How do you explain this in this Keyword Difficulty Report?
-
Hello here,
I am trying to understand how my site virtualsheetmusic.com can better compete for the keyword "sheet music download" where we used to be 3rd until a few months ago, and now we are at the 5th spot.
But here is my specific question: I can't find an explanation why two of our competitors are ranked before us at the 3rd and 4th spot. Please, look at the attached image (very wide) which shows the Keyword Difficulty Report for this keyword. You can also download a PDF of it here below:
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/storage/keyword-sheet-music-download.pdf
We are at the 5th spot, and the two competitors highlighted in pink are the ones I am talking about: I am trying to understand why they are ranking better than us, despite our metrics look much better than theirs. In fact, if I look at the metrics in the report, I can't find an explanation to justify their outrank against us, so there must be something else that the report is missing.
Any thoughts about this issue are very welcome!
Thank you in advance for any help.
Sincerely,
Fabrizio[keyword-sheet music download.jpg](http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/storage/keyword-sheet music download.jpg)
-
Thank you Wesley for your comment on the other thread about the Panda. We have decided to put back all the pages in the index and in the meantime try to differentiate and thick them more. Our traffic was down too much as well as our business was suffering too much that we couldn't keep up.
As for the bounce rate, that is pretty much from all our sources. Direct traffic has actually an higher bounce rate right now (58%), and used to be better in the past (38% in 2009), but on the Google side it is now 46.33% whereas used to be 57% in 2009. Referral traffic is about 50% bounce rate and used to be worse in 2009 at 53%. Please, note that in 2009 our business was going great. 2009 was the best year ever and we always take it as the reference the reference year.
I am aware that we need to get that down furthermore, but it is hard to understand how to do it. If I look at our website, I don't see anything misleading or anything for which users can be scared away, but maybe I need someone that can think more "out of the box".
I really appreciate your help and brainstorming!
All the best,
-
Fabrizo, as I just commented in one of your other questions Google Panda is now part of the standard Google algorithm and it isn't a periodic update. You said you were waiting for the next panda update in order to make a recovery. I don't think this is going to work anymore.
A bounce rate of 45% is a very high bounce rate in my opinion. Is this for all pages, the home page, product page?
Where is the bounce rate the highest? From direct traffic, referral traffic or search engine traffic?I think that two things are not very good for your rankings:
1. You are not being found on your products since they are no-indexed.
2. Bounce rate is one of the metrics Google Panda misses. A bounce rate this high is an indicator to Google that users are not finding what they are looking for at your site. If a user types in a query, clicks on your site, goes back to google and clicks on one of your competitors and they look like their site then it is a clear signal to Google that the other site is more relevant for the user on a given query. If this happens a lot then they can lower your rankings.Try to find out where the bounce rate is coming from and try to give us here some more information which we can help you with. If anything was unclear, let me know.
-
Thank you Wesley, actually the only real explanation I have is that we are under a Panda penalization. That's why we have removed some many pages from the index and are hoping to recover in some way with the next Panda update (or Panda algorithm integration).
The bounce rate for our site is always pretty much the same as in the previous years: 45%
Do you think that a Panda penalization could be the "missing" metric here to explain our lower ranking? We have the same kind of problem on many other long tail keyword results targeting specific product pages: we have much lower rankings than many crappy websites!
Thank you again.
-
I don't see that, both external links and linking C-blocks are much lower than mine (I am talking about the sites highlighted in red). Am I missing anything?
-
Your metrics in fact look better than the other websites in the list (the ones in red at least).
In a different question you posted here you mentioned that you no-indexed all of your product pages. This could be a reason since i'm pretty sure your product pages can contain a lot of information which you want to be found on.The overall user experience could be an issue too (Google Panda). Go to your statistics on Bounce rate and overall time on page. Are people happy with what they find on your website or do they leave immediatly?
If they are leaving immediately try to determine why. Is the design of the website not good enough? Are they looking for something completely different in terms of content?
This is a very difficult question to answer without access to information which is not provided in the attached image.
I tried naming a few possible problems.Let me know if you find something and I hoped i helped in some way.
-
External links in and linking C-blocks are playing in their favor. Both are still an important metric to look at.
What keyword is this for?
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
-
Search Volume in Keyword Rankings Page
Is there a way to show search volumes for keywords in the Keyword Rankings tab page? A lot of times keywords we are ranking for are added to our campaign, and it would be very useful to see the search volumes within that grid. That way we could sort by the search volume and determine which keywords are worth targeting and optimizing for. I've had this ability with other software in the past and would be a great option for either Moz Pro version or the new Beta that is coming out. Which I'm still waiting for my invite BTW:)
Moz Pro | | agencypromogroup0 -
Not provided Data in SEOMoz reports
Hi How do SeoMoz reports deal with 'not provided' data I see my total visits from organic search for a month are same as total of both my branded and non branded keyword traffic combined yet GA is reporting 157 visits from non provided data so is SEOMoz being very clever and finding a way to decipher this not provided data and allocate it accordingly in the reports ? Or if not what ? Many Thanks Dan
Moz Pro | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Export & Email Keyword Report for Selected Tags
Is there a way to get a keyword ranking summary report emailed to me for specific tags?
Moz Pro | | CPollock0 -
Report not showing all links
I am trying to pull the back link report for the following URL www.hotscripts.com/category/scripts/php/scripts-programs/image-galleries/ OSE shows a total of 589 back links. When i download the report all I get in excel is 207. Why?
Moz Pro | | inetteam1 -
My rankings report is giving out wrong information
Hi, i am very puzzled about the rankings report. For some reason the past couple of weeks it is giving wrong information for example, my site www.in2town.co.uk the report says that the keyword gastric band hypnosis is eight in google on page one but when i have checked i cannot find it. It also says the word gastric band hypnotherapy is sixth place in google on page one can anyone please let me know what is going on
Moz Pro | | ClaireH-1848860 -
SEOmoz PRO Custom Reports Issues
This post is for all PRO members, On January 2, 2012, we found a serious bug in our custom reporting system that made it possible for some of our customers to see other customers’ custom reports. This affected less than 1% of our customers in total (.6 % to be exact). Fewer than 100 reports could potentially be viewed by another customer. We are taking this matter very seriously. 98 accounts were affected and we will be contacting those people individually via their account email addresses. If you do not receive an email from us, don’t worry - you were not affected. Soon after we discovered the problem, we completely turned off access to these reports; even though people may have been provided access previously, the access was limited to a short time period. They no longer have access to the reports whatsoever. The issue has now been resolved and all reports moving forward are functioning properly. For more information on what caused the issue, how it's been resolved and any other updates on the issue, follow the thread here: http://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/20836338-custom-reports-issues-resolved. We'll add any updates there. Also, we'd like to have all comments/questions from members in one place, so please use the Zendesk link for comments. We really appreciate your patience while we work through this. If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact us at help@seomoz.org - we're always happy to help. Sincerely, Jen Lopez
Moz Pro | | jennita
Community Manager, SEOmoz0 -
Why are SEOmoz Pro Keyword Ranking reports different between two 301-linked URLs?
Hi, My main domain is www.dancenut.com. I have this 301 URL redirected to www.dancenut.com/boston/. I set up an SEOmoz Pro campaign for each of these URLs in order to see if they were being treated differently in any way. In most cases the report results are identical, or the small differences are understandable. However, there is one big difference between the two sets of campaign reports. In the Keyword Ranking reports, the data for the Bing and Yahoo! reports are identical, but the data for the Google reports are dramatically different. Out of 21 keywords, 9 are listed in the top 50 for www.dancenut.com, but only 2 are listed in the top 50 for www.dancenut.com/boston/ (the specific positions are the same for the 2 keywords that are listed for both). Does this make any sense? Could the SEOmoz Pro data be wrong? If not, then I'm suspicious that Google may not be interpreting the 301 redirect properly. I don't think this could be fully explained by a 1-10% reduction in link juice due to the 301 because I have one keyword for which my site ranks #1 in Google, Bing, and Yahoo! with www.dancenut.com, but it doesn't even rank in the top 50 in Google with www.dancenut.com/boston/. And why would these differences only exist for Google? Any insight would be much appreciated! Andrew
Moz Pro | | dancenut0 -
How do I get my crawl report?
I received a message that my crawl report is complete with a link - went to the link however - when I click on the icon that has the report name and the complete check mark nothing happens looked around can't find the results. Need to bid on this job so it would be helpful to know where to get it. Thanks for all you do. Wickey
Moz Pro | | Wickey0