Why Is SERP Volatility Important for SEO Experts?
SERP volatility refers to significant fluctuations in search engine rankings over a period of time. When SERP volatility is high, search engine rankings become unpredictable and constantly change. Conversely, low SERP volatility indicates stable rankings, akin to clear and sunny weather.
At SEO Experts, our primary goal is to ensure our clients experience year-over-year, quarter-over-quarter, and month-over-month growth in visibility, traffic, and sales. SERP volatility plays a pivotal role in achieving these goals. All brands rely on both non-branded and branded keywords to drive traffic, conversions, and business value. When your site’s visibility suffers due to volatile SERPs, it can result in a sharp decline in revenue, conversions, and traffic.
One common cause of SERP volatility is Google’s algorithm updates, such as the core updates released periodically. These updates can lead to high volatility and cause websites to experience a drop in visibility and organic key performance indicators. For instance, the recent 2023 August core update placed a strong emphasis on ranking high-quality content, significantly affecting SERP rankings. Google releases these updates constantly to provide users with more helpful and reliable search results.
Other factors contributing to SERP volatility can include recent site updates or changes in search intent, among others. To understand these factors better, conducting a thorough site audit becomes essential.
How Can I Measure SERP Volatility as an SEO Expert?
To effectively manage SERP volatility, it’s crucial to measure and monitor it regularly. Several tools can help you gauge SERP volatility:
- Mozcast: Mozcast provides a “weather report” showcasing the turbulence of the Google algorithm over the last 90 days. The hotter and stormier the weather, the more unpredictable the SERPs have been.
- Semrush Sensor: Semrush Sensor offers visualization options and allows us to switch between mobile and desktop, countries, and categories. It also provides insights into various SERP features like Featured Snippets and instant ads.
- Mangools: Mangools offers visual representations of SERP volatility and allows users to switch between desktop and mobile. While it lacks some features compared to Semrush, it still serves as a valuable SEO tool.
- Algoroo: Algoroo provides insights into weekly winners and losers in SERP rankings, along with the dates of Google updates. It helps pinpoint which updates might have impacted your site, allowing us to alter our strategy to best serve our clients.
- CognitiveSEO: CognitiveSEO offers a tool called Signals, which allows SEO experts to monitor SERP volatility globally and locally. You can also track rankings that have changed by 3, 5, or 10 positions over time.
What Should SEO Experts Do During SERP Volatility?
When we encounter SERP volatility, it’s essential to take a strategic approach and avoid hasty decisions. Here are some guidelines we follow:
- Always Monitor Your Visibility: We continuously track your keywords to identify changes in SERPs. Review your landing pages to understand which keywords and pages were impacted while assessing other factors like lost backlinks and loading times.
- Always Be On Monitoring: Our team will conduct regular SEO audits, maintain a strong backlinking strategy, and optimize your website to stay competitive. Set up keyword alerts to stay informed about ranking changes.
- Optimize for Mobile: Given the prevalence of mobile searches, optimizing your website for mobile is crucial. At SEO Experts we ensure your site passes Core Web Vitals (CWV) to avoid traffic drops due to poor mobile experiences.
- Analyze Historical Data: We review historical data to identify keywords and pages that used to perform well but have slipped in rankings. This can uncover issues like technical problems, outdated content, or competitive content strategies.
- Verify Analytics Configuration: Our professional SEO team ensures proper analytics configuration on all web pages to track organic search traffic accurately. This is because misconfigured analytics or missing tracking codes can lead to inaccurate data.
- Adapt to Search Landscape Changes: Our expert seo services provide contatnt adaptation to our strategies, which are governed by staying updated on changes in the search landscape, such as paid search ads, Search Generative Experience (SGE), and SERP feature modifications.
- Evaluate the Impact of Other Marketing Campaigns: We consider how other marketing campaigns, such as paid advertising and display, can affect SEO. Our team is mindful of their potential impact on branded query volume and organic search traffic.
- Monitor Website Changes and Technical Issues: We keep communication channels open with our development team allowing you to stay informed about site updates. This is because changes to title tags, page headers, or URL structures can affect rankings and traffic, so change is always a nessasesity.
- Conduct a Comprehensive Site Content Audit: Our team assess your website’s content critically. Ensureing it provides value, transparency, and satisfies the information needs of your users. By compareing your content with that of competitors to identify areas for improvement, we can ensure you are a step ahead of the curve.
Monitoring SERP volatility is crucial for SEO experts to maintain and improve website visibility, traffic, and conversions. We utilize SERP volatility tools to help identify changes and their potential causes because implemtation. During periods of volatility, we remain calm and follow the best proven practices, focusing on high-quality content and a great user experience to ensure long-term success for your clients.
Keep in mind that SEO is a strategy that requires a long-term perspective. Instead of seeking immediate victories, the focus should be on establishing a lasting online presence that can positively impact your business over an extended period. By collaborating with our trusted professionals at SEO Experts, you can move forward in the digital realm with confidence, assuring that your online visibility is being managed by skilled professionals.