situation. Initially, we may not know how much damage the earthquake did, how much it will cost to fix the damages, or even how many people died. As time goes on, that information is revealed.
The same is with Google. When they award your content with a decent ranking initially, they’re making their best guess on where the content will rank. As they receive more information through time, they then award the content with the appropriate ranking. If your content plummets, then it’s a good signal that something needs to be done differently.
Conclusion
We now have a much better idea as to what’s happening with our content and initial rankings. Do you feel like Matt Cutts answered that one well?
