On-Page Report Card is lacking

[raywhite]

To SEOMOZ Developers: All my pages score A's in the On-Page Report Card, yet most are not indexed in the top 50 positions for Google!!!  Don't you think there are other factors you're not considering when giving out A's?

In other words, a page should not be awarded an A when it's not in top 50 ranking positions.  That's seems to be a flaw in the Optimization Reports.  There must be something my page is missing, but you are not pointing it out.  Shouldn't your "A" requirements be more aligned with Google's ranking algorithms?

In other words, most pages awarded A's should be found to be ranked in the top 50.  And, most pages not ranked in the top 50 should recieve F's because they don't meet Google's ranking requirements.

In other words, you should model your report card more closely to Google's ranking.

Here's an example:

Keyword: "enterprise time management"

Page: www.stdtime.com/enterprise-time-management.htm

[FLEAR]

mind is blown at people moaning about weekly on page factors. I think it's great, made a lot of changes ( can only be positive! ) but ye, maybe more updates on link building etc would be cool!

[worldwideadventurer]

Thanks I will try it again then.

[CleverPhD]

The On-Page report is simply that - an "On-Page" report.  By definition, it does not check things that are outside of the page in question.  What you want to look at is a ranking report to see how a page is ranking.

On-page are just some of the 200+ things that Google looks at - so you have to look at the whole picture.  If everyone could just use a simple tool to reverse engineer the Google ranking algo, then I bet Rand would charge way more than $99 to access it!

On-page factors are SEO 101 though, so to delete it would be extreme.  I think people don't write about them as much as they are pretty well established (and straight forward) and so they do not need to be rehashed over and over again.

If there was not a tool, you would still need to read some Blog articles to find out best practices for on-page optimization.   You could still obsess over the details and implementing them for hours on end.  You would still end up in the same place that you are right now.

[CleverPhD]

You probably need to wait until SEOMoz sends Roger to do his weekly check and see what has changed to give a new grade.

[worldwideadventurer]

I am new - and realise I have been very poor at key words and page optimisation.

I tested one of my pages which got an F no surprise there - made a whole lot of changes, and the F came back the the scores all still the same. Now I am confused!

[Gamer07]

Thanks Ruth. I didn't know about the customization of reports. I take back that comment in that case

[RuthBurrReedy]

Thanks for your feedback on the on-page report - I'll pass it on to our Product team.

[RuthBurrReedy]

I would say that "also important" is a more accurate characterization of my comments above regarding link building and PA than "more important." Did you know that you can customize report emails to send the information you want? You can configure them in the Reports section.

The reason we send the weekly crawl report emails is so that users can easily see if their site is kicking up a new or unexpected error. If you have suggestions for how we can improve the report, I know our Product team would be interested in hearing them - you can request a feature at https://seomoz.zendesk.com/forums/293194-seomoz-PRO-feature-requests.

[Gamer07]

Fair enough but in my opinion the problem is that SEOMOZ is putting too much importance on the On-page optimization tool and on page report card by sending out weekly on-page reports.

If "LINK BUILDING and PA" is more important, then why don't you include them in weekly crawl report emails instead of the less important "ON PAGE REPORT"?

[Gamer07]

I think on page card should be discarded. I don't know why SEOMOZ still keeps it in Research Tools while most SEOMOZ writers don't even talk about on-page factors these days.

I have been running my own experiment with SEOMOZ on-page optimization tool and I have come to the conclusion that it is a waste of time to play with it.

I have hundreds of pages that would get F from the very same tool but rank in top 10 and other A rated pages fail to even show up in the top 50 results. Not to mention that it doesn't work at all for long-tail keywords...

The only positive I can see is that it gives you a general idea of what not to do on your pages, such as keyword stuffing or the use of meta keywords.

If I was SEOMOZ, I would change the grading system from the current A-F to a simple POSITIVE-NEGATIVE. This was it wouldn't drive people crazy over it, trying to convert a C/B to and A. Importance of On-page Optimization is way too exaggerated because of this tool, showing up in your campaign report and in emails.

The tool is apparently obselete and I really hope SEOMOZ updates the grading system and stops showing it as an important tool. I have wasted hours and hours with it because it looked like an important part of SEOMOZ Research Tools.

Actually, I'd rather read more blog posts, listen to the webinars and then spend time with other research tools than wasting time on this on-page report card.

[raywhite]

Fair enough.  Thank you for the reply.

[CleverPhD]

Agree with Ruth.  Plus, when I want to have deep thoughts, I leave SEOMoz and I go get me some Jack Handey

http://www.deepthoughtsbyjackhandey.com/

but that's just how I roll.......

[RuthBurrReedy]

Hi Ray,

Many sites don't have As on every page - not every SEO has the budget or the authority to easily make changes and fix on-page errors. You're the owner and president of your company, but most SEOs aren't - and many SEOs are dealing with hundreds or thousands of pages - getting an A on all of those pages can be a large amount of work.  Sometimes site structure issues like (for example) old CMS mean that on-page errors are difficult, if not impossible, to completely fix without a full site redesign - an expensive and time-consuming prospect for many businesses, even large ones with lots of budget.

I'm sorry that the tool hasn't met your expectations, but again, the on-page report card is not intended to give you a full SEO evaluation or to be a one-stop indicator of your SEO success. I disagree with your assessment that working to get an A in the on-page report card isn't helping you rank - combined with a solid off-page link building and sharing plan, having your on-page factors optimized can be a very powerful tool.  But they simply aren't enough to help you rank on their own.

[raywhite]

If this is true, then the A, B, C, D, F, rating is pointless, since all my pages are A's.  Everybody's pages are A's, right?  Is anybody stupid enough to get a B?  It's so easy to get an A that the other letters are pointless.

Why not just have a simple list of things to improve?

When I first started with this tool, I thought it would "think deep thoughts" about the text on my pages and tell me why the page didn't rank.  Instead, it just looks at simple things like H1 tags and keywords in the the title.  That's shallow.  Getting all those things right should earn you a D.  From there, you should have to fight for an A.  But in my case I can get an A with ten minutes of work, and it still doesn't help me rank.

[RuthBurrReedy]

CleverPhD is right on the money.  On-page factors are important, and they're great to fix since they're entirely under our control, but Google looks at over 200 different factors when deciding where to rank pages, and many of those factors are off-page (links, social shares, etc).

The on-page report card isn't intended to be the be-all and end-all of your SEO activities - nor is it a checklist of things you can do to automatically rank well.  Because Google keeps its algorithm a secret, there's no way for any outside party to definitively say "yes, your page will rank for sure."  As CleverPhD pointed out, the next step after a well-optimized page is to build high-quality links.  Pages don't exist in a vacuum - your site needs to not only be well-optimized but also have enough authority to place it highly against other pages competing for the keyword.  This is very difficult to do for a phrase with any kind of competition, based on on-page factors alone.

It looks like right now the page that you provided as an example has a Page Authority score of just 16 - you've got 1 link from 1 root domain.  I would focus on increasing your PA and DA scores by building some high-authority links.  The resources CleverPhD pointed out will be a great start.  I would also recommend Mike King's terrific post on link building, found here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building

Good luck!

[CleverPhD]

On page factors are just on page factors and while are important, are just one part of the ranking process.

I think of on page optimization as what, "gets you in the door" with Google/Bing/Etc.  If you get it wrong, then you may not get into the search engines to start with, or your ranking is much worse than should may be otherwise.

That said, just because you get on page optimization right, does not then automatically get you into the top 50 places for a keyword.

If it were that simple, then what would Google do with 100 pages that are focused on the same keywords that all got an A in onpage optimization?  How would  Google rank them as far as relevancy?

There are several hundred factors that come into play when getting a page to rank for a keyword.  What is the age of the page/domain?  Is this on a trusted domain? How many links are coming into that page?  Where are the links coming from?  What is the anchor text used on the link?  How many other pages are trying to rank for the same key words?  What are the link profiles for those pages?  etc. etc.

Take a look at the SEOmoz ranking factors article for more info

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

Not to sound sarcastic, but congrats on getting an A for your on page factors!  Many people never get that far and have poor rankings due to things that could be easily fixed!

Look at your SEO checklist  http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-seo-checklist-for-new-sites-whiteboard-friday and check that one off!  Onto other tasks!