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 some help understanding SEO - Please help before I lose [pull out] all my hair
-
I'm new to SEO, and am stubbornly trying to educate myself. I have a telescope shop in Canada, it's a small business that we run on the side. We're driving lots of traffic through FB and our outreach programs but I really want to increase our presence on search. We released a new website back in January and it killed some of our rankings. We're working our way back with a very specific set of efforts on regular SEO:
- Metadata and titles, although it seems that's not super relevant
- Building high quality backlinks and eliminating any spammy backlinks
- Rewriting product listings so that they are original content though I'm not sure how important this is in e-commerce
- Writing high quality articles and blog posts
- Working relevant keywords into our product pages and titles
I understand that good SEO is about pushing on all the levers, and trying to make sure that your site is as valuable to the end user as possible. We're making some good progress, but I'm puzzled by the #1 shop in Canada. They don't put any apparent effort into SEO and they still rank #1 on every key product we compete with them on. I've worked with two separate, highly ranked and regarded SEO firms on this and neither has been able to tell my why this other site ranks so highly. Here's a specific example on a popular product that we both sell, the Celestron NexStar 8SE.
Here’s the link to Telescope Canada’s page for their Celestron 8SE:
https://telescopescanada.ca/products/celestron-nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope-11069
Here’s a link to the Celestron 8SE page from the manufacturer website:
https://www.celestron.com/products/nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope
Telescopes Canada has just copied and pasted. There is no original content aside from adding the shipping and return policy to the tab, and having some options for selecting accessories on the page.
Here is our page:
https://all-startelescope.com/products/celestron-nexstar-8se
We have higher page authority, higher domain authority, and they keyword analyzer in moz says that our page is higher quality than the Telescopes Canada page. I can’t find a single metric on any tool (ubbersuggest, Moz, ahrefs, semrush) that says Telescopes Canada is a better site, or has a better NexStar 8SE product page.
But they keep ranking ahead of us, and right at the top of google search. Our titles are good, our metadata is good (but I don’t think that’s been a serious ranking factor for about ten years). Our text is original, it’s relevant, we have healthy internal links to the page. According to Moz's page ranker it's 20 points higher than Telescope Canada's page. We have invensted in some excellent blog content, we’re adding new products to the website so that we rank for more keywords. All of those things are helping, but I fundamentally don’t understand why Telescopes Canada is #1 almost across the board on every key product in our market. There is something that I’m not seeing here.
Can you see any metric, any tool in your toolbox that indicates why they rank at the top, or even higher than we do for in these search terms specific to that product:
Celestron NexStar 8SE
NexStar 8SE
Celestron NexStar 8SE Canada
NexStar 8SE CanadaI have a feeling it's something technical that I'm missing, but I'm not sure how obvious it is with two 'professional' firms not finding it. I'd really appreciate any help or insight that you can offer.
-
If you need someone to help understand SEO, an SEO agency can help you. Go to find the best expert for SEO.
-
@rohael I wouldn't say hosting is a major factor for SEO, especially when your website loads quickly. If you wish, we can arrange SEO for your website. Email me - itwelding.bok@gmail.com
-
@nkennett said in Need some help understanding SEO - Please help before I lose [pull out] all my hair:
i took a quick look. Their content is more in-depth than yours. They are getting ranked for 3740 keywords where you are at 2100. Thats a major difference. let me know this helps.
-
@flineo Hello, im relatively new to SEO, wouldn't call myself a beginner but Im stuck on the second page of google for my keyword- restaurant marketing agency Dubai www.upscalemedia.ae
Can you give me some tips on how I can possibly take it to the first page. I heard hosting on a private server may help, what do you suggest?
-
@nkennett I can understand you very well. But take into account that new website usually can take 6 months or longer (depends on the competition) to generate significant increase in traffic. I needed 6-8 months for my homepage until the first top 10 rankings were tracked. SEO Is investment. Rankings are not coming in a few days or weeks. It needs time and during this time you put much effort into this project and never give up.
-
You said you started a new website in January, in the past you were ranking higher? Have you made redirections to new URL addresses?
I would recommend to check issues in Google Search Console, and take a look for internal linking from your posts. Creating cornerstone pages is now a significant ranking factor for SEO. Anyway, try to get at least one backlink with anchor of your keyword.
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 Boost Your WordPress Website Speed to 95+ (Without Premium Plugins)
I'm reaching out for some advice on improving my WordPress website's speed. I'm currently using a free theme for this fusion magazine and aiming for a score of 95+ on Google PageSpeed Insights. I'm aware that premium plugins can significantly enhance performance, but I'm hoping to achieve similar results using primarily free solutions and manual optimizations.
Technical SEO | | mohammadrehanseo0 -
Unsolved Question about a Screaming Frog crawling issue
Hello, I have a very peculiar question about an issue I'm having when working on a website. It's a WordPress site and I'm using a generic plug in for title and meta updates. When I go to crawl the site through screaming frog, however, there seems to be a hard coded title tag that I can't find anywhere and the plug in updates don't get crawled. If anyone has any suggestions, thatd be great. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | KyleSennikoff0 -
How to index e-commerce marketplace product pages
Hello! We are an online marketplace that submitted our sitemap through Google Search Console 2 weeks ago. Although the sitemap has been submitted successfully, out of ~10000 links (we have ~10000 product pages), we only have 25 that have been indexed. I've attached images of the reasons given for not indexing the platform. gsc-dashboard-1 gsc-dashboard-2 How would we go about fixing this?
Technical SEO | | fbcosta0 -
How important is the optional <priority>tag in an XML sitemap of your website? Can this help search engines understand the hierarchy of a website?</priority>
Can the <priority>tag be used to tell search engines the hierarchy of a site or should it be used to let search engines know which priority to we want pages to be indexed in?</priority>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mycity4kids0 -
Domain Alias SEO
We have 5 domain alias of our existing sites
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unibiz
All 5 domain alias are domain alias of our main site. It means, all domain alias will have exactly same site and contents
Like Main domain: www.mywebsite.com
DomainAlias: www.myproduct.com, www.myproduct2.com, www.myproduc3.com
And if anybody will open our site www.myproduct.com, it will open same website which I have in primary site what can i do to rank all website without any penalty....i s there any way? This is domain alias of in hosting industry Thanks0 -
What should I cover in a SEO proposal ?
What should I cover in a SEO proposal? Is there any sample SEO Proposal template in SEOMoz?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kashyaplakkad1 -
SEO from Godaddy How Good is it?
http://www.godaddy.com/search-engine/seo-services.aspx?ci=44163 it said "Includes Standard Search Engine Visibility to Improve Search Rankings" it begs for question... Search Engine Visibility??? Improve SERP?!?!!? is it really that good? O.o; or have i successfully been eaten my promotional messages? Can anyone with experience with them share some information with me ? 🙂 (The price tag is mighty interesting)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IKT0