My apologies if this has already been covered in another thread.

I am quite new in the SEO industry but already have a few clients. One of the sites is a travel site. I have been concentrating on "on page" stuff at the moment, so not giving much thought to links, yet! I started working on this site about 2 months ago (site is years old, wasn't black listed or anything), generally tidying it up, making it more crawler friendly etc. I did notice more of a presence, all though not very good positions, just an overall presence. Which was good, that is what I had expected at this stage, that and no more. The site has a "top 10" list of destinations, that is, a list of 10 pages with destination specific offers. These pages were optimised and to my complete suprise, about 8 out of 10 ranked on the first SERP (usually top 5) for there chosen terms (google, MSN only). Everything is on-page, not even thought about links at this stage.

So, everythings going quite well, feeling quite positive and still suprised at the top 10 pages ranking so well and the site came up for alot of relevant, but less competitive terms. Then they all dropped down about 10 pages in the results, lol. Then they jumped back up, now they are about 5 pages down... I put this strange behaviour down to the big update and decided to do nothing, sit back, watch and learn.

Now I am still not doing as well as when I first started, but, the site is ranking for a very competitive term, position 9 to be exact. All of the other sites on the first couple of results pages have thousands of IBL's (my site has, maybe 3) and there's little old me, up there with the best. As good as it feels, it doesn't make any sense? My clients site shouldn't be there and I just know that in a couple of days the site will vanish into obscurity once again... which is OK, for now.

My quesiton is, can anyone explain why Google has such unpredictable behaviour? I've got a feeling someone is going to come on and say "welcome to SEO", if thats the case - fair enough ;)

Thanks

KP

How do you know it only has 3 IBLs?

Where are they from and what is the anchor text? - could be an interesting impact of percentage of IBLs with a particular anchor text (though not likely - as 100% is seem as spam generally).

Are you working title tags and on page copy more effectively than the rest for the term?

Is this a new page and is it possible you are getting the welcome to Google position - soon to be dropped....

Google used to have a famous "fresh content boost" to new pages, meaning that a new site could rank well for a spread of keywords for about 5-8 weeks, before the ranking was evenly weighted with pages from other sites in the index.

My quesiton is, can anyone explain why Google has such unpredictable behaviour?
What a strange question! Either it is unpredictable, and therefore unexplainable, or it is explainable, and therefore not unpredictable.

No way to know why something like this happens based upon your information. So much can go rigth and wrong in SEO, and so very much is dependant upon factors beyond the scope of your post. So, yes, "welcome to SEO", may you find the peace and tranquility you seek :)

Firstly, thanks for the replies.

Ok, AussieWebmaster, I came up with that figure for the IBL's by checking on Yahoo, according to Yahoo the site actually has 2 IBL's and they are both from forums e.g "know where I can get cheap holidays to etc", response, "yes, try www.site.com", no anchor text, just the URL. It is not a new page and the site has been live for years.

In response to I, Brian, "fresh content boost", It isn't a new site but was never optimised before. When I began working on this particular page, a lot of changes were made, a new "Top 10" list, search function plus all of the tags etc. Despite the fact that the page isn't new, maybe this has happened because the page has changed so much and has so much more content than before. Therefore, I can expect to get dropped anytime now.

Projectphp, lol, you must be a programmer ;)
You must excuse my contradiction, but as stated I am new in the industry and things that are unexplainable to me are not necessarily unexplainable to experts such as yourself.

Anyway guys, thanks for the opinions. I guess I was just looking for some reassurance. Ive spent the last 8-9 months trying to learn as much as I can, the site Im talking about is my first client, so I've been watching everything as closely as I can, trying to make some sense of it, and this didn't make any sense. Not that I'm complaining, I suppose I've just got to "go with the flow".

KP