My Post Ranked #1 On Yahoo In 1 Day- Short Lived Mini Success Story

Hello WA world,

This is actually my very first post about my progress here at Wealthy Affiliate. I have been too shy to publish a post here and besides, I didn’t think I had enough of a “progress” to brag about.

But any progress is still progress, right?

So here I am today, excited to tell you all that I finally have my very first sharable success story! It is, however quite short-lived but you know what, I am going to stay positive and take it as a win- even if it meant it was for a short while.

Every win is worth celebrating.

My Post Ranked # 1

I was randomly checking the status of one of my recent posts to see where it was being ranked, if it even was, that is.

I opened up jaaxy and entered in my targeted keyword and stared brainlessly as the page loaded the results. I knew at this point the result was just going to be an “unranked position” on all three search engines. Same as always. Tsk tsk.

But to my surprise and massive disbelief (imagine me with my mouth dropped open), that post managed to rank at the # 1 position on… YAHOO.

Now, I couldn’t believe it- This was MY post! Number ONE position? Really?? I honestly thought it was a mistake.

And then I sadly thought, it’s Yahoo, not Google. Sighhhh. Sad face.

Because I wasn’t expecting it, I quickly took a screenshot of it (above). It is a ‘once in a blue moon’ kinda thing for me, you know? Especially as a newbie, still. (Hopefully, I will have many more of these moments *fingers crossed*)

Also took a screenshot because I wanted to save this into memory for days I needed a kick in the butt. I apologize for being inappropriate but it is my butt I am talking about. Still, not good? Ahh, oh well.

Ever since I started here, I kept reading other WA members talking about how their post ranked on Google and it always motivated me to push forward but I always wondered when it would happen to me.

And finally it has- Woohoo! Thank you, WA.

So what if it isn’t Google! My post ranked #1 on Yahoo! Hooray!

Victory Dance!!

This is still an achievement! Wouldn’t you say so?

Short-Lived Success

Now, here’s the sad part of this story. My post didn’t stay at the first position.

Oh I forgot to mention, I had ranked #1 on yahoo just after one day of publishing my post. Yup. Crazy, right?

What happened to all the hours of work I put into all the previous posts? They weren’t even found on any position!

Why single out only ONE post? Geez Yahoo, why you gotta be so rude?

Yes, I went a little crazy and checked rankings for my other posts as well. Let me tell you, the results weren’t even half as good!!

I had 2 posts ranked on Google at like the 149th and 98th position and one of them had a downward red arrow next to it. Great, just great.

The other posts were also ranked in a scattered fashion on Bing and Yahoo but nothing worth smiling about. Some weren’t even ranked. No surprise there.

Anyways, so this specific post that ranked at the first position, only stayed there at that position for 3 consecutive days (March 27-29) until it dropped down to the 13th position (also with a downward red arrow) by April 11.

Currently, it is not ranked anywhere. *tears*

And this is the end of my short-lived success story.

Lesson Learned

I tried to wonder why my rankings changed and I went into a rabbit hole on the internet trying to find some answers. The best answer I found was when I watched a recent class by, ours truly, Kyle!

How To Access & Amplify Your Rankings

In this very-informative class, he explained that it is NORMAL for rankings to change and this could happen due to a number of reasons: Google updates, site speed, etc. Now, this site speed thing is quite true.

With the kind of theme I currently have activated, it runs a ton of images and this could be the reason for slower page loads. I am not kidding when I say LOTS of images.

Those of you who comment on my posts, know what I am talking about. Apologes for putting you guys through all those photos in your face!

Every training here on WA and even my wonderful coach always told me to focus on content..But the rebel me, I spent a considerable amount of time beautifying my website. And for no good reason. (I really need to start listening to people!).

Side Note: Please don’t waste your time on superficial aspects of your website. It is really not worth it!

All it cost me was lots of time, effort and really low speeds. Not fun at all.

I am this close to changing my entire theme to something more basic but maybe a few notches higher than the super-loved GeneratePress theme. Not throwing shade to those who use it. I think it is an awesome theme; just not for me. In fact, my speeds improved drastically with GeneratePress.

So I spent 2 days with SiteSupport trying to ask them to fix my site speeds. They were in the 60 and lower range (the red zone) on mobile devices. My experience with how I managed to fix my page speeds will have to be another post.

It was quite a struggle, to say the least. Super frustrating too.

Long story short, SiteSupport did the changes as much as they could and I worked on writing a new post targeting a low hanging keyword.

By this time, my speeds had improved to the “orange” color and I optimized my post the best I could. I published it, requested indexing on Google Search Console, and asked the wonderful WA community for their comments on it. After some comments and posting to my socials, I requested indexing again on Search Console.

Two days after I published this new post, it ranked on the 64th position on Google! That is page 7. I will take that as a win! Woohoo! No where close to page 1, not even first 20 pages lol but I am still happy.

Needless to say, I will be tracking this keyword to see how it continues to rank!

This is a Jaaxy feature available to Premium Plus WA members, I think. I could be wrong. I am not exactly sure.

Anyways, Jaaxy is great for checking site ranking, keyword searching, making lists, and so much more.

Going Forward

I still have a long way to go but just having this mini “ranking victory”, motivates me to keep going. And to put my story out there so it could motivate or inspire others.

The training here really works and you just have to trust yourself and keep going. I had a huge gap in my training soon after I started my membership here but I managed to pick up (and it was really hard to pick up from where I left off).

For everyone reading this, I would not like to say the same thing everyone says in every post: good things come with patience; if it happened to me, it will happen to you, etc etc. Yes, all those things are true. And please do believe it.

However, what I would like to leave you with is that even if you rank on page 1 on any of the search engines, it still qualifies as a huge win! Take a mini break and celebrate that win!

Allow yourself to be happy with what you have achieved with all your progress. Don’t be like me and say: oh it’s Yahoo, not Google.

Instead you should say: It is Yahoo today; Tomorrow it will be Google, Bing & Yahoo!!

Here’s to many more success- big or small!