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.
Was moving up in SERPS then Got Stuck on Page 2
-
Hi,
I was continuously acquiring quality back-links and my site was moving up in Google SERPS for 3 main keywords. Within a few weeks i was on Page 2 and 3 for these three keywords, but after reaching there I got stuck on these pages and positions despite no change in link building strategy / pattern. I have even increased the number and quality of links that I acquire per day, but I am still stuck at exact same positions.
The website is10 months old and related to a software niche. I update this website once a week.
For one keyword I am stuck at position 1 of page two (you can well imagine the frustration..!!).
My question is that what do I need to do to get out of this "SERP lock"?
-
Thanks all for the answers.
Yes EGOL, It looks like I need to do the Jolt (rate of change of acceleration) rather than just acceleration or speed as I am up against entities having $10b+ market cap(s). These guys love to mop the serp floor using small competition.
Are there any other factors you guys consider relevant in off-page SEO, in addition to rate of increase of links/day and quality/relevance of links?
-
Hi,
This is a great question and many people find themselves right where you are. Both Ryan and Egol have provided you some great responses and I agree with them both. There is a lot that goes into whether and when your site will move up or down. Personally, I feel the closer you get to page 1 the more fine tuning and possibly effort it will take to make the leap to the top of page one.
Sounds like you are doing pretty well for a very young site. Good job and good luck!
-
Did you take physics in high school or college?
Your question is similar to..... "What is the difference between speed and acceleration?"
Just because you are "continuously acquiring quality back-links" doesn't mean that your competitors are sitting on their butts.
If you are gaining ten links per day but the guy above you is gaining twenty you will never ever catch him....
.... and if he is on the third page then the guys near the top of page two might be gaining hundreds per day.
Every time you move up a position in the SERPs the website directly above you will require a greater level of effort to defeat.
That means you gotta press the accelerator down harder and harder as you move up the SERPs. Will you have it floored before you reach the top of page two?
In lightly competitive SERPs you might be able to defeat everyone... but when you get into the heavyweight SERPs the increasing competition will at some point be more than most people can muster.
That's where you hit "SERP lock" as you call it.
Keep in mind that the people behind you are working hard too..... you might tramp the pedal to the floor and see people from behind passing you buy.
My personal opinion is... more people who hold any SERPs today will be lower in the rankings than will be more highly ranked by this time next year. Really. They are going to be displaced by existing heavyweights who are expanding their reach and new heavyweights who are starting to accelerate.
Pick ten SERPs in different niches that interest you and record who is in position #5. Then come back in a year and look for them. More will go down than up.
-
what do I need to do to get out of this "SERP lock"?
Without looking at the site and the keywords involved, we can only offer generic advice.
I would suggest examining all aspects of your onpage factors. Some specifics are:
-
page title: focus a single keyword
-
header: focus the same keyword
-
content: the first sentence of your content should also focus the same keyword
-
site internal linking: when appropriate, other pages of your site should provide links in content to other relevant pages.
-
url: clean, friendly, static urls which offer appropriate use of keywords is helpful
Wikipedia is a great example for many of the above steps.
There are other items to check. My point is link building and site promotion is an ongoing process which happens over months and years. On page changes have the ability to instantly and dramatically change your ranking. There is a good chance you are stuck due to onpage factors.
-
-
Could you let us know the URL and the keywords you're targeting?
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
-
Website ranking stuck on 2nd page of google. How to bring it in top 10 position??
Hi I am working on a site indianhomeappliances.in that for search terms such as 'best washing machine in india' appears near the top of the 2nd page of Googl for url https://indianhomeappliances.in/best-washing-machine-in-india/ When looking at what is listed on the 1st page for 'best washing machine in india' I would appreciate any advice/guidance on what else could be done to give the site a final push to get on the 1st page of search results. I have made more than 60 backlinks along with sites from competitor analysis via moz for this page Looking at the sites that are on the 1st page I cant understand why many of them are ranking higher than me? Any insight and plan of attack would be most appreciated from any search experts on the forum. My website is 2.5 months old. Many Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Pank00770 -
Few pages without SSL
Hi, A website is not fully secured with a SSL certificate.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdenaSEO
Approx 97% of the pages on the website are secured. A few pages are unfortunately not secured with a SSL certificate, because otherwise some functions on those pages do not work. It's a website where you can play online games. These games do not work with an SSL connection. Is there anything we have to consider or optimize?
Because, for example when we click on the secure lock icon in the browser, the following notice.
Your connection to this site is not fully secured Can this harm the Google ranking? Regards,
Tom1 -
Moved company 'Help Center' from Zendesk to Intercom, got lots of 404 errors. What now?
Howdy folks, excited to be part of the Moz community after lurking for years! I'm a few weeks into my new job (Digital Marketing at Rewind) and about 10 days ago the product team moved our Help Center from Zendesk to Intercom. Apparently the import went smoothly, but it's caused one problem I'm not really sure how to go about solving: https://help.rewind.io/hc/en-us/articles/*** is where all our articles used to sit https://help.rewind.io/*** is where all our articles now are So, for example, the following article has now moved as such: https://help.rewind.io/hc/en-us/articles/115001902152-Can-I-fast-forward-my-store-after-a-rewind- https://help.rewind.io/general-faqs-and-billing/frequently-asked-questions/can-i-fast-forward-my-store-after-a-rewind This has created a bunch of broken URLs in places like our Shopify/BigCommerce app listings, in our email drips, and in external resources etc. I've played whackamole cleaning many of these up, but these old URLs are still indexed by Google – we're up to 475 Crawl Errors in Search Console over the past week, all of which are 404s. I reached out to Intercom about this to see if they had something in place to help, but they just said my "best option is tracking down old links and setting up 301 redirects for those particular addressed". Browsing the Zendesk forms turned up some relevant-ish results, with the leading recommendation being to configure javascript redirects in the Zendesk document head (thread 1, thread 2, thread 3) of individual articles. I'm comfortable setting up 301 redirects on our website, but I'm in a bit over my head in trying to determine how I could do this with content that's hosted externally and sitting on a subdomain. I have access to our Zendesk admin, so I can go in and edit stuff there, but don't have experience with javascript redirects and have read that they might not be great for such a large scale redirection. Hopefully this is enough context for someone to provide guidance on how you think I should go about fixing things (or if there's even anything for me to do) but please let me know if there's more info I can provide. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | henrycabrown1 -
Which of these examples are doorway pages?
Hi there, I am soon to launch a new platform/directory website, however, have a concern over doorway pages. I have read many articles on the difference between Doorway and Landing pages and do have a good understanding, however, am still very anxious that what I intend to do will be risking Google penalties. I have looked at other directory/platform websites and have noticed that a lot of them are still using doorway pages and are not getting penalised. So I was wondering if someone wouldn't mind kindly letting me know their opinion on which of the following examples are doorway pages and which are not so I can better understand what I can and cannot do? Example 1: When I Google 'piano lessons new york' and 'trumpet lessons new york' I get the following 'landing pages' in search: https://takelessons.com/new-york/piano-lessons https://takelessons.com/new-york/trumpet-lessons To me, the above pages are definitely doorway pages as they are very similar with content and text and are simply an intermediary step between the Google search and their listings pages for piano/trumpet teachers in New York. Is this correct? Example 2: When I Google 'piano lessons Sydney' I get presented with the following web page in search: http://www.musicteacher.com.au/directory/sydney-nsw/lessons/piano/ I would think that this is NOT a doorway page as the user has been taken directly to the search results page in the directory and the page doesn't seem to have been set up for the sole purpose of listing in search results for 'Piano Lessons in Sydney'. Example 3: When I Google 'pet minding Sydney' I get presented with the following two pages in search: https://www.madpaws.com.au/petsitters/Sydney-New-South-Wales?type=night&service=1&from=0&to=99&city=Sydney&state=New-South-Wales https://www.pawshake.com.au/petsitters/Sydney%252C%2520New%2520South%2520Wales%252C%2520Australia Like Example 2, I don't think these pages would be classified as doorway pages as they too direct to the search results page in the site directory instead of an intermediary page. What do you think? Thanks so much in advance for your expertise and help! Kind Regards, Adrian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Amor20050 -
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 -
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 -
Moving from a .org to a .com
We have been a .org website for as long as the web as been around. We just recently got the .com for our organization and wondered what the transition process would be like. We offer a lot of content to help parents with parenting and so as a content driven site we have about 13k external links and 1,200 linking root domains links to our site. Will we loose all our links in the transition to the .com? Is there a way to do this well that helps our brand and also retains our google ranking? Thanks so much for any and all help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | movieguide0 -
How long does google take to show the results in SERP once the pages are indexed ?
Hi...I am a newbie & trying to optimize the website www.peprismine.com. I have 3 questions - A little background about this : Initially, close to 150 pages were indexed by google. However, we decided to remove close to 100 URLs (as they were quite similar). After the changes, we submitted the NEW sitemap (with close to 50 pages) & google has indexed those URLs in sitemap. 1. My pages were indexed by google few days back. How long does google take to display the URL in SERP once the pages get indexed ? 2. Does google give more preference to websites with more number of pages than those with lesser number of pages to display results in SERP (I have just 50 pages). Does the NUMBER of pages really matter ? 3. Does removal / change of URLs have any negative effect on ranking ? (Many of these URLs were not shown on the 1st page) An answer from SEO experts will be highly appreciated. Thnx !
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PepMozBot0