I just launched a site about a month ago with a domain that is exact-match for my #1 keyword phrase. Started out at #29 in Yahoo/Bing (to which I like to refer collectively as Binghoo). Encouraged by this, I did some link building and jumped up to about #23. I kept link building and dropped to #26, where I stayed for a few days. I kept link building and woke up one morning to discover the site had skyrocketed to #3 on Binghoo for my search phrase. Stayed there for just over a week, during which I gained a few backlinks.
Yesterday, my site tumbled from Binghoo entirely - nowhere to be found on my primary keyword phrase but - get this - it was still coming up when people put in misspellings of the phrase!
This is not untypical of new sites in my experience; they seem to bounce wildly for the first few months.
Why this roller-coaster ride? Why can’t the SERPs assign a rank and stick reasonably close to it?
Probably so. With an exact-match domain I was hoping for more early stability. Also, I can see bouncing up and down in the results, but not being #3 one day and totally un-ranked the next.
early stability - yea but 1 month is nothing mate. i have a 7 years old domain with a VERY competitive keywords that up to this date jumps up an down. not 10-15 place but 1-5 places up and down. so i would say 1 month is really nothing.
Thanks for your input. I guess it’s just wishful thinking as this was a late-launch cold-season site and I would like it to rank consistently before next spring!