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.
Stuck on Page 2 - What Would You Do?!?
-
My site is : http://goo.gl/JgK1e
My main keyword is : Plastic Bins
i have been going back and forth between page 1 and 2 for this keyword and i was wondering if any of you could provide any guidance as to why i can't get on the top of page 1, and stay there...
My site has been around for a while, we believe we have a great user experience, all unique, fresh content, and the lowest prices...
I must be missing out on something major if I cannot get a steady page 1 ranking... Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance...
-
Joe,
You've certainly given us a lot to think about here. We really appreciate you taking the time to analyze.
Thanks!
-
I worked on a site in your industry a couple of years ago. Brought them from nowhere to the 1st page of Google for things like plastic bottles. They are still on the 1st page for that phrase and many others. Don't worry about the big players - if your site has been around a while you can compete. After all - Google is a machine. You just have to feed it what it wants to see.
Here are things I would do if I were going to rank your site - based on what it appears you have already been doing:
Your non anchor text content is condensed in one area at the very bottom of the page. It's even below the Facebook and Twitter icons that I'm almost nobody visits. I would move that content UP. I would also build it out more. I counted 253 words in that section and 71 of those words are cities and states. I kind of think you're blurring the focus of each geography with all the cities and states jammed together in one spot, but I wouldn't remove it just yet. [after looking at this more I realized this text dump is not unique to the home page - you have almost NO unique content on your home page ----- I would change this immediately]
I would add more non-anchor text content higher up on your site. I know not all of your competition is doing that (some are) but this is not the time to emulate the competition - now is the time to be something else - To stand a little taller and mean a little more.
Seriously - I'm not a "content is king" type of player, but why do I need to buy a plastic bin? Who uses plastic bins? It's easy to see you sell them - heck, according to Google you have "plastic bin" in the title of around 35% of all your pages. Be more confident in your message. Google can see (easily) that you sell plastic bins. Try the soft sell and just tell your story --- right now so much of your site just feels impersonal... industrial. I know your selling plastic widgets, but you can easily add content that makes a conversation.
Start telling the story about WHY someone would need YOUR plastic bins. Talk about the kind of people or industries that need your SOLUTIONS to their problems. It's just like the old adage - people don't buy shovels because they want a new tool - they buy shovels because they want a hole.
If I were you I would start selling holes. Some of your competitors are already doing that in a limited way, but you should just blow it out. Go big or go home. Who needs your holes? People into food storage, crafts, cleaning a garage, organizing basements, accountants, home based businesses to store parts or inventory, the medical industry, emergency preparedness, book storage.... the list can get very large if you just start expanding.
Non-content issues:
Remove the unused pages in your By Industry top navigation. It frustrated me and I am sure Google is not impressed by "There are no categories." Really? If there are no categories then remove the link. If you are using your top navigation as a memory assistant for your "to do" list.... Don't. Tighten your site down. Look everywhere for broken links - make it look like you really care.
Links
Yeah, you need more links. I think you can still climb to the 1st page and stay there without much more link building if you straighten the rest of your site out. It's critical that you start providing solutions to peoples needs rather than widgets. When you provide solutions - people will link to you naturally. Of course, you can and should prime the pump. There are many journalists that will write about a topic of your choosing and include links to your website - if you ask, are willing to pay (my experience has been a minimum of $100 and up to $500) and you have something worth linking to. This is why having that engaging content is important - you can get links from unusual sources and still look relevant.
I would also reduce the number of links on your home page and try to reduce the number of repetitive information break outs across the site. There are likely many more things I would do... but if you pull off the above things you will be fine.
[last thing - I just can't leave it alone -- get those links out of the sitewide footer. Find a better way.]
This advise is free to take it for what it's worth.
Best of luck.
Joe
(I am using a clients SEOMOZ account - my non-pro wouldn't allow me to post)
-
Thanks for your help, you're great!
-
When I am up against the heavy hitters I go to wordtracker or adwords keyword research tool and type in my primary keyword "plastic bins".
That would return terms such as.... large pb..... stackable pb.... clear pb..... colored pb..... p trash b..... p toy b.....corrugated pb
There is a treasure trove of traffic out there of people who are one step closer to a buy decision than the people who are simply searching for "pb". When I would wake up in the morning the fight bell would ding and I would be hammering to get massive amounts of good quality demonstration content, video, etc up on the site for all of those terms. There is enough keyword depth there to keep me busy for months and months.
I am not talking about yada yada yada yada pb yada yada yada pb yada yada content. I am talking about substantive idea-generating content that would inspire people to buy a plastic toy bin even if they didn't plan to buy one when they arrived. I would be trying to sell 'em a bin for their cat and pet raccoon.
When I looked at the keywords for plastic bins I was surprised to see that they are very very deep and very very rich. I would be after top rankings for all of those terms.
-
EGOL, once again, thanks for your help...
I guess i can't conceal the fact that i'm a beginner at this with my next question:
Can you please provide an example of "secondary and longtail keywords" for my keyword (plastic bins)?
Also, what is the best way to build links without spamming?
Thanks again
-
I understand how it is to see this type of site at the top
I don't worry about them. I am old enough that it doesn't get my temper pumping and have been watching the web long enough to see lots of these sites disappear completely overnight.
If I was in this SERP I would be hammering at the secondary keywords and the longtail to the point of keyword cannibalization. I think I would be making good money at it.
I'd be getting my YouTube stuff out to the front and center. If you have that kind of asset you want to show it off instead of putting it in the footer.
-
Thanks for your reply.
I agree, those are heavy hitters... however, the company at the top of the SERP is a 1 man operation that is about 1 year old. He spams all over the internet to get backlinks (check his backlinks, you'll see).... How has he managed to outrank all of the heavy hitters, as well as companies like mine that provide great experience and have been around for a long time and do not spam the internet?
Thanks
-
There are some heavy hitters in those SERPs.
walmart, usplastic, uline, target, grainger, officemax, rubbermaid, homedepot
These big brands are hard to beat. Those kinds of domains just have so much authority that you need a huge load of links to beat them. You're site is all about bins.... Keep hammering for links.
If this was my site I would be saturating the secondary keywords and the long tail.
Good luck!
(I see a small display problem using firefox on a PC. I see a "we're live should you need assistance" and a "x" box. It might be a box that is supposed to be displayed above your design that is breaking".)
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
-
Massive Amount of Pages Deindexed
On or about 12/1/17 a massive amount of my site's pages were deindexed. I have done the following: Ensured all pages are "index,follow" Ensured there are no manual penalites Ensured the sitemap correlates to all the pages Resubmitted to Google ALL pages are gone from Bing as well In the new SC interface, there are 661 pages that are Excluded with 252 being "Crawled - currently not indexed: The page was crawled by Google, but not indexed. It may or may not be indexed in the future; no need to resubmit this URL for crawling." What in the world does this mean and how the heck do I fix this. This is CRITICAL. Please help! The url is https://www.hkqpc.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | D.J.Hanchett0 -
Fresh page versus old page climbing up the rankings.
Hello, I have noticed that if publishe a webpage that google has never seen it ranks right away and usually in a descend position to start with (not great but descend). Usually top 30 to 50 and then over the months it slowly climbs up the rankings. However, if my page has been existing for let's say 3 years and I make changes to it, it takes much longer to climb up the rankings Has someone noticed that too ? and why is that ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
What are best page titles for sub-domain pages?
Hi Moz communtity, Let's say a website has multiple sub-domains with hundreds and thousands of pages. Generally we will be mentioning "primary keyword & "brand name" on every page of website. Can we do same on all pages of sub-domains to increase the authority of website for this primary keyword in Google? Or it gonna end up as negative impact if Google consider as duplicate content being mentioned same keyword and brand name on every page even on website and all pages of sub domains? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Using hreflang for international pages - is this how you do it?
My client is trying to achieve a global presence in select countries, and then track traffic from their international pages in Google Analytics. The content for the international pages is pretty much the same as for USA pages, but the form and a few other details are different due to how product licensing has to be set up. I don’t want to risk losing ranking for existing USA pages due to issues like duplicate content etc. What is the best way to approach this? This is my first foray into this and I’ve been scanning the MOZ topics but a number of the conversations are going over my head,so suggestions will need to be pretty simple 🙂 Is it a case of adding hreflang code to each page and creating different URLs for tracking. For example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caro-O
URL for USA: https://company.com/en-US/products/product-name/
URL for Canada: https://company.com/en-ca/products/product-name /
URL for German Language Content: https://company.com/de/products/product-name /
URL for rest of the world: https://company.com/en/products/product-name /1 -
Why does Google rank a product page rather than a category page?
Hi, everybody In the Moz ranking tool for one of our client's (the client sells sport equipment) account, there is a trend where more and more of their landing pages are product pages instead of category pages. The optimal landing page for the term "sleeping bag" is of course the sleeping bag category page, but Google is sending them to a product page for a specific sleeping bag.. What could be the critical factors that makes the product page more relevant than the category page as the landing page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo0 -
Should my back links go to home page or internal pages
Right now we rank on page 2 for many KWs, so should i now focus my attention on getting links to my home page to build domain authority or continue to direct links to the internal pages for specific KWs? I am about to write some articles for several good ranking sites and want to know whether to link my company name (same as domain name) or KW to the home page or use individual KWs to the internal pages - I am only allowed one link per article to my site. Thanks Ash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep10 -
How to combine 2 pages (same domain) that rank for same keyword?
Hi Mozzers, A quick question. In the last few months I have noticed that for a number of keywords I am having 2 different pages on my domain show up in the SERP. Always right next to each other (for example, position #7 and #8 or #3 and #4). So in the SERP it looks something like: www.mycompetition1.com www.mycompetition2.com www.mywebsite.com/page1.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft
4) www.mywebsite.com**/page2.html**
5) www.mycompetition3.com Now, I actually need both pages since the content on both pages is different - but on the same topic. Both pages have links to them, but page1.html always tends to have more. So, what is the best practice to tell Google that I only want 1 page to rank? Of course, the idea is that by combining the SEO Juice of both pages, I can push my way up to position 2 or 1. Does anybody have any experience in this? Any advice is much appreciated.0 -
Blocking Pages Via Robots, Can Images On Those Pages Be Included In Image Search
Hi! I have pages within my forum where visitors can upload photos. When they upload photos they provide a simple statement about the photo but no real information about the image,definitely not enough for the page to be deemed worthy of being indexed. The industry however is one that really leans on images and having the images in Google Image search is important to us. The url structure is like such: domain.com/community/photos/~username~/picture111111.aspx I wish to block the whole folder from Googlebot to prevent these low quality pages from being added to Google's main SERP results. This would be something like this: User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /community/photos/ Can I disallow Googlebot specifically rather than just using User-agent: * which would then allow googlebot-image to pick up the photos? I plan on configuring a way to add meaningful alt attributes and image names to assist in visibility, but the actual act of blocking the pages and getting the images picked up... Is this possible? Thanks! Leona
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HD_Leona0