Ranking in SERPs but not using terms on website.
-
As far as I know, it's not normally possible for a website to rank for a keyword that is not mentioned on the website. I have seen a website that ranks very well for key terms and yet they are not mentioned anywhere on the website, I have run advanced search & checked using tools including cloak checker on my findings.
How can this be?
-
If I link to your website with the link text "SEO Moz" you can then rank for the term "SEO Moz" without having it on your site.
-
Hi Lee,
without being able to double check keywords on that particular domain I suggest two possible factors working on google that you may be overlooking:
-
hummingbird engine and semantic search. Google is trying to get the searchers intent not just plain keywords. Is possible that the site you're seeing is being highly related with the market they are thus getting a boost in all terms related to that topic.
-
google bombing. this is something it used to work and even if some say no, it still work sometimes. Bombing was a practice to use exact anchors to give authority on a site about something without even mention that. Some people are worried about this being a possible negative seo practie and some other uses that as an optimization factor. What I can say is that google bombing could work but not as it was. As this is not related to keywords but to topic, as the linking site topic will be passed to the linked one and if that site accrues more links it vcould be possible to see it ranking for such topics.
-
-
Valid information from all contributors thanks.
The site is related to the key terms however these are specific competitor multiple brands key terms which seems to rank very well for considering the brands aren't mentioned on the website.
I've checked backlinks, anchor texts, internal site search etc and nothing coming up for the brand terms and yet rank well. Trying to figure out how this is possible...
-
Intriguing love these problems.
The above two answers likely have it covered - on the off chance have you checked their referring domains - could they have bought a domain that ranked for those keywords and then done a 301 re-direct. Somehow the devaluation for relevance has been missed by google.
-
Hi there
I would agree Direct here - Google looks at topics and variations of keywords, so you may be ranking for variation terms, or what Google thinks are variation terms.
A few questions:
Are the terms you are ranking for related to your site, industry, or content in any way? Even loosely?
Are the terms you are ranking for high level or very broad? Or are they granular?
Have you looked at your backlinks and anchor text?
Are you ranking at all for the keywords/queries you want to be ranking for?
Have you been regularly checking your Search Console queries?I would look into your on-site SEO and content to see what may be causing your issue. You may be producing content in a way that's confusing search engines or users.
Take a look at the resources above and let me know if they help at all - good luck!
-
assuming you are referring to Google ranking.
Google's algorithm and technology is more advanced than just "actual " keywords, but also understands related keywords. you could be ranking due to this.
If you are not ranking for the keywords you are aiming for, check for over optimisation on your website.. or even under optimisation..
R
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
-
Really struggling with serps....
My website is only a week old or so but I have no pages showing on the serps or at least in the first few hundred results! I have many other hobby websites that had pages in the top 100 results instantly and the niche of this new website is tiny and not saturated so it should be up there already! All pages are indexed but non showing in the results. it feels like I have been penalised or something but I don’t see how or why? my website is www.magnet-fishing.co.uk of anyone can see anything obvious that I am missing regards Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Onlytopheadsets0 -
Fetch and render partial result could this affect SERP rankings [NSFW URL]
Moderator's Note: URL NSFW We have been desperately trying to understand over the last 10 days why our homepage disappears for a few days in the SERPS for our most important keywords, before reappearing again for a few more days and then gone again! We have tried everything. Checked Google webmaster - no manual actions, no crawl errors, no messages. The site is being indexed even when it disappears but when it's gone it will not even appear in the search results for our business name. Other internal pages come up instead. We have searched for bad back links. Duplicate content. We put a 301 redirect on the non www. version of the site. We added a H1 tag that was missing. Still after fetching as Google and requesting reindexing we were going through this cycle of disappearing in the rankings (an internal page would actually come in at 6th position as opposed to our home page which had previously spent years in the number 2 spot) and then coming back for a few days. Today I tried fetch and render as Google and was only getting a partial result. It was saying the video that we have embedded on our home page was temporarily unavailable. Could this have been causing the issue? We have removed the video for now and fetched and rendered and returned a complete status. I've now requested reindexing and am crossing everything that this fixes the problem. Do you think this could have been at the root of the problem? If anyone has any other suggestions the address is NSFW https://goo.gl/dwA8YB
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GemmaApril2 -
Redirecting Old Websites to New Websites
Hi Everyone, We are about to take down a number of websites in favour of a new singular B2B hub and would be looking to redirect all of these sites to the new home. For SEO purposes, what would be the best way to do this? Due to the difference in setups and scale of the site, it would be difficult to correctly match up each page to page between the sites for individual 301 redirects. Could someone advise on the best plan of action? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chbiz0 -
Should my website be accessible by IP?
I have been doing some digging in to this today essentially triggered off by looking at the secure certificate on my site and comparing it to others as i have been seeing some security warnings on a random basis. I noticed that on all instances none of the other sites IP addresses re-direct to the website, whereas on my site it does. is re-directing the IP address to the website a big no-no?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WAWKA1 -
How to answer for question "why xyz site is ranking for abc keyword" and not our website
Hi All, This is a layman question but would like to get a concrete answer for. I would like to know how to answer the questions like "Why our competitor is ranking for keyword ABC but not us"? What metrics or data can I showcase that gives logical answer. Please help in this regard. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Avin1230 -
Desktop vs. Mobile Website - ranking impact
Working on develop mobile pages using dynamic serving method, we are planing on only develop number of important pages (not the whole site) to be mobile friendly. To keep the consistency of the user experience, the new mobile site will only have internal links to pages that are mobile friend. Questions: If an existing non-mobile page ranking #1 on mobile SERP today, this page will not have a mobile friendly version, and will not link in the mobilefriendly site. will there be any impact to the ranking. Assuming: When Google mobile/Smartphone bots will not see a link to this page. The page will still accessible to Google desktop bots.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomchu0 -
Website Redirection Issue
Hi All, Like to know is there any better way to do 301 redirection. My Client whose website name is Online Plants created with OpenCart. Over the period of time he added nearly 10,000's of products and now he is cleaning them ( by grouping similar attribute under one products) which is right way to do. For example , Product A with different size ( X,XL,XXL ) previously had 3 product entry ( A - X, A - XL, A - XXL ) , now he is moving all of them under one. So while moving he is deleting the other two entry. Now whats the best way to inform google . Putting a manual 301 redirection for each and every product is impossible as there are more products. Whats the best way to go ahead on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Verve-Innovation1 -
Website keeps dropping in ranking with no visible penalty.
Hi everyone! I would really appreciate your help on this! The website URL is: www.gipsydharma.com It has now been over a year, but we're finding it very difficult to start ranking for any useful keywords. Some keywords like: leather boots / boots for women / handmade clothing at some point went up to page 20, but have now dropped again below page 50. Now, most of our traffic comes from social media so the business is going OK. But the question still remains, what does Google have against the above URL? Its not a super amazing website, but it provides unique and engaging content and has zero spam. I also don't think its over optimized, but I may be wrong on this. Recently, I've also noticed that the Domain Authority has also been going down, it was 46 at some point and now its 40. There's no visible penalty and all the pre-Penguin links (of which there weren't that many, I think) were cleaned up months ago, without Google suggesting that. There are very few keyword rich backlinks and a lot of them come naturally anyways. So again, any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GipsyDharma0