New keyword simply not Ranking
-
Evening all, first post.
I'm currently ranking OK for a broad range of keywords - nothing at number 1 but some are on the first page. However, there is one particular keyword which simply refuses to get indexed. I've witnessed this behaviour before with another site where it appears at SERP 300 or so, then vanishes, comes back at 200 odd and then vanishes. Right now, it's not even ranking in any position. I'm using SERPFox for SERP position on Google.
I've had Moz analyse the content on page and it's getting an A. The article is about 2000 words, with good Title and page description and the keyword is appearing under 1%.
My question is, have you witnessed odd behaviour like this before where other keywords are ranking OK but an odd few don't even get indexed? I have a few links built to the URL and asked Google Webmaster tools to index the URL but still nothing. I have no penalties or anything to worry about.
The only other info I have is that this URL is on a brand-new domain but the previous domain has a 301 redirect with a page authority of 42 and a domain authority of 38 (not too high). And, everything else appears to be running along OK.
The point is, I have no expectations about the keyword ranking in a certain position but find it odd how the keyword keeps popping in and out of Google SERP.
The keyword has a difficulty of: 58%
Any thoughts appreciated. Robert.
-
Hi, I had another thought - the old posts are ranking fine on the new site after the 301 redirect. Some are slightly down but in the main, they are approx the same SERP position.
It's new posts which are having the difficulty. Are new posts on a new domain difficult to rank anywhere even with a 301 redirect passing authority through? The 301 is passing everything through to the new domain.
Getting really frustrated! As I say, I don't have an expectation of search position but this is good content which is being indexed but not being given any SERP position.
-
Thanks for the reply - not really!
The keyword is 2 words and 58% competitiveness according to Moz. Still not ranking at all.
Question I have is regarding the 301 redirect. This is a brand-new post and not a post which is being redirected via the 301. However, I would have assumed that the 301 would be passing domain authority through anyway.
As I said, I have no expectations in terms of SERP position - although I would have expected a top 50. But, the post is simply nowhere within Google at all. Not even appearing in any SERP position. It appeared and then disappeared and not appeared again for the last few days.
The post went live on November 22nd, it's now 12th Dec. I posted the SERPFox pic for anyone to look at. Interestingly, there's another new post which was posted on the 27th November which is doing exactly the same thing.
Everything else is ranking on the new site as it used to on the old site prior to the 301 redirect.
Arrggghhh, Rob.
-
Don't you just love SEO sometimes Robert?!
It is very frustrating when you think you have done everything right, but don't see the results you are expecting. Obviously, I don't know the full details of the keyword and the page you are trying to rank it on, but I don't think I have ever had what you have described having done what you have described.
Recently I have seen some odd bouncing around in SERP rankings, nothing very dramatic but bigger bounces then I would expect and negative ones at that when I would have expected positives. My only thought is I wonder, with the shake up in search by Google and the growing move to semantic search and away from a boolean keyword-based algorithm, whether this is the cause of such volatility of which we can expect to see more.
You mention 'keyword'. I know 'keyword' tends to be synonymous with what is more accurately a keyword phrase, but is the keyword you are trying to rank for just one word or a multi-word phrase? If one word, then I would expect to see a big swing in ranking results because in many/most cases how can you draw a semantic understanding of the searcher's intent through one word. I don't think it's linear, and although this is a generalisation, I think the longer your keyword phrase the less volatility.
I don't think the above is really an answer for you, but I hope it helps maybe in some way.
Peter
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
-
Do Meta Keywords matter?
I am a firm believer in the fundamentals of SEO but is there any data to support its impact positively or negatively towards a sites rank?
Technical SEO | | Brandonp0 -
Not ranking - Scarped content
Hi, I have a problem with a website, that never compe up with before. The website is: https://www.enallaktikidrasi.com It has a bunch of excellent articles, good enough on-page SEO and a medium backlink profile. However, it is ranking just for very very few keywords. The major problem is that there are original articles that searched by their title won't appear in top100 results but they will appear in other websites that scapre them (even if they give a backlink to our original article!) Also, the website has good rankings in Bing and Yahoo but not in Google. There are keywords ranking in #1 in Bing but nowhere in top10 pages in Google.... I am guessing for 3 issues: 1. Majestic shows a very low trust score (just 13). However, the website has not got any kind of penalty in the last 3 years. 2. There are many scarpers. The odd is that scarpers with no real value outrank our content. (Scarpers with almost zero backlink profile) 3. We ran Sucuri on website as there were a large bots attack. Is there a correlation between it bots attack and Google results? (but why not in Bing and Yahoo too?) It seems like Google underestimates the website when indexing websites for some reason. Moreover, some of the articles are really the best around but the keywords they are targeted are not either within the 30 first pages... Any help?? Thanks..
Technical SEO | | alex33andros0 -
Keyword Phrase in URL structure
Wondered the best URL structure, to include a major keyword phrase. Our clients' case is that their domain name is not the main keyword. So should we include the keyword phrase in the URL structure to list all their office locations: A - www.website.com/anxiety-treatment/denver/1001
Technical SEO | | ErnieB
or
B - www.website.com/denver/1001 Would this be considered keyword stuffing? We'd like "A" above to rank for keyword phrases related to "anxiety treatment denver", etc.0 -
How do we maintain keyword rankings when creating a domain?
We are creating a new corporate "marketing site" on Hubspot and connecting our existing product site to that as a sub-domain. Our existing site ranks very well for all of our targeted keywords. The existing product site will now be behind a login, so how do we transfer juice to the new site in Hubspot? Or can we?
Technical SEO | | Reis_Inc.0 -
After fixing duplicate pages problem - keyword rankings have fallen off a cliff!
We have recently signed up to SEOMOZ and found that our site had over 2,500 duplicated pages. We reported it the the web designer and they found links on the website to an old prototype version of the website and so they did a SQL run to get rid of them. Doing this got rid of 90% of them. However, this morning, moz has just done another crawl of our website and our keyword rankings have fallen off a cliff. Particularly, important one that we were at position 1 for. We are now on the fifth page. Can anyone shed any light on it? Will this be temporary? Thanks Stuart
Technical SEO | | Stuart260 -
Brand New Site Penalized?
I recently launched 2 completely separate and unrelated websites at the same time. Both are new domains and hosting accounts. neither have any links. One is ranking for a branded search and the other is not. The interesting thing is that I tested both sites on the back end of my server before launch. The site that is not ranking for branded search IS ranking still on the back end of my site for the branded search. I have removed all content and 301 redirected the testing urls back to my portfolio page. Could this be do to Google indexing one but not the other. Does it have anything to do with testing on my server first and my DA being higher than current new sites? Or is it something completely different I'm missing completely. Is this a Penalty?
Technical SEO | | CDUBP0 -
Importance of keyword in the content to rank well
Well, I am very beginner seo. our website is www.theprinterdepo.com and our main keyword for the moment is refurbished printers, but there might be hundreds of more keywords. I was analyzing the SERPs and found that for our keyword, the first 2 websites that come up have very different content 1.http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=PRN They rank first, but I dont see a lot of text with the keyword in their text or links 2. http://www.valstarprinters.com/ They mention the keywords lots of times in the text, probably they are doing keyword stuffing? So this makes me thing, how the 1st one ranked there? just by link builiding?
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Does a CDN affect search rankings?
I feel kind of stupid asking this, but if i use one it would speed things up quite a bit. It is for a ecommerce website, any guidance on this would be awesome!
Technical SEO | | Hyrule0