Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Need some help understanding SEO - Please help before I lose [pull out] all my hair

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Need some help understanding SEO - Please help before I lose [pull out] all my hair

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    technical seo getting beaten sites with no seo ranking 1
    6
    7
    3269
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • nkennett
      nkennett Subscriber last edited by

      I'm new to SEO, and am stubbornly trying to educate myself. I have a telescope shop in Canada, it's a small business that we run on the side. We're driving lots of traffic through FB and our outreach programs but I really want to increase our presence on search. We released a new website back in January and it killed some of our rankings. We're working our way back with a very specific set of efforts on regular SEO:

      1. Metadata and titles, although it seems that's not super relevant
      2. Building high quality backlinks and eliminating any spammy backlinks
      3. Rewriting product listings so that they are original content though I'm not sure how important this is in e-commerce
      4. Writing high quality articles and blog posts
      5. Working relevant keywords into our product pages and titles

      I understand that good SEO is about pushing on all the levers, and trying to make sure that your site is as valuable to the end user as possible. We're making some good progress, but I'm puzzled by the #1 shop in Canada. They don't put any apparent effort into SEO and they still rank #1 on every key product we compete with them on. I've worked with two separate, highly ranked and regarded SEO firms on this and neither has been able to tell my why this other site ranks so highly. Here's a specific example on a popular product that we both sell, the Celestron NexStar 8SE.

      Here’s the link to Telescope Canada’s page for their Celestron 8SE:

      https://telescopescanada.ca/products/celestron-nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope-11069

      Here’s a link to the Celestron 8SE page from the manufacturer website:

      https://www.celestron.com/products/nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope

      Telescopes Canada has just copied and pasted. There is no original content aside from adding the shipping and return policy to the tab, and having some options for selecting accessories on the page.

      Here is our page:

      https://all-startelescope.com/products/celestron-nexstar-8se

      We have higher page authority, higher domain authority, and they keyword analyzer in moz says that our page is higher quality than the Telescopes Canada page. I can’t find a single metric on any tool (ubbersuggest, Moz, ahrefs, semrush) that says Telescopes Canada is a better site, or has a better NexStar 8SE product page.

      But they keep ranking ahead of us, and right at the top of google search. Our titles are good, our metadata is good (but I don’t think that’s been a serious ranking factor for about ten years). Our text is original, it’s relevant, we have healthy internal links to the page. According to Moz's page ranker it's 20 points higher than Telescope Canada's page. We have invensted in some excellent blog content, we’re adding new products to the website so that we rank for more keywords. All of those things are helping, but I fundamentally don’t understand why Telescopes Canada is #1 almost across the board on every key product in our market. There is something that I’m not seeing here.

      Can you see any metric, any tool in your toolbox that indicates why they rank at the top, or even higher than we do for in these search terms specific to that product:

      Celestron NexStar 8SE
      NexStar 8SE
      Celestron NexStar 8SE Canada
      NexStar 8SE Canada

      I have a feeling it's something technical that I'm missing, but I'm not sure how obvious it is with two 'professional' firms not finding it. I'd really appreciate any help or insight that you can offer.

      mfarha0 Khonalo 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • emmamiller843
        emmamiller843 last edited by

        If you need someone to help understand SEO, an SEO agency can help you. Go to find the best expert for SEO.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Flineo
          Flineo @rohael last edited by

          @rohael I wouldn't say hosting is a major factor for SEO, especially when your website loads quickly. If you wish, we can arrange SEO for your website. Email me - itwelding.bok@gmail.com

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • mfarha0
            mfarha0 @nkennett last edited by

            @nkennett said in Need some help understanding SEO - Please help before I lose [pull out] all my hair:

            https://all-startelescope.com/

            i took a quick look. Their content is more in-depth than yours. They are getting ranked for 3740 keywords where you are at 2100. Thats a major difference. let me know this helps.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • rohael
              rohael @Flineo last edited by

              @flineo Hello, im relatively new to SEO, wouldn't call myself a beginner but Im stuck on the second page of google for my keyword- restaurant marketing agency Dubai www.upscalemedia.ae

              Can you give me some tips on how I can possibly take it to the first page. I heard hosting on a private server may help, what do you suggest?

              Flineo 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Khonalo
                Khonalo @nkennett last edited by

                @nkennett I can understand you very well. But take into account that new website usually can take 6 months or longer (depends on the competition) to generate significant increase in traffic. I needed 6-8 months for my homepage until the first top 10 rankings were tracked. SEO Is investment. Rankings are not coming in a few days or weeks. It needs time and during this time you put much effort into this project and never give up.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Flineo
                  Flineo last edited by

                  You said you started a new website in January, in the past you were ranking higher? Have you made redirections to new URL addresses?
                  I would recommend to check issues in Google Search Console, and take a look for internal linking from your posts. Creating cornerstone pages is now a significant ranking factor for SEO. Anyway, try to get at least one backlink with anchor of your keyword.

                  rohael 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • davidvogel

                    Best redirect destination for 18k highly-linked pages

                    redirect redirect chain technical seo 301 redirects

                    Technical SEO question regarding redirects; I appreciate any insights on best way to handle. Situation: We're decommissioning several major content sections on a website, comprising ~18k webpages. This is a well established site (10+ years) and many of the pages within these sections have high-quality inbound links from .orgs and .edus. Challenge: We're trying to determine the best place to redirect these 18k pages. For user experience, we believe best option is the homepage, which has a statement about the changes to the site and links to the most important remaining sections of the site. It's also the most important page on site, so the bolster of 301 redirected links doesn't seem bad. However, someone on our team is concerned that that many new redirected pages and links going to our homepage will trigger a negative SEO flag for the homepage, and recommends instead that they all go to our custom 404 page (which also includes links to important remaining sections). What's the right approach here to preserve remaining SEO value of these soon-to-be-redirected pages without triggering Google penalties?

                    Technical SEO | | davidvogel
                    0
                  • WayneM.

                    Meta name Author

                    wordpress technical seo meta data

                    Hello! I have a problem. I'm using Rank Math for WordPress. But I can’t configure a basic thing such as <meta name="author" content="" />. I had to insert this code manually using the hook. Does anyone know a normal way to do this markup? Example page: https://b-shoes.com/foot-shaped-shoes/ Thank you!

                    Technical SEO | | WayneM.
                    0
                  • KyleSennikoff

                    Unsolved Question about a Screaming Frog crawling issue

                    technical seo crawl errors

                    Hello, I have a very peculiar question about an issue I'm having when working on a website. It's a WordPress site and I'm using a generic plug in for title and meta updates. When I go to crawl the site through screaming frog, however, there seems to be a hard coded title tag that I can't find anywhere and the plug in updates don't get crawled. If anyone has any suggestions, thatd be great. Thanks!

                    Technical SEO | | KyleSennikoff
                    0
                  • Ravi_Rana

                    Why Product pages are throwing Missing field "image" and Missing field "price" in Wordpress Woocommerce

                    technical seo structured data woocommerce wordpress seo

                    I have a wordpress wocommerce website where I have uploaded 100s of products but it's giving me error in GSC under merchant listing tab. When I tested it show missing field image and missing field price. I have done everything according to https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/product#merchant-listing-experiences and applied fixed i.e. images are 800x800 and price range is also there. What else can be done here?!merchant listing.jpg

                    Technical SEO | | Ravi_Rana
                    0
                  • Davit1985

                    My url disappeared from Google but Search Console shows indexed. This url has been indexed for more than a year. Please help!

                    Super weird problem that I can't solve for last 5 hours. One of my urls: https://www.dcacar.com/lax-car-service.html Has been indexed for more than a year and also has an AMP version, few hours ago I realized that it had disappeared from serps. We were ranking on page 1 for several key terms. When I perform a search "site:dcacar.com " the url is no where to be found  on all 5 pages. But when I check my Google Console it shows as indexed I requested to index again but nothing changed. All other 50 or so urls are not effected at all, this is the only url that has gone missing can someone solve this mystery for me please. Thanks a lot in advance.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davit1985
                    0
                  • viatrading1

                    Merging Pages and SEO

                    Hi, We are redesigning our website the following way: Before: Page A with Content A, Page B with Content B, Page C with Content C, etc
                    e.g. one page for each Customer Returns, Overstocks, Master Case, etc
                    Now: Page D with content A + B + C etc.
                    e.g. one long page containing all Product Conditions, one after the other So we are merging multiples pages into one.
                    What is the best way to do so, so we don't lose traffic? (or we lose the minimum possible) e.g. should we 301 Redirect A/B/C to D...?
                    Is it likely that we lose significant traffic with this change? Thank you,

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading1
                    0
                  • ydesjardins200

                    Help FORUM ( User generated content ) SEO best practices

                    Hello Moz folks ! For the very first time im dealing with a massive community who rely on UGC ( user generated content ). Their forum is finding a great deal of duplicate content/broken link/ duplicate title and on-site issue. I have Advance SEO knowledge related to ecommerce or blogging but new to forum and UGC. I would really love to learn or get ressources links that would allow me to see/understand the best practices in term of SEO. Any help is greatly appreciated. Best, Yan

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ydesjardins200
                    0
                  • bronxpad

                    Domain expiration and seo

                    My domain name is free with my service with yahoo but it expires every year and gets extended automatically as I continue service, how does this impact my seo efforts? I've heard that the search engines prefer sites to expire in 3 years or more? Is this a fact?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.