Ranking Page #1 for Keyword without Hypen, Not at all for Keyword with Hyphen
-
Hi There!
So I work in an industry where there are different conventions for referring to, searching on and spelling the industry name. For example, let's pretend there were a variety of different conventions for referring to the SEO industry. So someone could search for S-EO, SEO, sEO, etc. and those would all be accepted and understood means of referring to the industry.
If we use the SEO example as a comparison for our industry, the two most common conventions would be S-EO and SEO. Using this example, we rank on the first page for the term "SEO" but do not rank AT ALL for the term "S-EO". We have a high-value piece of content that is targeted in the following way: "S-EO (SEO): The Basics Guide" so it is more targeted at the hyphenated word but does not rank at all for the hyphenated version, whereas it is page one for the non-hyphenated term.
As additional pieces of context:
-In general, our site is more targeted at the hyphenated term and there are places where we rank in the top spot for both the hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions. For example, we rank in a top 2 position for both S-EO & SEO software but do not rank at all for the broader "S-EO" term.
-There are times when we do appear on page one for the term "S-EO" but it's typically only for a matter or hours or days and then we disappear entirely from the SERPs for that term. We consistently appear for "SEO."
-I currently do not believe we are dealing with a penalty of any sort - our link profile is clean and our spam score per Moz is 2 / 17.
Any thoughts or ideas as to what is going on here and how we can potentially rank for the term "S-EO?"
-
It probably shows up when you make a change b/c of the "freshness" factor.
-
Another update on this - I added a rel canonical to the page, making it clear what the true URL that should be appearing in the SERPs is. That URL is the same one that shows up on the SERPs for the version of the keyword without a hyphen.
After doing this, the page appeared briefly on the keyword results with a hyphen and then disappeared entirely again within the same day. It still shows for the keyword with no hyphen.
Often, when I make a change to that page, it will appear in the SERPs for the keyword with a hyphen and then disappear entirely again within hours or days. It consistently appears in the results for no hyphen though, regardless of changes to the page.
-
Thanks, Donna. Yeah, I'm with you, it doesn't make sense to me and doesn't seem logical. Hopefully, someone else has a theory on something we're missing.
Thanks for your time in looking into it!
-
I don't see a logical explanation for the results we're seeing Dan.
Your link profile could be stronger, but if that was the root cause I'd expect to see you on page 2 or 3 of search results for e-discovery and yet (as you've mentioned), you're nowhere to be found.
The only thing I can think of, and I don't think it's the explanation either, is that Google is ranking pages that intend to answer the question "WHAT IS e-discovery" and while your content addresses that, it is more focused on HOW TO.
Maybe someone else will see something we're both missing.
-
Hi Donna,
Yes, in instances where we do appear for "S-EO" it is the same result as for SEO.
And the specific term(s) of concern are "ediscovery" (we are the "E-Discovery (eDiscovery): The Basics Guide" result on page one) vs. e-discovery. Thanks!
-
In those instances where you do appear on page one for S-EO, is the page displayed the same as the one when searching for SEO or is it a different result?
And my question is about your link profile compared to the top 10 competitors, not the competitiveness of the search term. Not sure if I was clear about that.
Why don't you share the term you're talking about your domain. If you 're not comfortable doing that, feel free to private message me.
-
Thanks for the reply, Donna.
I believe we do - going back to the example - the terms S-EO and SEO have almost the exact same competition score in Moz, 47% & 48%, respectively (and they really are the same keyword, anyway), and we rank page #1 for SEO but not at all for S-EO...like, not even on the top 200 pages.
Furthermore, I have seen instances where we do appear on page one for S-EO for hours or even days but eventually go away entirely. This makes me think some sort of penalty but, again, I don't see anything in the link profile to indicate that, there have been no black hat tactics that I'm aware of in the three years I've been there, and there's no manual penalty in GSC.
-
Hi Daniel,
I know you said you believe your link profile is clean, but it is strong enough? That's what I'd research first. Do you have enough high-quality incoming links with keyword relevant anchor text to outrank the competition?
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
-
Deep level category pages not ranking well
Hi Guys, I have pages which are 3 levels deep on this site: **https://tinyurl.com/y7bnwkms ** They are barely ranking even though we have optimised them with category based content. Now it seems it might be a internal linking issue. Also noticed ahrefs has not visited the URL yet. So we are in the processing of installing breadcrumbs, building links from level 2 categories to level 3 (which is that url above) plus building links from blog to these level 3 pages. Also links are all in the sitemap. Besides that do you see anything else we can do? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bridhard80 -
Taken a canonical off a page to let it rank with new unique content - what more can I do?
A week ago, I took a canonical off of a page that was pointing to the homepage for a very big, generic search term for my brand as we felt that it could have been harming our rankings (as it wasn't a true canonical page). A week in and our rankings for the term have dropped 7 positions out of page 1 and the page we want to rank instead is nowhere to be seen. Do I hang fire? As such a big search term, it's affecting traffic, but I don't want to make any rash decisions. Here's a bit more info: For arguments sake, let's call the search term we're going after 'Boots', with the URL where the canonical was placed of /boots. The canonical went to the root domain as we sell, well... boots. At the time, the homepage was ranking for Boots on page 1 and we wanted to change this so that the Boots page ranked for that term... all logical right? We did the following: Took off mentions of Boots from meta on the homepage and made sure it was optimised for on the boots page. Took the canonical off of /boots. Used GSC to fetch & ask Google to recrawl "/boots". Resubmitted the sitemap. Do I hang fire on running back to the safety of ranking for boots on the homepage? Do I risk keyword cannibalisation by adding the search terms back to the homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kelly_Edwards0 -
H1 tag found on page, but saying doesn't match keyword
We've run a on-page grader test on our home page www.whichledlight.com with the keyword 'led bulbs' it comes back with saying there is a H1 tag, although the content of the keyword apperently doesn't contain 'led bulbs... which seems a bit odd because the content of the tag is 'UK’s #1 Price Comparison Site for LED Bulbs` I've used other SEO checkers and some say we don't even have a H1 tag, or H2, H3 and so on for any page. Screaming Frog seems to think we have a H1 tag though, and can also detect the content of the tag. Any ideas? ** Update ** The website is a single page app (EmberJS) so we use prerender to create snapshots of the pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrueluxGroup
We were under the impression that MOZ can crawl these prerendered pages fine, so were a bit baffled as to why it would say we have a H1 tag, but think the contents of the tag still doesn't match our keyword.0 -
Domain Authority: 23, Page Authority: 33, Can My Site Still Rank?
Greetings: Our New York City commercial real estate site is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Key MOZ metric are as follows: Domain Authority: 23
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Page Authority: 33
28 Root Domains linking to the site
179 Total Links. In the last six months domain authority, page authority, domains linking to the site have declined. We have focused on removing duplicate content and low quality links which may have had a negative impact on the above metrics. Our ranking has dropped greatly in the last two months. Could it be due to the above metrics? These numbers seem pretty bad. How can I reverse without engaging in any black hat behavior that could work against me in the future? Ideas?
Thanks, Alan Rosinsky0 -
Product Page rankings - How to boost?
Hi folks I am responsible for an e-commerce website. Our website is doing very well but I believe that our product pages should be ranking more highly than they currently are. When taking over my current role, it became clear that a number of changes would need to be made to try and boost the under performing product pages. Amongst other things I therefore implemented the following: New Product content - we have placed a massive focus on reworking all product content so that it is unique and offers value to the reader. The new content includes videos, images and text that is all keyword rich but (I hope) not seen as overly spammy. Duplicate content - the CMS was creating multiple versions of the same page - I addressed this by implementing 301 redirects and adding canonical links. This ensures there is now only 1 version of the page Parameters - I instructed Google to not index certain URLs containing specific parameters Internal links - I have tried to improve the number of links to the products from relevant key category pages My question is, although some of the changes have only been in place for a month, what else can I do to ensure that the product pages rank as highly as possible. As an e-commerce website with so many products it is very difficult to link to these product pages directly, so any tips or suggestions would be welcome! Here's an example of a product page link : http://www.directheatingsupplies.co.uk/pid_37440/100180/Worcester-Greenstar-29CDi-Classic-Gas-Combi-Boiler-7738100216-29-Cdi.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DHS_SH0 -
Our keyword rank fell drastically since our last moz crawl. What gives?
Our site was just crawled last night an we had a number of keywords fall 25% or so, from say # 30 to 38. What would cause such a drastic fall? We haven't taken down pages or changed changed page titles, url or content. One thing we are having trouble with is our meta description and meta keywords for each page. Drupal 7 seems to be giving us trouble and the meta information isn't showing up anymore. Would that cause the fall? Any other suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | drudalton1 -
Link Juice Vs. Page Rank
What is better from an SEO point of view a Page with Page Rank of 5 with 0 clicks linking to your site or a page with a Page Rank of 3 with 1000 clicks linking back to your site? Is link juice important? do search engines count Link Juice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
I am working SEO on a website that has 2 pages for different variations of a keyword.
I have run into a situation where a website has 2 pages for different variations of a keyword. I personally like to use 1 page and make it powerful for a variety of variations of that keyword. Unfortunately for the site I’m working on, using only one page is not an option. Here is an example: They have a page for “Alex Miley Cameras” and then they have a page for “Alex Miley Cell Phones”. On the first one they want to rank for Alex Miley & Alex Miley Cameras. For the 2<sup>nd</sup> they want to rank for “Alex Miley Cell Phones”. My concern is will Google be indecisive on which page to rank for the keyword “Alex Miley” since they both contain this word. Also, will it affect any of the other words and spread the juice making each page weaker. I would appreciate advice on how to rank these pages each separately for their keywords and not have to worry about any confusion from Google. I can’t change the structure of the site. I only have access to the Meta info and page content. Thank you for your help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOPresident0