Why my site doesn't come on top even though search terms are very similar or exact?

[cricmax]

For example, when I search in google for "Kookaburra Pro 600 wheelie kit bag", my site comes 9th on 1st page but 3rd link doesn't even match the exact key word rather it has few of the words.

Can one of you expert please explain how it works?

Thanks,

CricMax

[VentaMarketing]

Amar,

If you do not have full control over your URL structure, I would not recommend making the change you mention above.

Changing your website's permalink structure is a monotonous task that requires a good bit of expertise. You will need to implement old page to new page 301 redirects for every URL your change. I would only trust this task to an SEO professional that fully understands website architecture and 301 redirects.

My biggest advice to you is to start building quality links to your website. That is what will generate higher rankings.

[cricmax]

Max,

Thanks for answering all my questions and they were very helpful as you explained it in plain English.

We have the following URL structure and we are trying to re-structure it

http://www.cricmax.com/p/6552/kookaburra-kahuna-chaos-cricket-bat

I know in your 1st post you had mentioned to remove /p/6552 and we looked into it but we can not remove it because it's system generated unique ID. However, we can tweak it to following:

http://www.cricmax.com/kookaburra-kahuna-chaos-cricket-bat-6552 - is this a good idea? does this affect the way google see our product page?

Please advise

Thanks,

www.cricmax.com

[VentaMarketing]

Amar,

I would not "stuff" keywords in your URL, so the second example would be the better of those two. It is great to have keywords in your URL's, but your also want to keep them simple, concise, and with a solid navigational structure.

Also, if you do start changing your URL's, be sure to set up 301 redirects for all of the old pages, so you do not lose any traffic or link juice.

The "meta description" does not affect rankings. It's best use is to entice people to click on your page in the search results.

opensiteexplorer.org is a great tool for checking out your competition's backlink profile.

[cricmax]

Max,

Thank you for all your help and great answers. I have couple more

1. Can you please tell me which one is better?

www.cricmax.com/cricket-bat/kookaburra-cricket-bat/kookaburra-kahuna-cricket-bat/kookaburra-kahuna-1000-cricket-bat.html

OR

www.cricmax.com/kookaburra-cricket-bat/kookaburra-kahuna-1000-cricket-bat.html

What are the advantage of having 1st one over 2nd one or vice versa?

2. is it good to have keywords similar to product name in description field?  Does that help to bring the site up in ranking?

3. How do I see where my competitors are linking? e.g. www.cricketstoreonline.com vs www.cricmax.com

Please advise

Thanks,

www.cricmax.com

[VentaMarketing]

I would recommend sharing via Social Media, regardless of SEO, because it will help build your brand awareness. There is a debate right now of whether or not Google uses Social signals to determine rankings. Even if they don't right now, I would recommend building up your Social Media outlets now, so you will reap the benefits if/when search engines decide to include Social signals in their ranking algorithm. Regarding blog posting and commenting, I would only use blog commenting as a way to add valuable insight to a post and to establish a relationship with the writer, not as a means to aquire a link. That is spammy and blog comment links are normally tagged as nofollow. I would focus on guest blog posting. That is where you will receive valuable links that will help you rank.

[VentaMarketing]

I would recommend sharing via Social Media, regardless of SEO, because it will help build your brand awareness. There is a debate right now of whether or not Google uses Social signals to determine rankings. Even if they don't right now, I would recommend building up your Social Media outlets now, so you will reap the benefits if/when search engines decide to include Social signals in their ranking algorithm. Regarding blog posting and commenting, I would only use blog commenting as a way to add valuable insight to a post and to establish a relationship with the writer, not as a means to aquire a link. That is spammy and blog comment links are normally tagged as nofollow. I would focus on guest blog posting. That is where you will receive valuable links that will help you rank.

[cricmax]

Max,

Does it help to share link of a specific product from our website to facebook and Google Plus?

I will start posting and commenting on blogs and share my domain.

Thanks,

Cricmax

[VentaMarketing]

Amar,

The quantity of unique links does matter, the more you have the higher your domain and page authority will be, but you should always focus on quality over quantity. One quality link can be worth more than 100 spammy links.

Regarding videos, I would not rely solely on your video channels for the links. A link from youtube.com will be marked as "nofollow" which mean the link exists, but it will pass not pass any SEO juice to your website (meaning it will not increase your domain and page authority). I looked like dailymotion.com, and it does not add a "nofollow" tag to their links. The only problem with that link is it will be coming from your profile page, which will have a starting page authority of 1 (unless you build liks to it).

However, videos can be a great way to generate links from other websites. Take the same strategy I mentioned earlier and apply it to your videos. And of course, always require a link when someone uses your video.

[cricmax]

Max,

What about having youtube and dailymotion product videos? Does that help? We can put our web adress in description field.

Also, does quantity of unique link matters?

Thanks,

Cricmax

[VentaMarketing]

Amar,

Your domain and page authority are basically like a grade for your backlink profile, and the only way to increase your grade is to generate quality links to your website.

Here is a good article that has many specific ways to build links: http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml

Also, I would recommend finding websites that you think your customers visit. Since you are an expert in the products your sell, create content that reviews a product, compares products that you sell, or something along those lines. Once you create this content, reach out to the websites that you think your customers visit. Promote your content to the people who own or manage the website/blog. Call them first, then email (in my experience phone calls have a higher success rate than emails). Explain how adding your content to their website/blog would add value because their readers would be interested in it. And of course, in your content always include a link to your website (either in your bio or in the actual content). Lastly, when you do manage to get a link from a good website, keep that relationship with the person who gave you the link. It is a lot easier to get a link from someone you have a relationship with than from someone you don't.

I hope this helps and answers your question.

[cricmax]

Max,

What is the best way to increase page and domain authority?

Also, how to build quality links and best way?

[VentaMarketing]

Hello Amar,

I took a look at the search results for "Kookaburra Pro 600 wheelie kit bag."

cricketbestbuy.com is the 3rd results that I think you are referring to in your question, and I assume your website is cricmax.com

Here are some reason their page  is ranking higher than yours.

First, cricketbestbuy.com's domain authority is 23 vs 20 (yours). Their page authority is 16 vs 1 (yours). Domain and page authority are based off of your website and page's backlink profile. Links are the most important factor when Google determines rankings. To increase this you need to get quality websites to link to your website and this specific page.

Second, your title tag is better for this search query, since you have the "600" model vs their "300" model, but it is not an exact match. If you remove "B/L/S" from the title tag, it would be an exact match, which will serve you better. I would follow this same rule for the h1 tag, especially if the "B/L/S" is not 100% necessary for identifying the product (you can always add that in the description).

If possible, I would look into changing your permalink structure. Something like "cricmax.com/products/kookaburra/kookaburra-pro-600-wheelie-kit-bag" would be better than "cricmax.com/p/6616/kookaburra-pro-600-wheelie-bls-kit-bag"

To sum it up, the main factor that is causing cricketbestbuy.com's page to rank higher than yours is its domain and page authority, which can be solved with a few great links.

Good Luck.

[cogbox]

This question, "why doesn't my site come out on top", is pretty much the topic of all of SEOmoz. So, there are many factors to consider beyond just the title tag.

But, looking at that SERP, I can see that the one listing in the top 10 that has the fewest keywords in the title, DOES have the first word of your query, "kookaburra" , as it's domain name, which would help.

Also, that domain (www.kookaburra.biz) has the most domain authority. It is by far the strongest in terms of inbound links and followed linking root URLs.

Compare link metrics from those other sites to your site, and you'll see some significant differences:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=cricmax.com

If you want to learn more, the beginners guide here on SEOmoz would be a good place to start: 
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

With particular attention to Chapter 7:
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links

Thanks,
Chris

[AlanBleiweiss]

1. SEO is a complex set of multiple algorithms that cumulatively intend to find the content on the vast web that their automated formula based system "thinks" most reflects the intent of the person performing the search, regardless of whether the phrase typed in is an exact match or not.

2. When I copied and pasted the phrase you refer to into Google (without quotes) yes, I see your site in the 9th position.  However when I put "quotes" around it, for a true "exact match", THIS page on SEOMoz is the only one that comes up because the phrase you are asking about is NOT an exact match to your own site's page that shows up.  Because of that, Google can't show your page first, since no pages (other than this one) use that exact phrase, thus triggering #1. above.

3. Even with all of that being said, hundreds of factors can cause a site to show up higher even if your site does have an exact match, but where your site might be weak from an SEO perspective for other reasons beyond phrase matching.  (See item #1 above once again for the complexity factor).