Help me solve a keyword ranking mystery please
-
I posted this and had some help (thank you!) but found some new things, so I thought I'd just start a new thread so no info. is missed.
Hi everyone, I'm new here So far I've had wonderful success seo wise and none of the updates (Penguin nor Panda) affected any sites, until this one.
For example, one site has 7 keywords I'm optimizing for. Out of those 7, all but 2 (and variations of the 2 - one word vs long-tail) completely tanked. These keywords were all on page 2/3. One of the two survivors never budged from page 2 (it's a brand keyword so I was very happy to finally get it to page 2)
Now when I check rankings, the other terms show up in the 200-400 spots, but NOT for the URL I was optimizing for (category page) but instead for random products in the category.
The only thing I've done differently with the 2 keywords that are still doing well, was focus - we did more link-building for those, but not an extreme amount. Never over-optimize.
My question is, how did 2 survive and 5 are still floating up and down. Last night I saw one go up 122 spots, now today down 14. I'm really struggling with this.
I just ran another diagnostic crawl here and the report found 0 errors and 0 warnings. I checked category content with a plagiarism checker and found some external duplicate content which I've already taken care of.
No critical warnings/messages in WMT either. I'm stumped
Thank you for any help.
-
Do you mean as in duplicate content or too high keyword ratio? If so, I checked for duplicate content, didn't find much off site or on, fixed what I could. All the content was originally written and added to the site months ago. Survived Panda in Oct. Nov. and Dec. so why now? It's a mystery...
-
Does the body content on that category page have anything to do with the 5 keywords you lost rankings for?
-
Yes - it's a skin care site so each category page is www.sitename/categoryname
I just don't get why 2 did well (the most competitive) and the others are MIA
-
For those other 5 that are floating are they product related?
Maybe it would be better for your business to optimize the product pages with keywords that relate specifically to the products that page is selling.
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
-
How to rank for a keyword
Hi guys, I'm looking to rank a new blog for a search term which we currently already rank #1 for. I want to create a blog which provides a better solution to a searchers query and knock our current #1 page for this new one. Is there a way to do this simply without losing the real-estate the currently ranked #1 page has already accumulated? Or is just a matter of working on this new blog to find it's own way to the top? Thanks in advance, James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jameseacott0 -
"Null" appearing as top keyword in "Content Keywords" under Google index in Google Search Console
Hi, "Null" is appearing as top keyword in Google search console > Google Index > Content Keywords for our site http://goo.gl/cKaQ4K . We do not use "null" as keyword on site. We are not able to find why Google is treating "null" as a keyword for our site. Is anyone facing such issue. Thanks & Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
Can't understand our Ranking; DA, PA and On Page all better than Competiton; Ranking no where
Our rankings are up and down but our domain is clean, DA and PA good
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexSTUDIO18
and there is really in depth content which is all original. We are at a bit of a loss; The site is
http://www.fightstorepro.com I can use the phrase "Boxing Gloves" as an example
http://www.fightstorepro.com/gear/gloves/boxing-gloves.html PA 26 , DA29
Good original content; Video content, On page grade A
Not ranking in top 50 places?? The competitor in Pos4 is not matching our placing Anyone shed any light on this?0 -
Blocking Certain Site Parameters from Google's Index - Please Help
Hello, So we recently used Google Webmaster Tools in an attempt to block certain parameters on our site from showing up in Google's index. One of our site parameters is essentially for user location and accounts for over 500,000 URLs. This parameter does not change page content in any way, and there is no need for Google to index it. We edited the parameter in GWT to tell Google that it does not change site content and to not index it. However, after two weeks, all of these URLs are still definitely getting indexed. Why? Maybe there's something we're missing here. Perhaps there is another way to do this more effectively. Has anyone else ran into this problem? The path we used to implement this action:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jbake
Google Webmaster Tools > Crawl > URL Parameters Thank you in advance for your help!0 -
How to increase the traffic and keywords ranking
Am working on a website http://www.greavescotton.com. A month ago most of the keywords were in first page. This month I have noticed the fall of keyword rankings. I have checked the webmaster tools for any mails and messages but I did not find any. So can anyone please visit the site and check it and please give me the suggestions accordingly to increase the traffic and keywords. Also I would like to know the advantages of commenting in Youtube.com.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PrasanthMohanachandran0 -
Loosing Ranking
Hi, I'm working on a real estate website last 2 years. I've get top position on local and organic search result. But last 2 month I'm loosing ranking on some keywords on both local and organic search. I'm doing boomarking, guest posting related to real estate and social media promotion but getting no result that's way I'm looking seo person for my website. Thanks and waiting for your feedback
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KLLC0 -
Mystery: Ranking in Amazon for a product page?
My client has a product on Amazon that has more reviews and better rankings. However, their competitor with less reviews and lower ratings are ranking #1 for our primary keyword in Google. Our product page doesn't even rank on Google, but I'm assuming Google doesn't want to display two results from Amazon. The only difference is they have 1 link pointed to the product page that has a small PA of 10 and DA of 15. Do you think this link could be the only thing making a difference? Should we start building more links to this product page in addition to their website? Any other tips to help our Amazon page rank?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stryde0 -
Website Ranking Issue
Hey All My question is specfic to a particular website. The category of the website is Kitchen Appliances. The keyword is extremely competitive. The website I am currently optimizing has loads of products and many pages as well. I am constantly building links from industry specific websites for the website as well as composing articles and leading the users back to the website with keyword rich anchor text. I have been doing this for around 3 months and I do not see the website in the first 30 pages of the SERP (for the keyword kitchen appliances - the site is a page rank 2 BTW). No bugs reported as well in Webmaster tools. My next step is to add these articles to the website (www.example.com/KitchenAppliances ) with keyword rich metatags as well as content with internal links to my product pages. I also plan on sending traffic to these pages to build the pages link popularity. Do you think I can expect better results for the article pages than my original website product pages or do you think I should continue with the link building activity I was performing originally for the website. regards Ryan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO5Team2