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.
Website stuck on the second page
-
Hi there
Can you please help me. I did some link building and worked with website last couple of months and rank got better but all keywords are on the second page, some of them are 11th and 12th.
Is there anything I did wrong and google dont allow the website on the first page? Or should I just go on.
It just looks strange keywords are on the second page for 2 weeks and not going to the first page for any single day. The website is quite old, around 10 years.
Anyone knows what it is or where I can read about it?
-
How's your internal linking structure?
Do a site: domain.com check to see how Google perceives your internal linking. Are your relevant pages on the first page of your site search? If not, you may have an internal linking problem.
To check this I used a web based program to find all the outbound internal links of each page on my website (only 200 pages). I then transferred this data into Excel where I sorted it by page. From here I was able to see that my most important pages had 20 less links than the unimportant pages in front of it. I then went through my website adding additional links to my important pages, using the same keywords I was trying to rank them for, until they had the most internal links pointing at them.
Internal linking is typically a problem with websites that didn't plan ahead for SEO.
-
You must look at ranking in the SERP's as a popularity contest, so-to-speak. Backlinks by way of websites and social mediums are votes and can/will determine your placement in the search results.
Your chosen keywords/phrases might be extremely competitive, as well. When starting out with a site, it's best to select some niche, lower volume keywords, which are often more long-tail than the aggresive, highly-competitive 1-3 word keyphrases. Trust me, going for the gusto right off the bat will only leave you more and more frustrated as the years go on. You can always adjust your keywords down the road once you've established a good roll of backlinks and visitors to continue being more competitive.
And as I mentioned in an earlier post today, don't just focus on Google. There are other search engines out there as well, and you'd be making a large mistake in focusing solely on Google for SERP's as Bing/Yahoo holds a decent market share, too.
Keep trucking. SEO is an art-form. It's not something just anybody can do on a whim and expect to get to #1 overnight. It might be wise to invest in an SEO team to help get you pointed in the right direction.
- Marc
-
Hi Albere
It sounds like you've done some good work to progress as far as you have. I'd suggest to keep going and not give up, if what you've been doing has worked then keep doing more of it.
I've seen on many an occasion that it does take time and perseverance to jump from the second page to the first.
Try performing a competitor link analysis if you haven't already, look for any linking opportunities. See if you can improve the anchor text of any existing inbound links that you have.
Check your on-page and on-site attributes with the SEOmoz toolset. Ensure those keywords that you are targeting and included in your Meta Title, Description, H1 tag and throughout your page content (without over-doing it, everything in moderation).
Have a read of "A New Way of Looking at Ranking Factors" and check out the periodic table of ranking factors within it.
Keep producing fresh, relevant, interesting valuable content and share it socially across the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Do some online PR and share your content, this helps with acquiring new natural links.
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
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
-
Page rank and menus
Hi, My client has a large website and has a navigation with main categories. However, they also have a hamburger type navigation in the top right. If you click it it opens to a massive menu with every category and page visible. Do you know if having a navigation like this bleeds page rank? So if all deep pages are visible from the hamburger navigation this means that page rank is not being conserved to the main categories. If you click a main category in the main navigation (not the hamburger) you can see the sub pages. I think this is the right structure but the client has installed this huge menu to make it easier for people to see what there is. From a technical SEO is this not bad?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AL123al0 -
Should we 301 redirect old events pages on a website?
We have a client that has an events category section that is filled to the brim with past events webpages. Another issue is that these old events webpages all contain duplicate meta description tags, so we are concerned that Google might be penalizing our client's website for this issue. Our client does not want to create specialized meta description tags for these old events pages. Would it be a good idea to 301 redirect these old events landing pages to the main events category page to pass off link equity & remove the duplicate meta description tag issue? This seems drastic (we even noticed that searchmarketingexpo.com is keeping their old events pages). However it seems like these old events webpages offer little value to our website visitors. Any feedback would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Different Header on Home Page vs Sub pages
Hello, I am an SEO/PPC manager for a company that does a medical detox. You can see the site in question here: http://opiates.com. My question is, I've never heard of it specifically being a problem to have a different header on the home page of the site than on the subpages, but I rarely see it either. Most sites, if i'm not mistaken, use a consistent header across most of the site. However, a person i'm working for now said that she has had other SEO's look at the site (above) and they always say that it is a big SEO problem to have a different header on the homepage than on the subpages. Any thoughts on this subject? I've never heard of this before. Thanks, Jesse
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Waismann0 -
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 -
Does an H1 have to be at the top of a page?
Because H1 "may" carry some weight with Google does it have to be placed at the top of the page? Can I place it towards the bottom of the page instead in normal body size? My goal is to keep the main keywords in the H1 but create a much friendlier title for the customer to read at the top of the page.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PottyScotty0 -
Was moving up in SERPS then Got Stuck on Page 2
Hi, I was continuously acquiring quality back-links and my site was moving up in Google SERPS for 3 main keywords. Within a few weeks i was on Page 2 and 3 for these three keywords, but after reaching there I got stuck on these pages and positions despite no change in link building strategy / pattern. I have even increased the number and quality of links that I acquire per day, but I am still stuck at exact same positions. The website is10 months old and related to a software niche. I update this website once a week. For one keyword I am stuck at position 1 of page two (you can well imagine the frustration..!!). My question is that what do I need to do to get out of this "SERP lock"?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RightDirection0 -
301 - should I redirect entire domain or page for page?
Hi, We recently enabled a 301 on our domain from our old website to our new website. On the advice of fellow mozzer's we copied the old site exactly to the new domain, then did the 301 so that the sites are identical. Question is, should we be doing the 301 as a whole domain redirect, i.e. www.oldsite.com is now > www.newsite.com, or individually setting each page, i.e. www.oldsite.com/page1 is now www.newsite.com/page1 etc for each page in our site? Remembering that both old and new sites (for now) are identical copies. Also we set the 301 about 5 days ago and have verified its working but haven't seen a single change in rank either from the old site or new - is this because Google hasn't likely re-indexed yet? Thanks, Anthony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi0 -
Should the sitemap include just menu pages or all pages site wide?
I have a Drupal site that utilizes Solr, with 10 menu pages and about 4,000 pages of content. Redoing a few things and we'll need to revamp the sitemap. Typically I'd jam all pages into a single sitemap and that's it, but post-Panda, should I do anything different?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EricPacifico0