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You’re probably wondering how in the world can a search engine dance…Well, you’d be surprised at how much “dancing” actually does go on in search engines. And no, we aren’t talking about ballroom dancing.
The “Google Dance” can occur really in any search engine, however the term was coined for Google since it is the world’s largest search engine. This dance occurs when a site is trying to rank for a specific keyword but continues to have somewhat dramatic bounces in the site’s ranking.
As an example, a keyword we are ranking Simple SEO Group for was recently on page 1 position 5 after just two months of optimization. However, in the past week it has been bouncing as low as page 3 number 8. Each time it drops, it subsequently rebounds and drops again.
Now, most people might be thinking that this is really bad news that we were on page one for a few days and then dropped back below there. Shockingly, in our experiences, the Google Dance is actually a very good thing. It means search engines have a different view on your small business’ website due to our search engine optimization campaign. While the search engines don’t specifically know you are engaged in SEO, they do know that your website looks much more appealing to them, so they are trying to determine where exactly your site should be ranked.
Generally, once we make it to page 1 and then start seeing the Google Dance occur, it is only a few more weeks or at most a couple months before we see our search engine optimization results stabilize. I can’t think of a scenario where we got a website to page 1, saw the Google Dance, and didn’t subsequently make it back to page 1 and stabilize the results.
Now, if your website made it to page 1, stabilized there for a few months or even a year, and now is starting to dance around, this more than likely means one of two things:
- The SEO company you used didn’t use a time tested SEO method, meaning an algorithm change is going on and your site won’t make it past the new algorithm. This means your site will likely start to drop dramatically until you engage in SEO tactics that fit the new algorithm. Don’t worry, Simple SEO Group has a time tested SEO method that has never let algorithm changes effect rankings
- Or another thing that could be happening is your competitors are engaging in SEO of their own and trying to rank for that keyword. I’ve seen this happen countless times, even on our own websites. The solution for this is simply more SEO work to show them that we aren’t willing to give up our ranking on that keyword. Usually we have a pretty good head start, so it is usually pretty easy to get them to back off
Now that you know a bit more about the Google dance and a few things that can affect your website’s ranking, I have to ask–do you know where your website currently ranks? And do you know if your website is properly optimized for the best possible search engine rankings? If your site isn’t properly optimized, you are missing out on literally thousands of potential customers that are finding your competitors instead of you. Take a minute to fill out the small business SEO free consultation request directly to the right of this article and let one of our SEO specialists prepare your free 30 page SEO report to show you exactly what you’re missing out on!