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
-
Is it ok to repeat a (focus) keyword used on a previous page, on a new page?
I am cataloguing the pages on our website in terms of which focus keyword has been used with the page. I've noticed that some pages repeated the same keyword / term. I've heard that it's not really good practice, as it's like telling google conflicting information, as the pages with the same keywords will be competing against each other. Is this correct information? If so, is the alternative to use various long-winded keywords instead? If not, meaning it's ok to repeat the keyword on different pages, is there a maximum recommended number of times that we want to repeat the word? Still new-ish to SEO, so any help is much appreciated! V.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vitzz1 -
Too many on page links
Hi I know previously it was recommended to stick to under 100 links on the page, but I've run a crawl and mine are over this now with 130+ How important is this now? I've read a few articles to say it's not as crucial as before. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Page Title shown in SERPS not the same as
Hi all, I'm trying to get a homepage to rank for a certain term, but the page keeps showing up in the SERPS with the "Brand Name: Keyword" when I have written it as "Keyword - Brand Name" in the <title>tag. I can't even see "Brand Name" Keyword" in the code of the page so I don't know where Google is pulling this from? </p> <p>I have <meta name="robots" content="noodp,noydir"/> on the page.</p> <p>I'm running Yoast and have removed the Brand from the Site Name and the Page Title for the homepage is "Keyword - Brand Name" in WordPress. I've changed the meta description so I can see the page has been crawled and re-indexed as the new meta description is showing in the SERPs</p> <p>Any idea, where Google is pulling this Page Title from and how I can get it changed to read the actual <title> tag? Or is there something I need to change in WordPress?</p> <p>Thank you!</p></title>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
Different Header on Home Page vs Sub pages
Hello, I am an SEO/PPC manager for a company that does a medical detox. You can see the site in question here: http://opiates.com. My question is, I've never heard of it specifically being a problem to have a different header on the home page of the site than on the subpages, but I rarely see it either. Most sites, if i'm not mistaken, use a consistent header across most of the site. However, a person i'm working for now said that she has had other SEO's look at the site (above) and they always say that it is a big SEO problem to have a different header on the homepage than on the subpages. Any thoughts on this subject? I've never heard of this before. Thanks, Jesse
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Waismann0 -
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 -
Can too many "noindex" pages compared to "index" pages be a problem?
Hello, I have a question for you: our website virtualsheetmusic.com includes thousands of product pages, and due to Panda penalties in the past, we have no-indexed most of the product pages hoping in a sort of recovery (not yet seen though!). So, currently we have about 4,000 "index" page compared to about 80,000 "noindex" pages. Now, we plan to add additional 100,000 new product pages from a new publisher to offer our customers more music choice, and these new pages will still be marked as "noindex, follow". At the end of the integration process, we will end up having something like 180,000 "noindex, follow" pages compared to about 4,000 "index, follow" pages. Here is my question: can this huge discrepancy between 180,000 "noindex" pages and 4,000 "index" pages be a problem? Can this kind of scenario have or cause any negative effect on our current natural SEs profile? or is this something that doesn't actually matter? Any thoughts on this issue are very welcome. Thank you! Fabrizio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
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 -
Blocking Pages Via Robots, Can Images On Those Pages Be Included In Image Search
Hi! I have pages within my forum where visitors can upload photos. When they upload photos they provide a simple statement about the photo but no real information about the image,definitely not enough for the page to be deemed worthy of being indexed. The industry however is one that really leans on images and having the images in Google Image search is important to us. The url structure is like such: domain.com/community/photos/~username~/picture111111.aspx I wish to block the whole folder from Googlebot to prevent these low quality pages from being added to Google's main SERP results. This would be something like this: User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /community/photos/ Can I disallow Googlebot specifically rather than just using User-agent: * which would then allow googlebot-image to pick up the photos? I plan on configuring a way to add meaningful alt attributes and image names to assist in visibility, but the actual act of blocking the pages and getting the images picked up... Is this possible? Thanks! Leona
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HD_Leona0
