For the last 7 years I’ve been a Sacramento and San Francisco SEO consultant. One thing I’ve learned about keyword rankings is they can move up or down every 24 hours. What’s the best way to deal with this if you’ve attained a high ranking, but 24 hours later moved down 2-3 spots?

The short answer is to immediately stop worrying about it.

1) Google did not make some drastic change to the algorithm that resulted in you moving a few spots. And there are far better ways to confirm an algorithm change than by looking at your own rankings. (One of those ways is being aware of Google announcing big algorithm changes, which is what they do.)

2) Understand that if you’re doing SEO right, the rankings for your most valuable phrases will go up consistently over time. Compare your rankings month over month not day over day. And keep in mind that as you continue to create new blog posts and web pages, or add backlinks to your website, these will help your rankings across the board for all phrases.

It’s similar to going on a diet and disciplining yourself not to look at the scale every day. If you know you’ve been exercising and eating healthy, there’s no need to look at the scale. Eventually you’ll get the results.

Is there a caveat to when you should rush to check your rankings? Sure. If you’ve done a site redesign and noticed a dip across the board, that could mean a problem with how Google is indexing the content on your site now. It could also mean that the way you rearranged SEO content wasn’t SEO friendly.

SEO software, which is usually charged on a per month basis by companies like Moz, Serpstat, or SERanking, can help you managing your positions on Google. Or you can use a free tool called Google Search Console, verify your site, and unlock not only your position, but click thru rate as well.