Why some websites can rank the keywords they don't have in the page?
-
Hello guys,
Yesterday, I used SEMrush to search for the keyword "branding agency" to see the SERP. The Liquidagency ranks 5th on the first page. So I went to their homepage but saw no exact keywords "branding agency", even in the page source. Also, I didn't see "branding agency" as a top anchor text in the external links to the page (from the report of SEMrush).
I am an SEO newbie, can someone explain this to me, please? Thank you.
-
Also who is the guy lol name them if you suspect wrongdoing or unethical behaviors! I know of at least one page 1 ranking site around my locality that ended up converting a student organization domain with a lot of .edu backlinks and then just ran with it for seo and represented itself in multiple irrelevant and across the country large cities.
They even blatantly dared to SELL backlinks on their site... in broad daylight! in 2016! Needless to say I reported them to Google and saw them get kicked down a notch to page 2 for my test keywords from earlier searches.
-
Thank you!
-
Could be a lot of factors at play here such as the age of the domain, the inbound links it receives etc.
Check the Moz stats for it - page authority, domain authority etc.
-
Thank you, Sean. That is really helpful.
But why this guy ranks better than his competitors even though competitors are targeting exact keyword "branding agency". What are the reasons behind it?
Thank you,
Raymond
-
Hi there,
Historically in SEO, search engines used to use the 'exact match' text of a page (be that in the page title, URL, page copy, H1 etc.) to inform the term to rank the page for.
Nowadays, Google is a lot more understanding of related terms and synonyms since the 'Hummingbird' update. For example, if I optimised my entire site for 'advertising agency', there's a good chance that Google will understand that 'branding' is likely to come under my field of expertise and rank me for searches such as 'branding agency' or similar.
Their optimisation for the term 'branding agency' might not just be down to the homepage - the likelihood is that they have a page on the site explaining their branding services which helps the overall domain rank for that kind of term.
I hope this helps,
Sean
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
-
Should I apply Canonical Links from my Landing Pages to Core Website Pages?
I am working on an SEO project for the website: https://wave.com.au/ There are some core website pages, which we want to target for organic traffic, like this one: https://wave.com.au/doctors/medical-specialties/anaesthetist-jobs/ Then we have basically have another version that is set up as a landing page and used for CPC campaigns. https://wave.com.au/anaesthetists/ Essentially, my question is should I apply canonical links from the landing page versions to the core website pages (especially if I know they are only utilising them for CPC campaigns) so as to push link equity/juice across? Here is the GA data from January 1 - April 30, 2019 (Behavior > Site Content > All Pages😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wavelength_International0 -
Does you page need to be unique to rank
What I mean by unique is : Let's imagine I want to rank one "seo ranking factors." In order to compete do I need to have (in terms of design) that is totally different than everything out there or can I rank with a page that is presented in a very similar way than everything out there but with different content. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
SEO - Use pages on main site or set up outside keyword rich domains and websites
I have a client who is wanting to target searches for competitors products. His idea was to purchase domains related to the searches he's targeting (for example, people looking for another company's app) and to build out one page websites addressing the search query and why a customer would choose his app solution over a competitor. I know he'd have to build a handful of links to each site for any chance of success but I wanted to ask the following.. Would doing this be better than just building pages addressing the searches on his main website domain? Is there an SEO risk to doing this? Potential for a penalty? Anything we need to do to structure these in a way that won't violate Google's SEO guidelines? Any other thoughts on pros and cons of each strategy? Thank you! Ricky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Moz page optimization score issue, have a score of 95, but can get to 99 if I ad my keyword basically twice in the url.
Hello, I have a keyword for lack of providing too much info we will say my keyword is laptop-bags. Now we have a /laptop-bags/ page and inside that page **/laptop-bags/leather-shoulder/ ** We got a score of 95 for that page. Now I got a score of 99 when I changed it to **/laptop-bags/leather-shoulder-laptop-bags/ ** The way Bigcommerce handles is it will use the product category title in the url, page title and site links, to me it feels like it's spammy, as well as on my /laptop-bags/ page, I now have 18 keywords of " laptop bags " on that page when before it was 12, since I added laptop-bags to all 6 categories inside the laptop-bags page. How would you handle this, use the /keyword/ then /longtail-keyword/ in full or would using /laptop-bag/leather-shoulder/ still rank for leather shoulder laptop bags? I've asked this before and was told to use whatever sounded better to the user, but now moz is telling me different.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Pull meta descriptions from a website that isn't live anymore
Hi all, we moved a website over to Wordpress 2 months ago. It was using .cfm before, so all of the URLs have changed. We implemented 301 redirects for each page, but we weren't able to copy over any of the meta descriptions. We have an export file which has all of the old web pages. Is there a tool that would allow us to upload the old pages and extract the meta descriptions so that we can get them onto the new website? We use the Yoast SEO plugin which has a bulk meta descriptions editor, so I'm assuming that the easiest/most effective way would be to find a tool that generates some sort of .csv or excel file that we can just copy and paste? Any feedback/suggestions would be awesome, thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | georgetsn0 -
My Website Has a Google Penalty, But I Can't Disavow Links
I have a client who has definitely been penalized, rankings dropped for all keywords and hundreds of malicious backlinks when checked with WebMeUp....However, when I run the backlink portfolio on Moz, or any other tool, they don't appear anyone, and all the links are dead when I click on the actual URL. That being said, I can't disavow links that don't exist, and they don't show up in Webmaster Tools, but I KNOW this site has been penalized. Also- I noticed this today (attached). Any suggestions? I've never come across this issue before. xT6JNJC.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 01023450 -
Web developer won't 301 redirect to my new website....what can I do?
I want to come away from our third party web developer and use a new website with different web developers, however the web developer wont 301 redirect the old url's to the new ones. Is he required to do this by law? Is there away of doing the 301 redirects without him? Any advice would be much appreciated. Many thanks,Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CoGri0 -
What keywords should my main page contain ?
Hello. I have a domain with scripts and components for websites, each product page is somehow different and contains different phrases and keywords, for example: a) Flash Photo Gallery
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adrianTNT
b) JavaScript Menu
c) Flash Menu
d) PHP Rating Script
e) PHP Poll script It's kind of clear for me how to optimize keywords on these pages individually, but what would be best content / terms / keywords to use on my main page and main page title and anchor text to my root domain? Should it be a mix of all these keywords mentioned above ? Or is it better to be a general term like "website scripts" ?0