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
-
Duplicate pages coming from links from the login page - what should we do about them?
This is a follow on to an earlier question which was well answered by Dirk Ceuppens regarding abnormal crawl issues. We are seeing that the issues relating to Duplicate Pages are coming from links from the login page which shows information about where the user was redirected from. For example, if the visitor is not logged on and wishes to wish-list an item, they will be redirected to the login page, with the item code and intended action in the url; which can then continue on to the desired page once logged on. The MOZ crawler is seeing these pages as having Duplicated Content whilst they are all the same apart from a piece of information in the URL. Should we be blocking these duplications? Are they a risk to us? What should we be doing? Many thanks, Sarah
Moz Pro | | Mutatio_Digital0 -
Crawl Diagnostics saids a page is linking but I can't find the link on the page.
Hi I have just got my first Crawl Diagnostics report and I have a questions. It saids that this page: http://goo.gl/8py9wj links to http://goo.gl/Uc7qKq which is a 404. I can't recognize the URL on the page which is a 404 and when searching in the code I can't find the %7Blink%7D in the URL which gives the problems. I hope you can help me to understand what triggers it 🙂
Moz Pro | | SebastianThode0 -
Crawl Diagnostics Summary Problem
We added our website a Robots.txt file and there are pages blocked by robots.txt. Crawl Diagnostics Summary page shows there is no page blocked by Robots.txt. Why?
Moz Pro | | iskq0 -
Open Site Explorer is showing "No Data" for my page titles under the "Top Pages" Tab
This is for my site: www.kibin.com/ Does this mean there is something wrong with how we're titling our pages? We're working on our on-page SEO, titles, meta descriptions this week and getting them up to snuff. I don't understand what is going on here or if it's something to be worried about. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | Kibin0 -
How Do I deal with duplicate page titles for pages on eCommerce site
Hi We have an ecommerce site selling physical products. There are a few areas where the products run into two pages. I have used canonical meta tags and next and prev meta tags too. Despite this SEOMOZ reports are still displaying these as warnings for duplicate page titles. An example would be /brand_name/range/ <link rel="next" href="/brand_name/range/?page=2" /> <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="/band_name/range/"/> /brand_name/range/?page=2 <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">prev</a>" href="/brand_name/range/" /> <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="/band_name/range/?page=2"/> Should I be doing something different?
Moz Pro | | wouldBseoKING0 -
Is it possible to exclude pages from Crawl Diagnostic?
I like the crawl diagnostic but it shows many errors due to a forum that I have. I don't care about the SEO value of this forum and would like to exclude any pages in the /forum/ directory. Is it possible to add exclusions to the crawl diagnostic tool?
Moz Pro | | wfernley2 -
Crawl slow again
Once again the weekly crawl on my site is very slow. I have around 441 pages in the crawl and this has been running for over 12 hours. This last happened two weeks ago (ran for over 48 hours). Last week's crawl was much quicker (not sure exactly how long but guessing an hour or so). Is this a known issue and is there anything that can be done to unblock it? Weekends are the best time for me to assess and respond to changes I have made to my site so having this (small) crawl take most of the weekend is really quite problematic. Thanks. Mark
Moz Pro | | MarkWill0 -
Canonical tags and SEOmoz crawls
Hi there. Recently, we've made some changes to http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/ to implement canonical tags to some dynamically generated pages to stop duplicate content issues. Previously, these were blocked with robots.txt. In Webmaster Tools, everything looks great - pages crawled has shot up, and overall traffic and sales has seen a positive increase. However the SEOmoz crawl report is now showing a huge increase in duplicate content issues. What I'd like to know is whether SEOmoz registers a canonical tag as preventing a piece of duplicate content, or just adds to it the notices report. That is, if I have 10 pages of duplicate content all with correct canonical tags, will I still see 10 errors in the crawl, but also 10 notices showing a canonical has been found? Or, should it be 0 duplicate content errors, but 10 notices of canonicals? I know it's a small point, but it could potentially have a big difference. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | neooptic0