Website Ranking Issue

[SEO5Team]

Hey All

My question is specfic to a particular website. The category of the website is Kitchen Appliances. The keyword is extremely competitive. The website I am currently optimizing has loads of products and many pages as well. I am constantly building links from industry specific websites for the website as well as composing articles and leading the users back to the website with keyword rich anchor text. I have been doing this for around 3 months and I do not see the website in the first 30 pages of the SERP (for the keyword kitchen appliances - the site is a page rank 2 BTW). No bugs reported as well in Webmaster tools.

My next step is to add these articles to the website (www.example.com/KitchenAppliances ) with keyword rich metatags as well as content with internal links to my product pages. I also plan on sending traffic to these pages to build the pages link popularity.

Do you think I can expect better results for the article pages than my original website product pages or do you think I should continue with the link building activity I was performing originally for the website.

regards

Ryan

[Sjani11]

Still in 2020, we are facing the same issue. I have a charcoal Grill reviews blog that is facing the ranking issues.

[jaraca]

I learned a lot with these answers. I consider they are very interesting.
Thank you all for the comments.

[Gaveltek-173238]

It would seem everyone has a similar theme... "Keep pushing on" with the tools available to you on the SEOMOZ site you can quantify any data that is returned. That being said, try long tail keywords such as:

kitchen stoves (brand)

Kitchen equipment (brand)

through the use of good titles and descriptions ( non one cares about meta keywords) you will win. Regarding your linkbuilding, you heart is in the right place, but place your inbound links in more natural places like well ranked blogs, or industry specific review sites. Review sites could really lend a hand in getting your keyword issue licked. Remember, seo is a marathon, not a sprint.  Feel free to contact me, I am always happy to offer reports, etc... to those in need. WE are a community that supports our own.

[Gaveltek-173238]

This blog answers that question, barely  http://gaveltek.com/seoblog/seo/ranking-serp’s-finding-me-experiments-explanations-gaveltek-start-adequately-marketing-web-brand/

[KeriMorgret]

Ryan, were any of these answers a "helpful answer" for you? Do you have further questions? How are things now that you've had some more time with this client?

[Marcus_Miller]

Whilst this is one hell of a keyword to go after if you have nothing in the first 300 results then there is a chance that you have some kind of penalty or possibly a filter pushing you down the ranks. If it is an ecommerce store and it is using the standard product descriptions which are on several other sites all your efforts may be wasted.

Here is a few things to try:

1. Take some snippets of text from various pages and google them in double quotes. If you get lots of other pages returned and not yours at all, then you have a major problem. If you are returned but just below some other pages then you are likely filtered to some extent as there is nothing unique there.

2. Google some exact title tags and see what is returned. Again, if you don't come up or you come up below other results that are not crazy relevant then you have a problem.

As ever, it's really hard without seeing a URL and you are going after a really general and popular search term that probably converts quite poorly anyway.

You can test the value of this term for your client with some paid search, get 500 clicks to the homepage which I guess is what you are targeting, see how many conversions you generate from that, if it's low, then you maybe wasting your time as top 10 results may be a long way off so you are picking up scraps.

You are probably better off working around the edges and going after some more specific phrases and concentrating on building some content that is useful to the target audience to bring in links & visitors. Combine that with some other marketing activities (social, email list, offline etc) and you should slowly be able to build and reinvest in the site.

Hope it helps, no easy answers I am afraid!
Marcus

[Getz.pro]

You really took on the big one huh? This would be a good case to use PPC until you build enough authority to rank. Without actually seeing your efforts, you seem to be doing the right things so time against the 700lb websites is what you need. Time to keep doing what you are doing.

Social networking might give you a quick let up if you can generate some buzz on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc. Find creative ways to market in those niches until you can rank better. I just purchased skydiving tickets through Yelp from their email list.

Keep doing what you are doing, and work the other marketing avenues also.

I hope that helped

[EGOL]

"Kitchen Appliances.....  the keyword is extremely competitive.... doing this for around 3 months....  the site is a page rank 2 BTW)... "

This is like attacking the US Navy with a slingshot.

Your competitors, have been out there working (with teams of expert people) for the past ten years and some of them are billion dollar brand names, so it is unlikely that a one-man-band is going to get traction in a couple of months.

I think that you need to ask yourself if you have the resources to compete for fast results in this niche.  I don't think that submitting stuff to article sites is going to be competitive.

Consider making a detailed plan with best-on-the-web content that will enable you to penetrate a specific niche in this broad market.

[BlastAM]

You should also be aware that Google automatically adjusts your search results to your location.  You will see your current location it chose for you (even if you are not logged in) on the left column.  You can easily change your location to other areas to see if your rankings are the same for other areas.  This is extremely useful if your client has a chain of stores in different locations and you want to see the rankings for each city.

[aarondicks]

Continue to push! Link building isn't easy! Vary your linking techniques, and keep monitoring your progress through software, be it a Spreadsheet or Pro SEOmoz!

[aarondicks]

Great suggestion, I do this, but then through Extension Manager enable toe SEOmoz Toolbar for the quick links to OSE and the metrics

[JasonJackson]

@Kacker I LOVE YOU!  you just made my life so much easier

[Sangeeta]

Have you tried adding product videos and building links via those videos. These videos especially if they are done in a fun way are more likely to be shared on the social media. Just be share to get the video tags and description right!

Currently, probably the sites linking back to you are low in value and hence there is no positive movement for the keywords.

[Wayne76]

Hey Ryan... just a quick niblet of advice I wanted to share after reading your post: Don't get too hung up on your or anyone else's PR. It's a much better practice to study the backlinks on any given site. You want to be sure that sites you are approaching for links aren't harboring spammy links, or attracting bad neighborhoods.  Sometimes a site might have a robust PR, but it's link profile is a horror show!

PR can be a bit of a mirage in many instances. So be careful!

[MattBowers]

For the most unbiased results, try opening a "new incognito window" in Chrome. That way you don't actually have to log out. Just click the wrench to see this option.

[NicoleMunoz]

Hi Matthew!

The results will be different when you are logged in as compared to when you are logged out.  When you are logged in, you receive personalized search results based on your search history and who is in your network.

Nicole

[chrisfree]

"Be sure you are logged out of your google account when you do the search."

What's the reason for needing to be logged out?

[znotes]

I would focus on diversifying your linkbuilding. Vary the landing pages, anchor text, and PR of the sites u are requesting links from.

[tomcraig86]

Don't worry about meta tags, they're not used and add clutter to the page code.

Must be an on page SEO issue.... Check on page elements out as your next port of call.

[sly-grrr]

Hi Kawasaki,

When you say you are building links back to the main website, are you pointing these at the main page or are you building keyword rich links to inside product pages? Just a thought, if you're not linking to inside pages it will probably make a difference. Natural website link building structure will not all point to the main page of a site

Do you have any pages on your site linking out? I am not talking about building a links page, however linking out to sites in the category you want to be found in, or to news articles about your particular industry can help the search engines decide where you're relevant. If you're selling kitchen products you probably don't want to link out to your competitor but you could link out to the manufacturer site. Not in excess, up to five links when appropriate from a few of your main pages.

[qlkasdjfw]

Make sure that anchor text with your business name is solid part of your link profile.

[NicoleMunoz]

Run your site in OpenSiteExplorer.com and also run your top 5 competitors.  To find your top 5 competitors, do a search in Google for your main keyword.. the top 5 sites are your top 5 competitors. Be sure you are logged out of your google account when you do the search.

Create an excel file that maps the domain authority, page authority, total links, and links from unique domains.  If your numbers are less than any of your competitors, you have more work to do.

If you lack in domain or page authority, you need more high quality links.

If you lack in number of links from different domains... you need more links from many more sites.

If you lack in total number of links... you just need a whole lot more links.

Once your numbers outrank your competitors in terms of authority and links, if you still don't outrank them, then you need to look at on-site stuff.

This is a ROUGH overview and an easy way for a beginner to start work asap.  What we do is a little more complex but we can save that for another day!

Nicole

[jcolman]

Ryan, also be on the lookout for duplicate content, which is a constant challenge for most e-commerce sites.  This can dilute your rankings and drive you down in the SERPs.  SEOmoz has a great primer on what duplicate content is and what to do about it.

[ninjamarketer]

I heard Rand saying in one of the SEOMoz webinars that they are working on incorporating the SERPS analysis report on the web app. Unfortunately at this time it is a manual process but well worth. We spent nearly 4 hours per keywords in order to just populate date and run analysis but we were able to improve rankings on some highly ocmpetitive keywords based on this analysis.

[SEO5Team]

Hello Sameer

Is there an automatic way for me to pull the reports related to a keyword of my choice or were those reports created manually ?

[SEO5Team]

Thanks a lot Sameer. Appreciate it

[ninjamarketer]

Hey Vineesh,

I would suggest you should perform SERP analysis (http://seomoz.box.net/shared/g3vz0kxbbp) on the top 10 listings for your target keywords. It is quite possible that backlinks is not the only key issue here. There could be several reasons why your website is not ranking and some of these are

1. Authority of the domain

2. Authority of the pages your are trying to rank

3. Total number of backinks

4. Quality of the backlinks

5. Social syndication by users (mainly Twitter / Fb)

6. On page optimization

Identify the pattern using the statistical calculation mentioned in above linked excel file and focus on the gap.

Thanks

Sameer