Unable to get into top 20 even when pages are optimized and most crawl issues resolved
-
I have a few keyword phrases I've been trying to rank in the top 20 for (starting place). I have optimized for a few different phrases, ranging in keyword difficulty, but no matter what I do I can't seem to get in. In many cases, the exact same results show up for many different variations of the phrases I'd like to rank for. I've read about how google tries to match user intent and so if it decides those results are more relevant then it will always show them, but does that mean that no matter what I do I will always be behind them?
The main question I have is: how should I proceed? Should I stop optimizing pages and focus on link acquisition? Or go through and make sure there isn't a single crawl issue? Or focus on optimizing for longer tail keyword phrases?
It just feels like I've done so much of what the moz tools have recommended and I'm seeing very little movement over the past couple of months, if anything I see dips in performance after optimization.
Thanks in advance!
-
Roman
More than crawl issues, but in short yes, broken links, site loading speed, mobile optimization etc. All the basics. The technical seo audit by Moz is an great checklist to work through.
Yes they will be if they are from bought links, or spam directories, but if they are earn't links then they would be natural and should not incur a penalty. It is hard work getting one or two. We use Moz and majestic and do a link analysis. Have you done that? How many links do you actually have with the keyword anchor text you are targeting on the specific page?
Your own blog, and own socials etc and the posts get re-published because you created such awesome content.
Hope that assists. Tragically there is nothing short of back breaking work ahead...
-
John,
Just to make sure I'm understanding you correctly.
1. Are you suggesting that getting crawl issues to 0 should be my main priority?
2. I was under the impression that obvious use of keywords in anchor text is an easy way of getting penalized by google's algorithm. Is that not true?
3. By "target articles" do you mean guest blog posts on other sites or on my own blog.
Thanks again for further input!
Roman
-
Roman
You still have to work on the technical. So do not stop. Also however I would suggest - specific backlink / anchor text targeting of the important keywords you are chasing. So target articles (backlinks) where the anchor text is reflective of the keyword you are attempting to rank for. Make sure they have a strong trust flow and see how you go. Need to get the content up to a formidable level.
Hope that assists.
-
Hey John,
Thanks so much for your response.
1. Technical SEO, I have spent a good deal of time working on the technical side of things. We do have remaining issues but our site has a lot of pages, especially on the blog (subdomain) and it would take a very long time to get all of them fixed (issues like long page names and duplicate descriptions). But I have fixed duplicate content, 301 to single url, etc. Speed-wise we're ok (64/100 perf grade & 2.5 Load time on pingdom).
2. Backlinks-wise, we're not in terrible shape. 35 DA and 41 PA (homepage). And while many of our competitors are much stronger than us authority-wise, I've seen some with lower numbers that rank higher for some keyword phrases.
3. Content. I have recently started up an initiative for creating more relevant content on the blog with a focus on creating sharable content to earn us some social links and attempt to build some potential marketing relationships. Although we're still in the very early stages on that front (lots of growing pains).
I have to say I've probably watched and read almost every video in the moz academy and read a ton of articles elsewhere, including most of what Matt Cutts has put out there. It feels like I've followed all the right advice from the pros but I'm not seeing that big jump I've been dying to wake up to! Taking all of this into account, what would you advise?
Thanks,
Roman
Also, if anyone else has any advice I would really appreciate the help!
-
Hi
Without going into a great depth and people will rightly point out everything I have missed there are three keys aspects to ranking. The first is technical seo - see audit link https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015
It sounds like you are on top of technical - but maybe a quick check. A key one is page loading speed (tools.pingdom.com)
The second is authoritative backlinks. It does sound like a site authority issue - what is your DA & PA for you home page? https://moz.com/products/api if low ie less than 15. Read https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building
Then the third you need to consider is content creation. https://moz.com/blog/how-to-build-a-content-marketing-strategy.
So three big issues - where are you with each one? Do a little audit and see where you are at may give you guidance in where to place limited resources.
Hope that assists.
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
-
Why is my page rank disapointing
Hi fairly new here, so just getting used to everything one questions please. Just ran a crawl test of the website and this page http://www.livingphilosophy.org.uk/teaching-philosophy/index.htm came back with a page authority of 1. Other pages have a rank of 18 through 26 scratched my head for a few hours and came up with no ideas. thanks andy
Moz Pro | | livingphilosophy0 -
Pages to Optimise Issues
HI, Can someone tell me why 2 A pages are showing up in red in the F Grade page ? I see Page title missing from the output and just curious if I need to addrss some issue. xpOW4tY.jpg
Moz Pro | | ecrmeuro0 -
How can I deal with tag page duplicate issues
The Moz crawler reported some dupliated issues. Many of them have to do with tags.
Moz Pro | | IamKovacs
Each tag has a link, and as some articles are under several tags, these come up as duplicate content. I read Dr Peter's piece on Canonical stuff, but it's not clear to me if any of these are the solution. Perhaps the solution lies somewhere else? Maybe I need to block the robots from these urls (But that seems counter-SEO-productive) Thanks
Kovacs0 -
Page Authority is the same on every page of my site
I'm analyzing a site and the page authority is the exact same for every page in the site. How can this be since the page authority is supposed to be unique to each page?
Moz Pro | | azjayhawk0 -
Dynamic URL pages in Crawl Diagnostics
The crawl diagnostic has found errors for pages that do not exist within the site. These pages do not appear in the SERPs and are seemingly dynamic URL pages. Most of the URLs that appear are formatted http://mysite.com/keyword,%20_keyword_,%20key_word_/ which appear as dynamic URLs for potential search phrases within the site. The other popular variety among these pages have a URL format of http://mysite.com/tag/keyword/filename.xml?sort=filter which are only generated by a filter utility on the site. These pages comprise about 90% of 401 errors, duplicate page content/title, overly-dynamic URL, missing meta decription tag, etc. Many of the same pages appear for multiple errors/warnings/notices categories. So, why are these pages being received into the crawl test? and how to I stop it to gauge for a better analysis of my site via SEOmoz?
Moz Pro | | Visually0 -
Crawl Report Technical Issue
I'm having a problem with our campaign especially the crawl report. Because the last update is Nov 4 and isn't supposed to be updated weekly? I already submit a helpdesk support ticket and even send a seperate e-mail regarding this issue but until now the report is still not updated. Anybody here can help me raise this issue/ Thanks.
Moz Pro | | shebinhassan0 -
How do I get the Page Authority of individual URLs in my exported (CSV) crawl reports?
I need to prioritize fixes somehow. It seems the best way to do this would be to filter my exported crawl report by the Page Authority of each URL with an error/issue. However, Page Authority doesn't seem to be included in the crawl report's CSV file. Am I missing something?
Moz Pro | | Twilio0 -
Page Rank and offline sites
I have a domain with PR6 according to the Historical Pagerank Checker. But that last PR was calculated 2 years ago. I brought the site back online a few days ago and have checked that many/most of the backlinks are still valid. It is now in the Google index but the Historical Pagerank Checker shows PR0. Will it get back its previous rank or something close to it? How long will it take?
Moz Pro | | DomainOptions0