Ranking in SERPs but not using terms on website.
-
As far as I know, it's not normally possible for a website to rank for a keyword that is not mentioned on the website. I have seen a website that ranks very well for key terms and yet they are not mentioned anywhere on the website, I have run advanced search & checked using tools including cloak checker on my findings.
How can this be?
-
If I link to your website with the link text "SEO Moz" you can then rank for the term "SEO Moz" without having it on your site.
-
Hi Lee,
without being able to double check keywords on that particular domain I suggest two possible factors working on google that you may be overlooking:
-
hummingbird engine and semantic search. Google is trying to get the searchers intent not just plain keywords. Is possible that the site you're seeing is being highly related with the market they are thus getting a boost in all terms related to that topic.
-
google bombing. this is something it used to work and even if some say no, it still work sometimes. Bombing was a practice to use exact anchors to give authority on a site about something without even mention that. Some people are worried about this being a possible negative seo practie and some other uses that as an optimization factor. What I can say is that google bombing could work but not as it was. As this is not related to keywords but to topic, as the linking site topic will be passed to the linked one and if that site accrues more links it vcould be possible to see it ranking for such topics.
-
-
Valid information from all contributors thanks.
The site is related to the key terms however these are specific competitor multiple brands key terms which seems to rank very well for considering the brands aren't mentioned on the website.
I've checked backlinks, anchor texts, internal site search etc and nothing coming up for the brand terms and yet rank well. Trying to figure out how this is possible...
-
Intriguing love these problems.
The above two answers likely have it covered - on the off chance have you checked their referring domains - could they have bought a domain that ranked for those keywords and then done a 301 re-direct. Somehow the devaluation for relevance has been missed by google.
-
Hi there
I would agree Direct here - Google looks at topics and variations of keywords, so you may be ranking for variation terms, or what Google thinks are variation terms.
A few questions:
Are the terms you are ranking for related to your site, industry, or content in any way? Even loosely?
Are the terms you are ranking for high level or very broad? Or are they granular?
Have you looked at your backlinks and anchor text?
Are you ranking at all for the keywords/queries you want to be ranking for?
Have you been regularly checking your Search Console queries?I would look into your on-site SEO and content to see what may be causing your issue. You may be producing content in a way that's confusing search engines or users.
Take a look at the resources above and let me know if they help at all - good luck!
-
assuming you are referring to Google ranking.
Google's algorithm and technology is more advanced than just "actual " keywords, but also understands related keywords. you could be ranking due to this.
If you are not ranking for the keywords you are aiming for, check for over optimisation on your website.. or even under optimisation..
R
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
-
Should my website be accessible by IP?
I have been doing some digging in to this today essentially triggered off by looking at the secure certificate on my site and comparing it to others as i have been seeing some security warnings on a random basis. I noticed that on all instances none of the other sites IP addresses re-direct to the website, whereas on my site it does. is re-directing the IP address to the website a big no-no?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WAWKA1 -
Ranking go down why ?
Hello, Thank you , if you help us our web url www.prismpharmamachinery.com before some time very top ranking but now going down 5-7 pages in google any SEO expert can help for that Regards pooja
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Poojath0 -
Search terms that have the same meaning
If there are two fairly equally strong search terms that mean the same thing and want to direct people to a single page on my site, is it recommended that both phrases be placed in the H1? For example, Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich (BLT Sandwich) I don't want to rank high for only one phrase while ranking lower (and potentially losing users) for the second phrase. What's the best strategy for this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hamackey0 -
An affiliate website uses datafeeds and around 65.000 products are deleted in the new feeds. What are the best practises to do with the product pages? 404 ALL pages, 301 Redirect to the upper catagory?
Note: All product pages are on INDEX FOLLOW. Right now this is happening with the deleted productpages: 1. When a product is removed from the new datafeed the pages stay online and are showing simliar products for 3 months. The productpages are removed from the categorie pages but not from the sitemap! 2. Pages receiving more than 3 hits after the first 3 months keep on existing and also in the sitemaps. These pages are not shown in the categories. 3. Pages from deleted datafeeds that receive 2 hits or less, are getting a 301 redirect to the upper categorie for again 3 months 4. Afther the last 3 months all 301 redirects are getting a customized 404 page with similar products. Any suggestions of Comments about this structure? 🙂 Issues to think about:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zanox
- The amount of 404 pages Google is warning about in GWT
- Right now all productpages are indexed
- Use as much value as possible in the right way from all pages
- Usability for the visitor Extra info about the near future: Beceause of the duplicate content issue with datafeeds we are going to put all product pages on NOINDEX, FOLLOW and focus only on category and subcategory pages.0 -
Recent ranking drop followed by strange behavior in SERPS
Recently on the evening of August 5th almost all of the keywords our pages ranked highly for dropped by anywhere from 5 to 8 pages. The only activity during this time was an article that had been picked up by a major news outlet and then was apparently copied onto other sources with links to our domain and article. More puzzling though is rather than simply having the same page show up lower for a keyword, in a number of instances a different page is now shown for the result, often with less or no relevance to the keyword. In some cases, for a single keyword phrase we've seen as many as 10 different pages rotated throughout the day when performing a search. Prior to our rankings falling, we've never seen this behavior.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrianQuinn0 -
Can anyone tell me if this website was built with Frontpage or another cookie cutter drag and drop website creator by looking at the source code?
Can anyone tell me if this website was built with Frontpage or another cookie cutter drag and drop website creator by looking at the source code? http://naturespremiumpestdefense.com/ Thanks, Russell
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ULTRASEM0 -
Construction website
Hi, I have a construction website that is aimed at tradesmen. There are 2 goals of the site: 1. To allow potential customers to sign up for a trade account. 2. To allow existing customers to access to products and login to their account to make an order. The site is full of categories and products which should be indexed so we rank for these trade products. The homepage redesign is where i am having an issue: Currently the site is set up like a standard retail site but without prices, which are viewable only when logged in. The homepage is designed such that there is several call to actions about promotions, services and to apply for a trade account, that apply to both existing and potential customers. At the moment there is a poor conversion to get potential customers to apply for a trade account. This is because there is too much distraction away from this goal and they are allowed to engage other areas of the site freely. The main purpose of the homepage should be to encourage potential customers to sign up. The secondary purpose to for existing customers to access the accounts and products. I believe potential customers should not be exposed to the categories and products as it is a distraction from the primary goal. Potential customers, i.e. Tradesmen, would already have a certain understanding of the types of products we provide, so I don't feel it is necessary to allow them to crawl the rest of the site unless they have an account. What are your thoughts on that? Here is my lack of understanding: On the homepage, if I restrict access to categories and products to existing account holders only, where a login is required to proceed, would that mean Google cannot access these pages to index them? Or is this only controlled by NoFollows & Robots.txt? Obviously not indexing is undesirable. I do understand potential customers will need some information about our range of products but the idea is to coerce them to sign up for an account so they can see this information. The more information that is provided to a potential customer, the higher the probability a person can make a decision against applying for an account. Restricting access creates a motivator to reveal information and we capture their data to converse with them personally. This increases the probability of us being able to retain their interest by providing a customised service based on their needs. All of this I feel makes perfect sense to me, the only query/obstacle I have is the indexing of the site. If Google cannot index pages that are restricted by account access, then I would like suggestions to solve/compromise/optimise the above. Just to address the desired behaviour of index pages. If in search a our product page appears, the person clicking the link would either be redirected or exposed to a login or sign up screen to view. Thank you so much for your help. Antonio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AVSFencingSupplies0 -
What strategies to best use to boost rankings across long-tail articles on site?
Heya! I'm currently engaged in what appears to be a slightly unusual SEO task. I run a large, reasonably well-respected (but not global-standard, yet) site that I'm currently monetising through individual articles targetted at addressing specific search engine queries that I know have decent traffic. It's the EHow / Demand Media model, except with a focus on a single specific (video games) niche, and much, much better quality articles (sufficiently good that they attract a fair amount of praise - all the writers on the site are published authors and the quality's damn high). Most of our articles end up ranking with essentially no backup, but they don't rank high - usually 2nd or 3rd page of Google. I'm trying to determine what the most effective strategy would be for us to boost our article rankings with the least possible expense / effort (we don't have a huge budget). Our long-tail articles are mostly being trumped by articles with either a couple of external links to them or by other articles with no links but from a site with significantly higher Domain Authority (70+ to our 48).I'm working to improve our on-page optimisation, but it's already pretty good (an "A" report from the SEOMoz tools on most or all pages). So, I'm wondering what the best use of our time would be to increase traffic globally across the site. Strategies I'm considering: Focussing on building links to the homepage and to any other pages on the site, by asking for links from community members, doing linkbait articles, directory submissions, guest blogging, and so on. Long-term aim: increase our domain-wide MozRank and MozTrust. Build links to our long-tail articles specifically, most popular first. Get direct links from relevant blogs, press releases, social bookmarking, etc. Long-term aim: get to #1 on Google one page at a time. Something Else? I'm wondering what the big SEO brains here would suggest? Happy to provide additional details if it would help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cairmen1