Top 10 keywords is still going strong but the rest just got smashed!
-
Hi SEOMOZ and it's USERs,
Been trying to find my answer online but now after three weeks of reading blogposts I'm going to try this.
My website was ranking really good on 10 important keywords but not so good on the long tail, between 11 - 50 on maybe 30 different other, not so important keywords.
So I began doing some work (I'm a newbie) but this is what I did:
1. Changed top navigation structure to get 4 other pages (w/ keywords as links) in it. (used a dropdown)
2. Wrote plenty of text that was a good fit for the page. (The text is OK and not to spammy looking.)
3. Added three links from high quality sites with keywords as links to these pages. I added them from my own site that is on the same server, same IP. I know, not looking so good.
4. Changed URL structure on a couple of pages to get a keyword in it. (did a correct 301)
5. Changed to better Titles and headings on the page. Keywords in them both but not the same.The result:
1. My 10 most important keywords I began ranking even better. I rank no. 1 on 9 out of 10.
2. Almost all the other pages went from ranking ~ 15 - 50 to not > 50.It has now been 4 weeks since I did most of the changes and 3 weeks since all the pages was hit > 50.
So now I'm thinking about what to do?
1. Should I clean up my text, titles so they don't look to over optimized?
2. Should I remove my links from my own pages? (my link profile in general is actually pretty good.)
3. or should I just wait? Because changing more will just indicate to Google that somehing fishy is going on ?In the beginning I hoped that Google killed my rankings just because of the big changes. But now after 3 weeks I'm more sceptical and thinks I've been hit by a over-optimizing filter.
According to webmaster tools I've not been hit by a manually penalty.
Please, help me. I would really appreciate all ideas from people here with more experience.
-
So it sounds to me that you really just need to focus on the SEO basics, don't do things that you know you're not supposed to do just to try to speed things up (like building a bad link profile) and focus on understanding who your audience is so you can create content that's better than "not too spammy". Remember, doing SEO stuff without a high regard to its correctness or its adherence to Google's webmaster guidelines gets a lot of newbies in trouble.
-
ok. Thanks for clarifying.
Of my top 10 important keywords that I rank no. 1, 7 of them are to my home page and 3 to other pages on my site.
-
By the second point, I meant: is it only your home page that ranks well (for all of those 10 high-ranking terms), or are any of your internal pages also ranking well?
-
Hi Chris,
Thanks for taking the time to get back.-
The pages were a couple of years old. But because of no On-page optimization they weren't ranking as good as I wanted them too.
If I look at my competitors, the top 10 pages are much worse in quality then mine. (Ok, I'm not unbiased ) -
Not sure if I understand this question. The important keywords that I rank really on are mostly ranking my homepage/front-page. But there are a few sub-pages that are ranking well on a couple of important keywords too.
-
According to SEOMOZ Keyword difficulty tool they are all about the same in difficulty. Between 30 - 40 %.
-
-
Eskil,
A couple of things I didn't get from your question that could help in providing an answer:
- How old were the pages that were not ranking as high as you think they should when you made the changes you described in your question?
- Are the keywords that are ranking well on pages besides the homepage?
- How competitive are the terms you are ranking well for and how competitive are the ones you are not ranking well for?
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
-
Backlinks that go to a redirected URL
Hey guys, just wondering, my client has 3 websites, 2 of 3 will be closed down and the domains will be permanently redirected to the 1 primary domain - however they have some high quality backlinks pointing the domains that will be redirected. How does this effective SEO? Domain One (primary - getting redesign and rebuilt) - not many backlinks
Technical SEO | | thinkLukeSEO
Domain Two (will redirect to Domain One) - has quality backlinks
Domain Three (will redirect to Domain One) - has quality backlinks When the new website is launched on Domain One I will contact the backlink providers and request they update their URL - i assume that would be the best.0 -
Is "commented out" text still read by the SEs?
A site I reviewed was showing up in Google rankings for key phrases specific to a city, however the page that was showing up had the 'city' key phrases commented out. Does Google still read and utilized commented out text? Or is it more likely that the page in question got indexed before the key phrases were commented out and it's just still appearing for the related search queries?
Technical SEO | | MLTGroup1 -
Wordpress: Tags generate duplicate Content - just delete the tags!?
Asking people, they say tags are bad and spamy and as I can see they generate all my duplicate page content issues. So the big question is, why Google very often prefers to show in SERPS these Tag-URLS... so it can't be too bad! :)))? Then after some research I found the "Term Optimizer" on Yoast.com ... that should help exactly with this problem but it seems not to be available anymore? So may be there another plugin that can help... or just delete all tags from my blog? and install permanent redirects?
Technical SEO | | inlinear
Is this the solution?0 -
Keyword not showing
Hi, we are trying to rank this keyword "Human Resource Books" for Silvercreek.ca for a long time. But somehow, the keyword is not ranked by google at all. Is there a reason why Google is denying our site? What did we do wrong? Can anyone help to see what wrong with tis siet www.silvercreekpress.ca? thanks
Technical SEO | | solution.advisor0 -
Why my ranking on google just disappeared
I have my website ranked on page one probably in top 6, but all of a sudden around 3-4 months before my website just disappeared for that keyword. Any suggestions? Keyword: Brass rod, brass rods webpage url: www.jayjalaramext.com/brass-rods/ and the website itself www.jayjalaramext.com Is it over optimized? or optimized more often which lead to bad history? or any panda or penguing effect ? Waiting for the suggestions.
Technical SEO | | HirenKhambhayta0 -
Will SEO Moz index our keywords if the site is ALL https?
We have a site coming into beta next week. Playing around with SEO Moz, I had trouble getting the keywords to rank at all. Was this because the site is entirely https? If yes, what else can SEO Moz NOT do if the site is all https? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | OTSEO0 -
Title tag keyword prioritizing
It's widely accepted that in title tags, the first word ranks the highest, and each word after that contributes less than the one before. So a page with the title "Philadelphia Parks" will rank higher than "Parks in Philadelphia" for Philadelphia, but the second page will rank higher for Parks. With this in mind, which keywords should I put first in the title tags of my product pages? Brand name? Product SKU? Is it better to prioritze general words with higher search volume (more impressions) or more specific terms with lower search volume (stronger long tail)? Any guidance would be appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | AmericanOutlets0 -
Keyword Difficulty Tool
Hi Mozzers! Randfishkin just posted yesterday a very nice important and helpfull post, about keyword difficulty. I will be happy, if you can write here the metrics from reports of keyword difficulty, to know more about position of our website on SERP, and to know more what to engage if someone is ranking higher than me, with same metrics of the report of keyword difficulty. It would be very nice, if we talk on this topic here about keyword difficulty how to's. Thanks
Technical SEO | | leadsprofi0