Hi, I was on position #4 (page1) for a very long time, for a competitive keyword with around 100K searches... but lately my site started dance among positions 1,2,3,4 (page1) in different parts of the day. Usually starts with #1 position in the morning and sinks down at to position #4 at the end of the day. what does this mean? is google thinking to put me at pos #1? and checking how it will perform? What is the reason for google dance? I didn't build any links, or anything...
This might be the answer, and I don't think that they are testing your performance for #1 ranking or so simply because they know it all already, before and after. Is your website dynamic or static ?
Here is some questions: Is the site less than about 1 year old? Most of the pages of the site has been indexed by Google? Your site ranks well for its' competitive keywords in Yahoo and MSN? Your site ranks well for the non-competitive keywords on Google? The Googlebot visits and crawls the site on a regular basis? Your site has lots of unique backlinks? You haven't done anything known to cause a penalty? Your site does not rank in the top 300-400 for it's main keyword? If your website similar to the above questions, it is sandbox
Mary William what penalty are u talking about? if increasing ranking means penalty it's cool ! read OP again please. As for changes I optimized site for faster loading...
Unless you post the url here, no exact answer could be given. I can give only general advices here. This type of dance is a good sign than a bad one. Your website ranked#4 and then started to move around #1- #4 then it is possible to ranked #1. Even saying that, this is not a guarantee as your competitors do wants to take over your placement as always. You said you didn't built more links but I assume your competitor does. There is a chance for your website position to lower than where it was (#4) either. I would recommend you acquire a few quality links first. Do it in steady pace and no bunch of low quality links. If your website is authority and aged enough, the position should be more stable anyway.
Thanks, that makes sense... My site is the one I've in the sig, it's 3 years old, and generally ranks good on the range of keywords. I just noticed this weird dance... Only thing I did was to optimize site for faster loading, like combine js, combine css, gzip content etc. Could that be the reason for possible increase in ranking?
moving between positions 1,2,3,4 (page1) in different parts of the day is very little to worry about as such, if it was pages 1 to 4 that would be a different matter could just be different data centers that you hit at different times, could be personalise search... have you turned it off ? ("Web History" - top right of results page)
Combining css and js into eternal files can help with site load and rankings. In most cases it will put your content higher in your source and make it easier to crawl.
Yeah, that's a good indication that you may acquire the upper position, make sure you are getting more authority links and fresh contents that supports the keyword.