Rank & Tank is a catchy new phrase that I came up with to describe a current ranking trend on Google, specific to blogs. To give proper credit, the idea came to me during Jerry West's presentation at the StomperNet Live6 event last month. The term itself was not used or taught, but the idea came to me as one of those AHA! "lightbulb moments" while Jerry was explaining how Google currently treats blog posts in the SERPs...
SERPs stands for Search Engine Results Pages, and is basically the results that are returned when you do a search on Google.
We've discussed the Rank & Tank concept a few times on Twitter lately and several people asked me for a more detailed definition of what it is and how it works - so here goes:
If you blog, you've probably already noticed this. Basically a new blog post will rank very well for a specific keyword phrase within hours of being published (usually longtail phrases, meaning a 3-word phrase or longer). These are phrases people are searching for, the phrases you optimized that particular blog post for - not just meaningless strings of words.
It would be difficult for me to give an example that would 'stick', considering the nature of the concept - so you'll have to test this on your own, or watch new posts that appear on ClickNewz and watch how it works.
And this post wont work since nobody is searching for "Rank & Tank" 😛
At any rate, the blog post will rank fairly quick - sometimes within minutes on an established blog - but then within a few days it will "tank" and fall out of the SERPs altogether (or so far down in the results that it might as well have).
This quick indexing started about a year ago, around August 2007 from what I understand. While it used to take months to get a page indexed and ranking, now it only takes minutes... literally.
So why do blog posts "rank & tank"? Most blogs are updated frequently with fresh news about current topics or events. Those updates (individual posts) are indexed quickly and appear high in the results due to both relevancy and timing.
Here's a good current example: I searched Hurrican Ike, which just went through Cuba and is heading towards the Gulf of Mexico. It is expected to hit Texas/Mexico late Friday or early Saturday of this week.
In the past, you would have to go straight to CNN.com or similar to get current news stories. Or you would have to wait until they had already happened, and a good month or two (or three) went by to be able to find something on it in the search results. Not the case anymore:
Great, right? Of course! And there's nothing new about this. Like I said, its been the case for a little over a year now. The part that was really a "lightbulb moment" for me was in how you can save a blog post from tanking so quickly.
I've been watching my blog in the SERPs closely over the last year, and noticed that some blog posts "stick" - meaning they maintain good rankings - while others "tank" like usual. One example is a search for BANS Review, which has held #3 & #4 spots for quite some time now. (note: search results may vary depending on location)
The obvious difference in whether a post "sticks" or "tanks"... is in whether that post gets any additional attention or promotion once its published. That might include: inbound links, diggs, stumbles, social bookmarks, etc.
I came home from StomperNet Live6 totally jazzed, and tested it out. And yes I know this seems like a super simple concept, one I should have picked up on a long time ago on my own, but sometimes it just takes hearing it to really get your brain in gear.
I picked a longtail keyword phrase that gets over 100 searches a day, according to WordTracker. I wrote a GREAT blog post on that topic, and within minutes had a #4 ranking for the keyword phrase. Normally I would stop there and move on to the next blog post, but I gave this one a little 'extra attention'... and within 48 hours it moved up in ranking to #1 and has been sitting there ever since.
By the way, that keyword phrase is currently the #1 phrase sending targeted traffic into my blog according to my stats program. Using this super simple strategy, I am already on target to more than double my blog traffic this month.
I'll share the keyword & post details with you next, in a complete case study of how I used social media (correctly!) to easily make this happen. Stay tuned - you'll get a great tip in that case study...
Best,
p.s. If you want to learn super simple ways to double or triple your traffic and profit potential, plus advanced and/or aggressive marketing strategies too, you need to be learning from the likes of Jerry West and the rest of the StomperNet team.
You can still get the Free SEO Course and premier edition of The Net Effect as special offer right now, both for the price of S/H ($9.95 in the US). Grab it while you can 😉
About Lynn Terry
I was astounded when I first saw how quickly this can happen - especially when it happened to one of my 30DC posts. But as you hinted, there was minimal competition for that keyword phrase. Number 1, yes. Value of that ranking, not much.
One 30DCer tried a nonsensical phrase, and ranked number 1 for "dog fish sunglasses salad" within an hour. (It's still number one, though still not a popular search term 😉
So I look forward to your case study of ranking for "real world" phrase.
Really good stuff here.
Fortunately its just as easy with popular keyword phrases using a blog, considering how Google is 'treating' them right now. *Keeping* that ranking is where the work comes in, as mentioned in the original post.
The keywords are, of course, the "key" to getting targeted traffic that increases opt-ins & sales 😉
Note: if you look quick (!) you'll see this post in the top 10 for "rank and tank"...
Lynn , you may have missed that link I sent you on twitter... 😉
http://www.hittail.com which will help users with long tail keywords.
Worth looking at, I use it sometimes myself.
Maybe some of your readers would also find it interesting, and may benefit from it.
Hope it helps anyone who looks.
Take care,
Rob
Great job!!!!! This blog is very nice. I´ll come back!
Hey Lynn,
Great post. I have been working on how to overcome this "Rank and Tank" also. I look forward to reading your case study.
I am also becoming quite a fan.
Shannon
Thank you Shannon. Like I said, the concept is a no brainer... but all too often we focus on one direction and not necessarily the other, to the point of missing tons of traffic & sales. This one is so simple I'm bonking my own forehead! :p
Great post! I have to give you credit, I know that it is an SEO thing but you include more links in a post than I can click on!
The content is so good that I need to reread it a few times to click and come back!
Thanks for all your hard work and excellent info!
@bestreflections
Thank you Tina! To be honest, the links are just as much for reference as they are for "seo". The links are optional of course, but highly relevant to the topic and an opportunity for me to keep explanations to a minimum 🙂
Its always a good idea to have reference links within your posts, whether to outside sources or to your own archives - a good blogging tip!
Another link tip, if you have written a good previous post on the topic, do a nice anchour link to it. 😉
You see Lynn do this at times, it's good for getting eyes on old post and ALSO helps this very rank and tank, helps to "keep it up there" so to speak. 😉
I like sharing tips lol... all helps, karma means I get to good tips too. 🙂
Rob
Hi Lynn,
Did I say I was here to stay? Yep, I'm pitching a tent in this blog! I have to read the upcoming case study.. waiting...waiting...
And I'm waiting for my Stompernet mag too, on your recommendation of course. Though I doubt I'll be able to keep it, simply due to the cost of shipping to Australia. Any chance of a downloadable version?
Excellent post Lynn, very astute.
I'm going to link to this from my blog and tweet it - very good stuff!
I am very excited about this article because I am setting up a blog now for the first time and see the amazing potential to increase traffic this way. I am interested in knowing if a followup article was written to let us know which phrase you used to increase your traffic so high. This article has given me new ideas on the direction I want to go with the article. It's also very interesting to know that Google is paying so much attention to blogs. I wonder whether this slows down their crawling on non-blog sites, would you know the answer to that?
Thank you Tony!
Glenys - As far as I know its going to be a print publication only. We'll have to keep our eye on StomperNet for any other word.
Speed, if anything their crawling is faster than ever. But no, I dont have any official answer to that... And the follow-up article is coming soon. I held off putting it up right away as I had a few more details to put together for it. Should be up by Monday at the latest 😉
This is an excellent case study in itself - 4 months later and this post now ranks #2 for "rank and tank" (at least it does for me here in Spain). Excellent content, practicing what you preach, as always 😉
Hai Lynn, what a great post! I become your big fans now! I should learn a lot from you!
I followed a link from a comment today and was pleased to see someone writing about this. I will search your archives for the next case study article so I can read it.
Terry, I've noticed this a few times with a celebrity gossip blog I used to run. It always helps to have the proper long-term SEO fundamentals down so that the traffic sources aren't so "fly-by-night."
Recently I've seen a blog (root domain) go from page 1 and get dropped to results position 800+...I'm thinking it's something other than the blog rank & tank issue with that one. The owner probably hit the submit sitemap or pinged it too hard is my guess. Trying to figure this one out.
I have had that hit me too many times. I was not sure if it was something I was doing or what?
I have a few self-hosted WordPress blogs last year. I noticed that it took 3-5 days for these sites to get indexed by Google. I started posting and was pleasantly surprised to see my posts indexed anywhere from 20 minutes - 2 hours later. Very fast. The trend that I'm noticing in recent weeks is that my posts do not index for days or sometimes never. Has Google changed something recently.
I went "searching" online yesterday and found several similar complaints from other people. Their posts also used to index quickly up until this year. March/April seemed to be a turning point for many people. If a post is timely or involves current events, celeb news, etc.....It does no good to wait "weeks till never" for the post to index. Evergreen is not as worrisome, however it does not help in making money with affiliate programs or adsense if the posts don't index as quickly or ever.
FYI- Slow indexing or no indexing has even been a problem lately for the content mills such as Examiner, Associated Content, etc. Again, these problems are recent. April/May has been problematic.
These sites gets MILLIONS of hits per month, especially with news stories. If larger sites are having issues with Google indexing slowly, what hope is there for those of us that are trying to build out our own self-hosted sites? I even have my WordPress.org sites set to automatically "Ping". It all used to work like a charm. Just curious what your take is Lynn...
First sentence should read "I have a few self-hosted WordPress blogs that I started last year."
This was very helpful! Thanks!