Why your rankings yo yo when you start SEO

Amazing! Our rankings have soared in 1 month! Our agency’s brilliant….

Wait, now they’ve dropped again in month 2. Did my agency get lazy?

This is the natural reaction if you start a new SEO campaign and see a sharp early rise in rankings, followed by a dip. You’ll assume that your agency has worked really really hard setting up the campaign and doing some early activity to get your high up Google, and then celebrated their results and taken their foot off the pedal in month 2.

If only SEO were that easy that you could hit good results that quickly. What is most likely happening when you see results like this is that Google has realised your site exists and is figuring out what to do with you. No-one knows how the Google algorithm works exactly (apart from Google technicians) but it seems that when they first index a site and realise that activity is happening with it, it can sometimes push it up the rankings. They then dig a bit deeper, spend a bit more time analysing the site and the links, which can cause a drop while they suss you out. SEO is a long game, and the idea is to get Google to recognise your site as quality on a long term basis, giving lasting results. So the yo-yoing at the start is part of this, because it means Google’s taking things seriously and with sustained and quality SEO and online marketing activities, over time a high ranking will build.