Beware, no one can guarantee a #1 ranking in Google or any other Search Engine. No one can even guarantee that your keywords will get a top ten ranking in any major Search Engine, never mind Google. Below the main reasons why ranking guarantees can’t be made:

1. No control over all SEO elements

Rankings will always fluctuate and are  never permanent because you or your SEO agency will never be in control of all elements affecting Search Engine rankings

2. Search Engine algorithms change.

Search Engines are notorious for changing the algorithms used to display results. Changes to Search Engines can severely affect your site’s ranking almost overnight – positive and negative.

3. Competitors optimise too.

Competing websites might target the same search terms (keywords) with their own SEO campaign. This will affect your ranking, how much will depend on your competitors success.

4. SEO results depend on data centre

Search Engines use different local data centres, which will show different rankings in different regions for the same search terms and same websites.

5. Don’t log-in to check rankings

Your rankings will depend whether Search Engine users are logged in or not. For example when you log-in to your Google account all the search results will be customised to your history and will be different to when you log-out.

6. Some websites have more clout than your site

Popular social media sites or dominant news sites might publish articles with the same keyword focus as your site. Because these sites have a large number of indexed pages and are indexed hourly you might find your site loosing rankings as soon as a relevant article is published

7. Website age matters

New websites are more likely to fluctuate in ranking than mature websites because of the age of indexed content and the lack of clear keyword significance.

8. Website content matters

Uncontrolled uploading of content to your website can cause keyword dilution  and changes to the keyword significance Search Engines allocated to your site.  Even small changes to your content, especially  page titles can adversely affect rankings over time.

9. Consistent link building

Poor link building strategy will cause your rankings to fluctuate substantially. Spam links, infrequent link building, high volume link building activity followed by no activity at all will all make your search results less stable.

10. Keep your site up and running

Frequent website downtime and pages that can’t be found will over time form a picture of unreliability in Search Engine’s indices. Access, loading and technical problems will result in adverse and fluctuating rankings. Make sure you choose a good hosting provider and check all your links on your website.

There are a lot of other elements impacting your rankings such as age of your domain name and age of your content. For this reason alone never throw away your existing content and never launch a new website without proper redirection of your old pages. If in doubt, consult your Search Engine Optimisation company.

Filed under: Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Web Thinking by admin