SEO Troubleshooting? Not ranking in Top 50 for "easy" keyword
-
Hi there,
First of all, thank you in advance to whoever steps in to help me with this issue!
So, I have a new site (launched December 2016) in the investing space and have been able to get page 1 rankings on some of my pages.
One of my best ranking pages is for the phrase "what is xiv". The Keyword Explorer has this phrase at a 21 difficulty. My page for this keyword is https://www.projectoption.com/what-is-xiv/. The post reached the first page almost immediately after being published, though I know I shouldn't expect this for other keywords of similar difficulty.
Here is my problem: I just wrote a comprehensive guide (8,000+ words) on a different keyword phrase: "vertical spreads." The Keyword Explorer has this phrase at a 25 difficulty. My page for this topic: https://www.projectoption.com/vertical-spreads-explained/.
However, the page is nowhere to be found in organic Google rankings (not in top 50), and the page has been live for a few weeks now.
I've done my best at optimizing the post, but something leads me to believe there are some issues that are beyond my SEO knowledge. For example, maybe the post is too long, and Google can't figure out what the page is about.
Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your time!
-Chris
-
David,
This seems like the most logical explanation and makes complete sense. Thank you!
I can confirm that I haven't linked to this page from my other website pages as I haven't quite figured out where the link fits best. However, I'll figure that out now and see how it goes in the next few weeks.
Thanks so much for your help, and nice last name!
-Chris
-
"create some backlinks using the keywords" sounds super dodgy!!
You shouldn't be the one creating links to your site.
You have really good content and I don't think you'll have much trouble getting links to your site with a bit of outreach and relationship building with other quality sites in your niche.
Don't ruin your awesome content by link building like it's 2010.
Cheers,
David
-
Hi Chris,
I quickly ran your site through Screaming Frog and found that this new page is not linking from your site anywhere - it's what's known as an "orphan page".
By not linking from the site, it is not receiving any "authority" from your domain and you will have a hard time getting it to rank for anything.
The first thing I would do is to make sure it's linking from your site and check how it's going in a few weeks.
Cheers,
David
-
Thanks so much for doing this.
To clarify, the keyword I'm having an issue ranking for is "vertical spread"
I used the "what is xiv" keyword to compare difficulties. The point is that I'm ranking very well for "what is xiv" but I'm not ranking at all for "vertical spread" when the difficulty is similar.
Page I'm trying to rank: https://www.projectoption.com/vertical-spreads-explained/
Targeted Keyword: Vertical Spread
-
-
Thank you for the reply.
To answer your questions:
1 & 3) Yes. The first thing I do after publishing new content is submitting the page to Google and index request.
- I have not yet received backlinks to this page. I understand that this is key to achieving the highest rankings, but it is a work in progress. Still, I would expect to at least reach the 2nd or 3rd page for this keyword without having any backlinks (since the pages/sites in those positions do not have many links and/or the content is not great).
-
By the way, you have no backlinks so, you should to start to build someones if you dont want to lose your rank
-
In fact I made an audit to your site
https://www.projectoption.com/
and guess what ?
you are in the position 03 for Google USA for the keyword "what is xiv"
you are in the position 80 for Google USA for the keyword "xiv trading strategy"
you are in the position 25 for Google USA for the keyword "how the vix works"So maybe your should check your search console and see what happen.
-
Even if you have an easy keyword that does not mean that everything is done
- did you submit your site to google?
- did you create some backlinks using the keywords ?
- did you check your search console to check if there is an error on your site?
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
-
Link rel="prev" AND canonical
Hi guys, When you have several tabs on your website with products, you can most likely navigate to page 2, 3, 4 etc...
Technical SEO | | AdenaSEO
You can add the link rel="prev" and link rel="next" tags to make sure that 1 page get's indexed / ranked by Google. am I correct? However this still means that all the pages can get indexed, right? For example a webshop makes use of the link rel="prev" and ="next" tags. In the Google results page though, all the seperate tabs pages are still visible/indexed..
http://www.domain.nl/watches/?tab=1
http://www.domain.nl/watches/?tab=24
http://www.domain.nl/watches/?tab=19
etc..... Can we prevent this, and make sure only the main page get's indexed and ranked, by adding a canonical link on every 'tab page' to the main page --> www.domain.nl/watches/ I hope I explained it well and I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Regards, Tom1 -
WMT "Index Status" vs Google search site:mydomain.com
Hi - I'm working for a client with a manual penalty. In their WMT account they have 2 pages indexed.If I search for "site:myclientsdomain.com" I get 175 results which is about right. I'm not sure what to make of the 2 indexed pages - any thoughts would be very appreciated. google-1.png google-2.png
Technical SEO | | JohnBolyard0 -
Rel="canonical" What if there is no header??
Hi Everyone! Thanks to moz.com, I just found out that we have a duplicate content issue: mywebsite.com and mywebsite.com/index.php have the same content. I would like to make mywebsite.com the main one because it already has a few links and a better page rank. I know how to do a 301 redirect (already have one for www.mywebsite.com) but I am aware that a 301 redirect for my index file would create a loop issue. I have read the article about redirecting without creating a loop (http://moz.com/blog/apache-redirect-an-index-file-to-your-domain-without-looping) but quite frankly I don't even have a clue what he's trying to tell me (e.g. "Create an apache DirectoryIndex directive for your document root." What????!)… So I figured a rel="canonical" tag for my index file would be easier and fix the problem, too (right??) In every "How to" description they always say you have to put the rel="canonical" tag in the header of your duplicate content file. But: My index.php has no header (or nothing that looks like a header to me)! This is what it looks like: foreach($_GET as $key => $value)
Technical SEO | | momof4
{
$$key = $value;
}
foreach($_POST as $key => $value)
{
$$key = $value;
}
$page_title="my title";
$page_description="my description";
$page_keywords="keywords";
//echo $link;
//exit;
if (!isset($link)):
$page_content="homepage.php";
else:
if ($link=="services"):
$page_content="services.php";
$page_title=" my title for services page";
$page_description="description for services.";
endif;
… ect. for the other pages So where do I put the rel=canonical tag? Or is there another solution for the whole problem? Like delete the whole index file (lol) Thanks in advance for any answers!0 -
How to use rel="alternate" properly for mobile directory.
Hey everyone, For the URL - http://www.absoluteautomation.ca/dakota-alert-dcpa-p/dkdcpa2500.htm - I have the following tags in the header: rel="canonical" href="http://www.absoluteautomation.ca/dakota-alert-dcpa-p/dkdcpa2500.htm" /> rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)" href="http://www.absoluteautomation.ca/mobile/Product.aspx?id=37564" /> Yes Google WMT is reading these as duplicate pages with duplicate titles, meta descriptions etc. How can I fix this? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | absoauto0 -
New TLD .solution .company with exact keyword match - will it be a viable proposition for SEO
I noticed some option for new TLD like .company & .solution My exact match keyword domain is all but taken on the traditional domains (com/org/net/info). Is there an SEO benefits or disadvantage to use the .solution or .company with the exact keyword match? Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | BLIT0 -
SEO Ultimate Plug in problems for SEO MOZ
Hi Newbee here! SEO ultimate seems to work ok for other url I have on this problem. http://www.pureescapism.co.uk and performing the on page grader for hair salon broadstairsI have canonicalizer on for the plug in and I have made it the rel=canonical targetIt tells me I haven't.Further down I don't get a tick also and am told : Remove all but a single canonical URL tag.Not aware I have more than one.I am also told : No More Than One Meta Description Element ( Cant see how I can do that either as I havent changed any code)Help please
Technical SEO | | Agentmorris0 -
How is a dash or "-" handled by Google search?
I am targeting the keyword AK-47 and it the variants in search (AK47, AK-47, AK 47) . How should I handle on page SEO? Right now I have AK47 and AK-47 incorporated. So my questions is really do I need to account for the space or is Google handling a dash as a space? At a quick glance of the top 10 it seems the dash is handled as a space, but I just wanted to get a conformation from people much smarter then I at seomoz. Thanks, Jason
Technical SEO | | idiHost0 -
Ranked on second page for keyword; now not within first 1000 listings?
Our website www.clientfirstfunding.com ranked 13th for the keyword "structured settlement". After this weekend we are no longer ranking for this keyword at all. We haven't made any changes at all to the site and i haven't gained any backlinks that appear to be spammy. We have held this position for the last several months. I can understand a drop in SERPs but one this drastic is shocking. Any ideas as to what could have caused this would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Tony19860