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.
Need help with fluctuating ranking for a specific keyword
-
my website www.totalmanagement.com fluctuates for the search term: web based property management software
I have been using SEO Moz for a few months now and have managed to get to the top 5 and jump around between 3 and 5.
Does anyone have any suggestions to assist me?
Long term goal is also to really target: Property Management Software
But I am still very new at this.
Thanks in advance for the help!
-
Jonathan-
I can appreciate you frustration - what point2propertymanager.com has is better (much better) overall domain authority and trust than your site - this outweighs your better on page SEO. Although your competitor's page links are internal, those links are passing strong link juice from the root domain. Examining their IBLs in Open Site Explorer shows domains with DA of 100 (e.g. adobe.com - and while those 100 DA links are nofollows, they still send a strong domain trust signal) - your site doesn't have a data available in OSE, but it would undoubtedly show your IBLs to both fewer and weaker.
In short, if you want better SERPs, you'll need to get quality IBLs through serious, systematic link building.
Chas
-
Can someone maybe help explain to me how this page:
http://www.point2propertymanager.com/property_management_software.html
is out ranking me for the term "web based property management software"
I ran a check on it with SEOMoz tools and the page grade is an F for the term and my homepage has a higher page rank and more linking root domains.
I am so confused I could scream!!!
-
Jonathan-
Your follow up reaffirms my suggestions where you need to take this to move up on your competitors. Link building is a difficult and multifaceted task, requiring dedications, perseverance (lots), research and some charm (and persuasion). There have been numerous blog posts on SEOmoz (and elsewhere) regarding link building techniques; read them all - if your budget can handle it, there are some very savvy (and white hat) link builders out there that can help you but their services are not inexpensive.
Other methods include getting your users raving about how great your software is - offer free trials, killer customer service, urge your users to blog about you, get reviews, post those reviews on your site in a Google acceptable micro format.
best of luck along with your hard work
-
Yes the competitors have been in business for years and we have not been. Server speed has been poor lately and I have complained to Hostgator.
I have been trying to get other sites to link to us but I am just at a loss as to how to get the volume I would need to even come close what the competitors have.
-
Hi Jonathan,
Welcome to the gray SEO world, full of "ifs" and google actualization. Is very hard to tell what happened, there is a lot of factors.
Google is change the algoritms again, and some points as load speed and text in the beginning of the website are becoming important.
And there is also the action from the concorrent websites. They got more links? they changed the website?
One tip I can give to you is stay connected at SEOMOZ blog to see the last changes at google and get a change to be ahead of the other websites.
-
Jonathan -
Always a difficult task chasing (and obsessing over) a high a SERP. My search for your KW in Google found you at position 8. Perhaps your results are skewed by your search history and/or being logged into a Google account, which can personalize search results that give a higher weight to frequented searches and results (your own site).
Looking at you your competitors link profiles show much stronger domain authority and vastly greater number of links. You have only 1 externally followed link.Your on page SEO is better than some of them, but the strength of their link profiles trumps that.
Also check you loads times - I noticed your site was slow to come up, and I checked it in Google Page Speed where it time out, although a refresh did bring up an acceptable 83., so perhaps there is a third party item loading that is hanging up.
All things being equal, Google will put the most (or best) linked to site ahead. Quality links from trusted domains are the best way to insure a stronger, more consistent ranking.
Chas
-
Have you done a press release for that term and the site? Typically, those will get some high quality authority links pointed to your site and should solidify your rankings.
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
-
Need help with Meta tags generator
Hello, I am doing SEO for my business website. I am trying to generate Meta Tags here
On-Page Optimization | | webdropyyc
https://webdrop.ca/seo-tools/meta-tag-generator What should I enter for "Search engines should revisit this page after ". We are not going to change content on daily basis. 7 Days or 30 days are good enough?0 -
Using Bold text for keywords
Hello I am updating an old e-commerce website of mine and many keywords are in bold - shall I remove the bold tag or keep them there? This is for SEO.
On-Page Optimization | | xdunningx0 -
Using keywords in my URL: Doing a redirect to /keyword
My website in "On Page Grade" received an A.Anyway, I only have 1 thing to optimize:_"Use Keywords in your URL__Using your targeted keywords in the URL string adds relevancy to your page for search engine rankings, assists potential visitors identify the topic of your page from the URL, and provides SEO value when used as the anchor text of referring links."_My website is ranking in top10 for a super high competitive keyword and all my others competitors have the keyword on their domain, but not for my URL.Since I can't change my domain for fixing this suggestion, I would like to know what do you think about doing a 301 redirect from / to mydomainname.com/keyword/So the index of my website would be the /keyword.I don't know if this can make a damage to my SERP for the big change ir it would be a great choice.
On-Page Optimization | | estebanseo0 -
Breadcrumbs keyword repeats
Hi I have a client project who's developers platform is populating the category part of the breadcrumbs with the header tag. Since these include the pages primary target keywords/phrase they are being repeated in the breadcrumbs increasing the keyword/phrase count on the page as well as repeating/duplicating the sentence. Can this cause problems ? or not because Google knows its not part of the page content/body copy (because its a breadcrumb) ? Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Title Tags: Does having the singular and plural version of the keyword hurt the ranking?
I'm wondering if there is a duplication issue with having a singular AND plural version of a keyword in the Title Tag. For example: Wood Desk - Wood Desks| Furniture Store Would this help or hurt my ranking for this URL? I can’t find a concrete answer for this under Moz’s “Title Tag SEO Best Practices Page.” Thanks for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | jampaper0 -
Help Please! - Anchor Text in the Menu
Hi everyone, I am a SEOMOZ newbie and I have been learning about SEO for a while now whilst working on my site - lockcity.co.uk - I already understood the importance of anchor text but was amazed to learn how google only count the anchor text used in the first link (http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/anchor-text). My questions are - does this rule still apply? and if so do the menus really count as the first link? If I went on this approach, this would make my menus too long for e.g. on my 'Auto Locksmith' page, my targetted keywords are 'Auto Locksmith' but also the town keywords need to be included. I really thought I had this covered on the home page by making sure the anchor text and alt text were keyword relevant to the link, but looks like Ive been missing out on an opportunity. Our business is slightly complicated in that the 25 mile radius we cover includes 4 different regions - therefore I feel like I always have to get these keywords in as well to make sure we get traffic from our area. Thanks for any advice you can give!
On-Page Optimization | | LockCity0 -
Why I am ranking for irrelevant keywords
My website is e-commerce and used to rank for all industry related keywords like buy widgets, cheap widgets, online widgets in top10. And suddenly my website was hacked and to resolve this hacking issue i have re-write all my dynamic urls into static pages after that new pages are indexed and ranking well. But after few months i have notice few changes in keywords ranking going down. But suddenly after Google Algo (EMD/Panda) update on Sept 27 i lost all my positions. And then according to Google guidelines i have worked on over optimization and low quality pages. I have removed all tones of low quality pages from SERP and simultaneously worked on url re-write. But i have notice small percent of changes in keyword positions like when Google Algo (EMD/Panda) is rolled out i lost my keyword positions from 1st page to 200 page and after working on over optimization and low quality pages the keywords are came back to 100 pages. Recently i have notice that my web pages ranking for irrelevant keywords. For example, let's say i used to rank for home page for these keywords; buy widgets, cheap widgets, online widgets but now am ranking for different inner pages say (guide pages). Can any one suggest me whats wrong..
On-Page Optimization | | BipSum0 -
301 redirect and then keywords in URL
Hi, Matt Cutts says that 301 redirects, including the ones on internal pages, causes the loss of a little bit of link juice. But also, I know that keywords in the URL are very important. On our site, we've got unoptimized URLs (few keywords) in the internal pages. Is it worth doing a 301 redirect in order to optimize the URLs for each main page. 301 redirects are the only way we can do it on our premade cart For example (just an example) say our main (1 of the 4) keywords for the page is "brown shoes". I'm wondering if I should redirect something like shoes.com/shoecolors.html to shoes.com/brown-shoes.html In other words, with the loss of juice would we come out ahead? In what instances would we come out ahead?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0