This week, as it happens, 3 clients asked us this exact question. So we figured: “Great, that’s a good reason for a short post.”
First, for anyone who isn’t familiar with it: “average position in Google” is simply the average ranking position of all the keywords you rank for.
For example: if you have 100 keywords, with 60 of them ranking in position 10 and 40 of them ranking in position 5, your average position in Google is 8 (60 times 10 plus 40 times 5, divided by 100).
“OK, got it. So is that bad or good?”
The short answer is “it depends.” Depends on what? On the other metrics.
If your average position dropped but your impressions and clicks went up, it’s most likely the result of the right optimization work, which brings in new keywords (new content / expanding existing content) to fill the content gaps on your site.
It doesn’t mean you’re losing rankings on the keywords you care about. It means you’re adding new keywords to the search results and increasing the number of queries you rank for. That’s why your average position drops.
If your average position drops and your impressions and clicks drop along with it, then yes, there’s most likely a problem you need to fix.
