Why my site doesn't come on top even though search terms are very similar or exact?
-
For example, when I search in google for "Kookaburra Pro 600 wheelie kit bag", my site comes 9th on 1st page but 3rd link doesn't even match the exact key word rather it has few of the words.
Can one of you expert please explain how it works?
Thanks,
CricMax
-
Amar,
If you do not have full control over your URL structure, I would not recommend making the change you mention above.
Changing your website's permalink structure is a monotonous task that requires a good bit of expertise. You will need to implement old page to new page 301 redirects for every URL your change. I would only trust this task to an SEO professional that fully understands website architecture and 301 redirects.
My biggest advice to you is to start building quality links to your website. That is what will generate higher rankings.
-
Max,
Thanks for answering all my questions and they were very helpful as you explained it in plain English.
We have the following URL structure and we are trying to re-structure it
http://www.cricmax.com/p/6552/kookaburra-kahuna-chaos-cricket-bat
I know in your 1st post you had mentioned to remove /p/6552 and we looked into it but we can not remove it because it's system generated unique ID. However, we can tweak it to following:
http://www.cricmax.com/kookaburra-kahuna-chaos-cricket-bat-6552 - is this a good idea? does this affect the way google see our product page?
Please advise
Thanks,
-
Amar,
I would not "stuff" keywords in your URL, so the second example would be the better of those two. It is great to have keywords in your URL's, but your also want to keep them simple, concise, and with a solid navigational structure.
Also, if you do start changing your URL's, be sure to set up 301 redirects for all of the old pages, so you do not lose any traffic or link juice.
The "meta description" does not affect rankings. It's best use is to entice people to click on your page in the search results.
opensiteexplorer.org is a great tool for checking out your competition's backlink profile.
-
Max,
Thank you for all your help and great answers. I have couple more
1. Can you please tell me which one is better?
OR
www.cricmax.com/kookaburra-cricket-bat/kookaburra-kahuna-1000-cricket-bat.html
What are the advantage of having 1st one over 2nd one or vice versa?
2. is it good to have keywords similar to product name in description field? Does that help to bring the site up in ranking?
3. How do I see where my competitors are linking? e.g. www.cricketstoreonline.com vs www.cricmax.com
Please advise
Thanks,
-
I would recommend sharing via Social Media, regardless of SEO, because it will help build your brand awareness. There is a debate right now of whether or not Google uses Social signals to determine rankings. Even if they don't right now, I would recommend building up your Social Media outlets now, so you will reap the benefits if/when search engines decide to include Social signals in their ranking algorithm. Regarding blog posting and commenting, I would only use blog commenting as a way to add valuable insight to a post and to establish a relationship with the writer, not as a means to aquire a link. That is spammy and blog comment links are normally tagged as nofollow. I would focus on guest blog posting. That is where you will receive valuable links that will help you rank.
-
I would recommend sharing via Social Media, regardless of SEO, because it will help build your brand awareness. There is a debate right now of whether or not Google uses Social signals to determine rankings. Even if they don't right now, I would recommend building up your Social Media outlets now, so you will reap the benefits if/when search engines decide to include Social signals in their ranking algorithm. Regarding blog posting and commenting, I would only use blog commenting as a way to add valuable insight to a post and to establish a relationship with the writer, not as a means to aquire a link. That is spammy and blog comment links are normally tagged as nofollow. I would focus on guest blog posting. That is where you will receive valuable links that will help you rank.
-
Max,
Does it help to share link of a specific product from our website to facebook and Google Plus?
I will start posting and commenting on blogs and share my domain.
Thanks,
Cricmax
-
Amar,
The quantity of unique links does matter, the more you have the higher your domain and page authority will be, but you should always focus on quality over quantity. One quality link can be worth more than 100 spammy links.
Regarding videos, I would not rely solely on your video channels for the links. A link from youtube.com will be marked as "nofollow" which mean the link exists, but it will pass not pass any SEO juice to your website (meaning it will not increase your domain and page authority). I looked like dailymotion.com, and it does not add a "nofollow" tag to their links. The only problem with that link is it will be coming from your profile page, which will have a starting page authority of 1 (unless you build liks to it).
However, videos can be a great way to generate links from other websites. Take the same strategy I mentioned earlier and apply it to your videos. And of course, always require a link when someone uses your video.
-
Max,
What about having youtube and dailymotion product videos? Does that help? We can put our web adress in description field.
Also, does quantity of unique link matters?
Thanks,
Cricmax
-
Amar,
Your domain and page authority are basically like a grade for your backlink profile, and the only way to increase your grade is to generate quality links to your website.
Here is a good article that has many specific ways to build links: http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml
Also, I would recommend finding websites that you think your customers visit. Since you are an expert in the products your sell, create content that reviews a product, compares products that you sell, or something along those lines. Once you create this content, reach out to the websites that you think your customers visit. Promote your content to the people who own or manage the website/blog. Call them first, then email (in my experience phone calls have a higher success rate than emails). Explain how adding your content to their website/blog would add value because their readers would be interested in it. And of course, in your content always include a link to your website (either in your bio or in the actual content). Lastly, when you do manage to get a link from a good website, keep that relationship with the person who gave you the link. It is a lot easier to get a link from someone you have a relationship with than from someone you don't.
I hope this helps and answers your question.
-
Max,
What is the best way to increase page and domain authority?
Also, how to build quality links and best way?
-
Hello Amar,
I took a look at the search results for "Kookaburra Pro 600 wheelie kit bag."
cricketbestbuy.com is the 3rd results that I think you are referring to in your question, and I assume your website is cricmax.com
Here are some reason their page is ranking higher than yours.
First, cricketbestbuy.com's domain authority is 23 vs 20 (yours). Their page authority is 16 vs 1 (yours). Domain and page authority are based off of your website and page's backlink profile. Links are the most important factor when Google determines rankings. To increase this you need to get quality websites to link to your website and this specific page.
Second, your title tag is better for this search query, since you have the "600" model vs their "300" model, but it is not an exact match. If you remove "B/L/S" from the title tag, it would be an exact match, which will serve you better. I would follow this same rule for the h1 tag, especially if the "B/L/S" is not 100% necessary for identifying the product (you can always add that in the description).
If possible, I would look into changing your permalink structure. Something like "cricmax.com/products/kookaburra/kookaburra-pro-600-wheelie-kit-bag" would be better than "cricmax.com/p/6616/kookaburra-pro-600-wheelie-bls-kit-bag"
To sum it up, the main factor that is causing cricketbestbuy.com's page to rank higher than yours is its domain and page authority, which can be solved with a few great links.
Good Luck.
-
This question, "why doesn't my site come out on top", is pretty much the topic of all of SEOmoz. So, there are many factors to consider beyond just the title tag.
But, looking at that SERP, I can see that the one listing in the top 10 that has the fewest keywords in the title, DOES have the first word of your query, "kookaburra" , as it's domain name, which would help.
Also, that domain (www.kookaburra.biz) has the most domain authority. It is by far the strongest in terms of inbound links and followed linking root URLs.
Compare link metrics from those other sites to your site, and you'll see some significant differences:
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=cricmax.com
If you want to learn more, the beginners guide here on SEOmoz would be a good place to start:
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seoWith particular attention to Chapter 7:
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-linksThanks,
Chris -
1. SEO is a complex set of multiple algorithms that cumulatively intend to find the content on the vast web that their automated formula based system "thinks" most reflects the intent of the person performing the search, regardless of whether the phrase typed in is an exact match or not.
2. When I copied and pasted the phrase you refer to into Google (without quotes) yes, I see your site in the 9th position. However when I put "quotes" around it, for a true "exact match", THIS page on SEOMoz is the only one that comes up because the phrase you are asking about is NOT an exact match to your own site's page that shows up. Because of that, Google can't show your page first, since no pages (other than this one) use that exact phrase, thus triggering #1. above.
3. Even with all of that being said, hundreds of factors can cause a site to show up higher even if your site does have an exact match, but where your site might be weak from an SEO perspective for other reasons beyond phrase matching. (See item #1 above once again for the complexity factor).
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Non ecommerce site with high DA, being outranked by lower DA sites with ecommerce - help?
I have a website that we look after, up until January this year the rankings were really strong - the site has a much higher domain authority than the competitors, much more links and much more relevant content (all measured with moz's tools). About 6 months ago the rankings started to dive for national search terms. Now one thing ive noticed is that nearly all of the other sites in the search sell products online where we have no such function - could this be correlated - has anyone else experienced this?
Competitive Research | | rhysc1 -
2 sites with low DA and PA and unoptimised <title>outranking everyone for competitive search term - How ?</title>
Im doing some keyword research for a new client, Ive found 2 anomalies for competitive search terms where sites with unoptimised <title>tags, poor backlinks and other stats, (compared to the other sites listed in the SERP) are out ranking everyone and claiming the #1 spot</p> <p> The 2 search terms are :</p> <ul> <li dir="ltr"> <p dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=interior+designers+london&oq=interior+designers+london&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i65j69i60j69i65l2j69i60.2784j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">Interior designers London</a>- #1 new-id.co.uk - <a href="https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/links?site=new-id.co.uk&filter=&source=external&target=page&group=0&page=1&sort=page_authority&anchor_id=&anchor_type=&anchor_text=&from_site=">OSE info</a></p> </li> <li dir="ltr"> <p dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=interior+designers+london&oq=interior+designers+london&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i65j69i60j69i65l2j69i60.2784j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=interior+designer+london">Interior designer London</a>- #1 nstudio.co.uk - <a href="https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fnstudio.com%2F&filter=&source=external&target=page&group=0&page=1&sort=page_authority&anchor_id=&anchor_type=&anchor_text=&from_site=">OSE info</a></p> </li> </ul> <p> (interestingly they hardly rank at all for any modification of those search terms)</p> <p> The only thing i could think of is that they both had some really good links using that exact anchor text, but ive been checking OSE for the past month both in the backlinks and the just discovered but couldnt see anything like that.</p> <p>I conducted the SERP checking from a laptop with a broadband connection based in London, although im not very local to either of these locations im about an 8th of the cities distance away from one of those location and about half a cities distance away from the other. So i dont think its a local skew thats causing the SERP rankings.</p> <p>For both sites i can see they had old domains which now redirect to the them :</p> <ul> <li dir="ltr"> <p dir="ltr"><span data-mce-mark="1">New-id.co.uk = </span><span data-mce-mark="1"><a href="http://newidinteriors.com/">newidinteriors.com</a> - <a href="https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fnewidinteriors.com&no_redirects=1&filter=&source=external&target=page&group=0&page=1&sort=page_authority&anchor_id=&anchor_type=&anchor_text=&from_site=">OSE info</a> - PA1, DA1</span></p> </li> <li dir="ltr"> <p dir="ltr"><span data-mce-mark="1">Nstudio.co.uk = intarya.com - <a href="https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/links?site=www.intarya.com&filter=&source=external&target=page&group=0&page=1&sort=page_authority&anchor_id=&anchor_type=&anchor_text=&from_site=">OSE info</a> - Da 32, PA43</span></p> </li> </ul> <p> Although the intarya domain was quite strong with good backlinks (but nothing above par comapred to the other sites the nstudio.co.uk site is now outranking, the anchor text was mostly natural with only some keyword anchor text from PA1 pages. </p> <p>The <a href="http://newidinteriors.com/">newidinteriors.com</a> didnt seem to have a backlink profile, both PA1 and DA1.</p> <p> Ive taken screenshots of the SERP pages below, but feel free to dig further</p> <p>Any idea what's going on here ?</p> <a download="HWkjmDf.png" class="imported-anchor-tag" href="http://i.imgur.com/HWkjmDf.png" target="_blank">HWkjmDf.png</a> <a download="A70jXse.png" class="imported-anchor-tag" href="http://i.imgur.com/A70jXse.png" target="_blank">A70jXse.png</a></title>
Competitive Research | | mike8780 -
Methods for estimating competitor website traffic from natural search
Hi all, I'm currently working on some competitor analysis and estimating website traffic based on rankings and estimated search volume for approximately 500 keywords. I'm then estimating based on click through rate from Webmaster tools. I think this will give me a relatively accurate estimation but was wondering how everyone else does this? Any other methods out there? Thanks, Elias
Competitive Research | | A_Q0 -
Why is this site ranking so well
I just took over an SEO campaign for a company we recently did a website for. The old company created individual landing pages for each city they service, but they didn't have any original content except replacing the city name. We are in the process of creating completely unique content per page. My main issue is that there is a company with no link profile, duplicate content on every page, no social media presence, etc - but consistently ranks for city + fence company The company we are starting to work with is: http://betterdecksandfences.com/ The company that is ranking for everything is: http://www.alcovyfence.com Any ideas?
Competitive Research | | BeardoCo0 -
Which top 10 organic results are my competitors?
Hi all, This is a question about whether the top 10 ORGANIC Google results for a broad match is your competition, or whether it's the top 10 for a phrase match, or an exact match. I'm a newbie here but not a newbie to the world of SEO. I hope to be able answer just as many questions as I ask 🙂 QUESTION: If a customer comes to me and says, "hey, who's my (organic) competition for wedding present?" and I want to use Google to get the top 10 organic results, do I use a broad, phrase, or exact match? It seems many people think an exact match is the way to go but I think they were more referring to Adwords results / competition. I'm not trying to determine search volume for Adwords or even the search volume for organic results... I'm only interested in the top 10 competitors in the organic results. No one types in "wedding present" (with inverted commas" when doing a search in Google, so surely to see who ranks organically for wedding present I'd want to simply type in wedding present (no inverted commas, aka broad match). I understand all the concepts about how Google results cary whether you're logged in, etc, etc so I don't want to get distracted by that. And I know there's a bunch of tools we can use like the SEOMoz Keyword Analysis Tool. But I just want to know specifically what people would use (broad, phrase or exact) to look at the top 10 organic competitors are when doing a manual search in Google.
Competitive Research | | eatyourveggies1 -
What's the best way to discover my business and search competitors?
I am trying to figure out who the real competitors are for the domain that I have been recently handed. Other than the client's references, which I don't think are the real competition (they are his benchmarks), how do I go about discovering the true competition? What the simplest, most effective way to go about discovering my business and search competitors? Given that this is a web portal, aren't both of the latter the same?
Competitive Research | | amit20760 -
Why my site is not crawled by open site explorer?
Hello friends, Im new here... I just create a campaign for my site www.electrosecurity.com.ec , but when I try to use open site explorer to see anything there... I receive a message saying that my site is not crawled... What can I do? I have a few links coming to my site.. but these links does not appears on my campaigns details.. for these links my site is PR3, but i can not see any of this links on the general view of my campaign. Sorry for my english....
Competitive Research | | lans27870 -
Use of competitive kw search software for KW discovery for SEO
I use traditional methods for keyword discovery, but occured to me that perhaps competitive keyword software should be applied to competitor's sites for further possibilitites. Any opinions or experience using this strategy? I know it used primarily for PPC, but value for SEO KW discovery? Any personal recommendations on which programs considered most effective? Thanks. Alan
Competitive Research | | ahw0