I am having an issue with my rankings
-
I am having an issue with my rankings. I am not sure if there are issues with onpage dup content or with the way wordpress is behaving but there is no reason based upon the sites back link profile that the site shouldn't be ranking well. The site is mesocare.org. If anyone can help it would be appreciated.
-
Just looking at the anchor text in your back link profile alone gives clues to why it's hard to rank - http://moz.com/researchtools/ose/anchors?page=1&site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mesocare.org%2F - that is, the anchors are mainly commercial keywords that one would try to rank for - this is exactly the site of link building that is not working as much, and will even get you penalized in extreme cases.
You have links on such pages as this: http://blogs.creighton.edu/klb89788/2012/08/31/hello-world/ and this http://wsn.eecs.berkeley.edu/?p=56 etc etc - which are not going to help and will likely only hurt the site in rankings.
Unfortunately this will take quite a bit of effort and work to overcome. You'll really have to show Google over time (6-12 months at least) some more quality signals - not only links but user metrics etc as well.
-
Google and being able to rank certain sites (especially affiliate and especially in health related fields) has changed a lot and has gotten much harder in recent years. The same tactics that worked in 2011/2012 won't work now. I'd say it was probably a little too artificially easy to rank those sites in the past, and now might be more a reflection of reality.
(I'll add more in another response)
-
The site does have some nice authority and link metrics.
I would start by targeting your on-page SEO a little better. Some tips:
-
Add more related headings (the H1 tag was only used)
-
sub pages could use better heading structure as well (missing H1 tags)
-
Add some bold content (every little bit helps in this competitive space)
-
Update your img alt tags (multiple images just use 'mesothelioma as alt text)
-
Strengthen your intra-linking architecture. I.e. add contextual links pointing to authority topics on your site (from one article to another)
-
-
I have been in the mesothelioma lead gen space for a long time. Ranked several websites successfully. Don't know why I can't this time.
-
I have been in the mesothelioma lead gen space for a long time. Ranked several websitea successfully. Don't know why I can't this time.
-
I wouldn't be so certain that you should rank high - Mesothelioma and related search are very competitive terms to try and rank for. It is a huge market for lead generation.
Start by tracking where your ranking is and work to improve the ranks incrementally. With such competitive terms, you really need to frame out your expectations and long-term goals.
Go back and answer this question for further strategies to execute:
- What are the top 10 search results doing to rank for those keywords?
-
The primary keyword I am trying to rank for is mesothelioma. Some other keywords to rank for are
Mesothelioma doctorMesothelioma treatmentMesothelioma symptomsMesothelioma victimsMesothelioma life expectancyI am not expecting to rank in the top 10 but should definitely be in the 20s but my site is nowhere.
-
You're missing some key questions to diagnose what you need:
-
What are you trying to rank for?
-
Which pages are you trying to rank?
-
What are the top 10 search results doing to rank for those keywords?
-
What are your pages doing to compete for ranking of those keywords?
Only after those questions are answered can we begin to analyse your site ranking.
-
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
-
Ranking fluctuation
According to Miles Rank tracking I have a keyword that is fluctuating by 5 or 6 positions in a 24-hour period every time it goes 10 down to 15 and back to 10 again with very little stopping point in between and keeps fluctuating like that. As far as I know the website is stable it uses Magento 1.9 and is a fixed category page. The page URL is relatively new as we migrated from an old site with a different URL structure I added 301s at server level from the old page URL to the new one. There is only two things I can think that can be the problem -
Technical SEO | | seoman10
1. Lack of links directly to the page (there is literally only one or two)
2. Loading speed problem But I don't see any of these would cause a 5 position fluctuation regularly every day. But do you have any thoughts? Thanks in advance.0 -
Issue with Title of Homepage - Wordpress Platform
I can't seem to get Google to read the title of my homepage the way I would like it to be read and I have double checked in all areas of my Wordpress Platform where the title may be defaulting and all it set up correctly. I have also ensured that the "force re-write of titles and meta descriptions" have been checked through a plugin I am using to monitor SEO (Yoast)... here is an example of how Google is reading my homepage title: XYZ Company: Primary Keyword in Ontario Canada - XYZ Company I would like it to read: Primary Keyword in Ontario Canada - XYZ Company But for some reason it keeps pulling in my website title. I have always re-submitted my URL to Google but no luck with the title change. If anyone has any insight as to why this is defaulting as such I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Issue with duplicate content
Hello guys, i have a question about duplicate content. Recently I noticed that MOZ's system reports a lot of duplicate content on one of my sites. I'm a little confused what i should do with that because this content is created automatically. All the duplicate content comes from subdomain of my site where we actually share cool images with people. This subdomain is actually pointing to our Tumblr blog where people re-blog our posts and images a lot. I'm really confused how all this duplicate content is created and what i should do to prevent it. Please tell me whether i need to "noindex", "nofollow" that subdomain or you can suggest something better to resolve that issue. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | odmsoft0 -
Is an international redirect hurting my ranking
We're a small international company that redirects users based on their language identifier.
Technical SEO | | _entreprenerd
I've now taken a big interest in and also how it affects ranking. When I look at my MOZ dashboard the fundedbyme.com domain has a higher ranking than fundedbyme.com/en/ for example. Our company wants to target other markets such as Spain and Germany, I am imposing penalties on myself by not having rel="canonical" in place and redirecting to the TLD?0 -
Disavow Issues
Hi We have a client who was hit by Penguin about 18 months ago. We disavowed all the bad links about 10 months ago however this has not resulted in an uplift in traffic or rankings. The client is asking me whether it would be better to dump the domain and move the website to a fresh domain. Can you provide thoughts / experience on this please? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | EffectiveSEOUK0 -
Why does my site rank so badly
its my turn to ask the interminable question why does my site rank so badly? site is: marriagerecords.org.uk. it was #1 for 'marriage records' on google for about 6 months. then it was 5th to 10th for about 2 months. now it is nowhere for this phrase and anything else, none of the pages I have written rank for anything. I have spent hours upon hours researching original content and I have got some great backlinks from sites like wrexham.gov.uk and somerset.gov.uk (some dont show in opensiteexplorer yet). im guessing im over-optimizing something but i'd love some concrete fixes if anyone could suggest any. thanks, tom
Technical SEO | | lethal0r0 -
Not ranking on Google
Hi all, I am optimising a site which is a hotel directory for a small island in the Mediterranean - Malta. The site is www.maltahotelsonline.com. I did a keyword research and optimised the page. However I am now at link building stage. Since we do not have many links the site is still not ranking very well for the desired keywords (ranking fine on Bing and Yahoo yet not on Google). As a result there isn't much traffic on the site. 1. Is there any particular issue that you can spot on this site that is not allowing it to rank well on Google? 2. Any suggestions on link-building please?
Technical SEO | | ICON_Malta0 -
Dismal content rankings
Hi, I realize this is a very broad question, but I am going to ask it anyways in the hopes that someone might have some insight. I have created a great deal of unique content for the site http://www.healthchoices.ca. You can select a video category from the top dropdown, then click on a video beside the provider box to see. The articles I've written are accessible by the View Article tab under each video. I have worked hard to make the articles informative and they are all unique with quotes from expert physicians. Even for strange health conditions that don't have a lot of competition - I don't see us appearing. Our search results are quite dismal for the amount of content we have. I guess I'm checking to see if anyone is able to point me in the right direction at all? If anything jumps out... Thanks, Erin
Technical SEO | | erinhealthchoices0