Weird behavior with site's rankings
-
I have a problem with my site's rankings.
I rank for higher difficulty (but lower search volume) keywords , but my site gets pushed back for lower difficulty, higher volume keywords, which literally pisses me off.I thought very seriously to start new with a new domain name, cause what ever i do seems that is not working.
I will admit that in past (2-3 years ago) i used some of those "seo packages" i had found, but those links which were like no more than 50, are all deleted now, and the domains are disavowed.
The only thing i can think of, is that some how my site got flagged as suspicious or something like that in google.Like 1 month ago, i wrote an article about a topic related with my niche, around a keyword that has difficulty 41%. The search term in 1st page has high authority domains, including a wikipedia page, and i currently rank in the 3rd place.
In the other had, i would expect to rank easily for a keyword difficulty of 30-35% but is happening the exact opposite.The pages i try to rank, are not spammy, are checked with moz tools, and also with canirank spam filters. All is good and green. Plus the content of those pages i try to rank have a Content Relevancy Score which varies from 98% to 100%...
Your opinion would be very helpful, thank you.
-
Hi Nikos,
It's important to remember that Keyword Difficulty scores are a Moz metric, not a Google metric - they are based on Moz' ability to judge how well other sites are competing for that term, and may not capture the entire competitive landscape (since nobody except Google knows everything that Google looks at).
Based on your ability to rank well for some terms and not others, it doesn't seem likely to me that you are under any sort of penalty, so much as that Google just isn't ranking you for some terms. In addition to the Keyword Difficulty scores for each term, take a look at which sites rank for the term (you can do this in the SERP Analysis feature of the Keyword Difficulty tool. Ask youself:
- What kinds of sites rank for this term? For example, if you are an individual business, but all of the sites and pages that are ranking for that term are aggregators or lists of multiple sites, it may be that Google has determined that an individual business site is not a good fit for that query. Similarly, if your page is a blog post and no other blog posts appear in the SERP, Google may have decided that a blog post isn't what people are looking for when they search that term.
- What is the search intent of the query? Based on the other pages that rank, what is the question or task that Google has decided users are trying to answer or complete when they search this term? Does your page do a better example of helping answer that question or complete that task than the other pages that rank?
- What types of content are ranking? Do they all have rich snippets? Are there images, video, shopping or maps results? All of these will tell you more about the kind of content Google thinks will match this query.
- Is there a specific page or website that is ranking for that term that you think you could push out of the top 10? Look for areas of opportunity. For example, maybe there is a site with high authority, but the page that ranks has very low page authority and doesn't fit the query very well. Try to create a page that is better than that page, specifically.
- How closely is the phrase related to your niche? You can tell from the keywords you are successfully ranking for, which topic areas Google is associating with your site. If you have a whole site about chocolates, it will be harder to rank a page about asparagus, even if the difficulty score is lower.
Also, don't forget to continue promoting your content to earn high-authority links to individual content pieces. Where it makes sense to do so, you may also want to link internally from some of your more popular and successful pages to some of the pages that are struggling.
I hope that helps!
-
Hi!
I have the same question as before
If someone has an idea, i would love to hear it -
Hi Nikos! Did EGOL answer your question? If so, please mark his response as a "Good Answer." If not, what questions do you still have?
-
Thanks for your answer.
User experience was one of my first concerns. So i purchased a bootstrap theme, which actually looks very good and is very user friendly. You can check it here. The pages i try to rank for, looks very similar to that one.
Time on site and Bounch rate
Average Bounch rate is 60% , and average time on page is 4 minutes, and 10 seconds (average last month metrics). My site is actually a review site if that helps you somehow.I receive often link requests from other webmasters (meaning other people think my site looks, and content is good), so overal, i don't think my site deserving those rankings. Unless some "old sins" are chasing me.
-
my site gets pushed back for lower difficulty, higher volume keywords, which literally pisses me off.
We often focus too much on competitive metrics and not enough about the presentation that we are making to our visitors. Many search professionals believe that google is looking at the behavior of visitors, how long they stay, how far they scroll, the number who click in, do they bookmark, do they share your site with friends... and more important... Are They Asking for You By Name in navigational and domain queries?
This is much of the "machine learning" that Google has patented and what they say they are using in some of their new algorithms. I've believe that this has been important for a long time and was willing to stick my neck out about it and bet my ranch a long time ago.
lower difficulty, higher volume keywords
The numbers you are looking at are not based upon what visitors think of your site and how they behave, they are based upon completely different things. I don't think that Moz or others who publish keyword difficulty estimations have very good abilities for determining how visitors behave. Google is the one who has that data, both from the SERPs and from Chrome, and from the engagement platforms like bookmarks and + and other things that they either control or can count.
Keyword difficulty is a brute force metric. Visitor satisfaction is much more discerning and very hard to measure.
which literally pisses me off.
How do your visitors feel when they try to use your website? Compare your site to the sites at the top of the SERPs. Do they have better content? Do they give a better visitor experience? Do they have a broader menu? Is their design better for navigation, comfort of reading, scanning, sharing, and all of the things that people want to do on a website. How do visitors feel when they click in.
Lots of people believe that it is really easy to earn good metrics. Really easy. But it is harder than Hell to please your visitor. How are you doing there? Take a look at be honest.
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
-
Investigating Google's treatment of different pages on our site - canonicals, addresses, and more.
Hey all - I hesitate to ask this question, but have spent weeks trying to figure it out to no avail. We are a real estate company and many of our building pages do not show up for a given address. I first thought maybe google did not like us, but we show up well for certain keywords 3rd for Houston office space and dallas office space, etc. We have decent DA and inbound links, but for some reason we do not show up for addresses. An example, 44 Wall St or 44 Wall St office space, we are no where to be found. Our title and description should allow us to easily picked up, but after scrolling through 15 pages (with a ton of non relevant results), we do not show up. This happens quite a bit. I have checked we are being crawled by looking at 44 Wall St TheSquareFoot and checking the cause. We have individual listing pages (with the same titles and descriptions) inside the buildings, but use canonical tags to let google know that these are related and want the building pages to be dominant. I have worked though quite a few tests and can not come up with a reason. If we were just page 7 and never moved it would be one thing, but since we do not show up at all, it almost seems like google is punishing us. My hope is there is one thing that we are doing wrong that is easily fixed. I realize in an ideal world we would have shorter URLs and other nits and nats, but this feels like something that would help us go from page 3 to page 1, not prevent us from ranking at all. Any thoughts or helpful comments would be greatly appreciated. http://www.thesquarefoot.com/buildings/ny/new-york/10005/lower-manhattan/44-wall-st/44-wall-street We do show up one page 1 for this building - http://www.thesquarefoot.com/buildings/ny/new-york/10036/midtown/1501-broadway, but is the exception. I have tried investigating any differences, but am quite baffled.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AtticusBerg10 -
'Nofollow' footer links from another site, are they 'bad' links?
Hi everyone,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | romanbond
one of my sites has about 1000 'nofollow' links from the footer of another of my sites. Are these in any way hurtful? Any help appreciated..0 -
What to do when all products are one of a kind WYSIWYG and url's are continuously changing. Lots of 404's
Hey Guys, I'm working on a website with WYSIWYG one of a kind products and the url's are continuously changing. There are allot of duplicate page titles (56 currently) but that number is always changing too. Let me give you guys a little background on the website. The site sells different types of live coral. So there may be anywhere from 20 - 150 corals of the same species. Each coral is a unique size, color etc. When the coral gets sold the site owner trashes the product creating a new 404. Sometimes the url gets indexed, other times they don't since the corals get sold within hours/days. I was thinking of optimizing each product with a keyword and re-using the url by having the client update the picture and price but that still leaves allot more products than keywords. Here is an example of the corals with the same title http://austinaquafarms.com/product-category/acans/ Thanks for the help guys. I'm not really sure what to do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aronwp0 -
PA59 DA51 Yet the site hardly ranks
Hello All, I wonder if you'd kind enough to help with your insights... The site is www.dataclinic.co.uk It's been up and running since 2002 and is a data recovery related site that for years ranked on page 1 for lots of data recovery search terms. Now it's hardly ranking at all, despite decent content and updated blogs. Google (via Webmaster tools) says the site hasn't been penalized for bad links... but we are searching for an explanation as to why it's so difficult to get our once good rankings back.... (For example, the main search term we'd like to rank for is "data recovery"... we are currently on page 8... [google.co.uk search]... why???) Any ideas greatly appreciated... and I'll reply to each of you privately if you wish. Thanks for your time. Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 3Amigos0 -
Multiple Locations Google Places (URL's)?
I'm managing a restaurant chain with 10 locations. Can they all share the home page url of the corporate site in Google Places or is it better to link each location url separately? Meaning can I use www.company.com for all locations in Google places for all locations or is it better to go with www.company.com/location.html for each location. The page authority of the home page is 60 while individual location pages the page authority is in the 20's. Hope this makes sense. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YMD
Gary0 -
Lost all ranking after site-wide 301 redirect
Hi all I did a complete site-wide 310 redirect about 3 weeks ago for a site that had consistently been in Pos 1-5 for my targeted keyword ("low glycemic foods"). I changed the domain from low-glycemic-foods-org to low-glycemic-diet.com because I thought that was a more appropriate title and thru my readings I believed that if I carefully followed the recommended procedures I would quickly regain my SERP. Webmaster tools is showing that I have over 800 inbound links - many from very trustworthy sources including .edu, etc BUT my home page is nowhere to be found for the keyword search "low glycemic diet". My Seomoz onpage SEO score is an "A" Any enlightenment would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | veezer0 -
New gTLD's, buy or wait and see?
Is the new gTLD scheme from ICANN worth the money? I manage a brand relatively well-known in our own market segment. Would I benefit from moving from .com and national TLDs for my international sites to my own brand TLD? Are there any obvious SEO pros and cons?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KnutDSvendsen0 -
Newish site dropped out of rankings - is this normal?
I've got a small, 3 month old site that was ranking for a few low-competition keywords. Then, yesterday, it dropped out of the rankings almost completely. The only way to find it is to google the URL/site name, and then it does come up. There are pages in the index, they're just not ranking like they did two days ago. I'm not doing anything black hat or even slightly shady - just writing articles and clean link building. Is this a normal part of the Google process? I've never seen it happen on any other sites I've been involved with.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | damoncali0