Optimized Page Not Ranking for Head Term
-
We have a primary donation page that we've tried to position well for the term 'Donate' and some of its longer-tailed derivatives.
The page has plenty of high-quality backlinks and internal links, and hasn't had any manual actions taken against it. The backlink profile is fairly good from what I can tell, definitely not mainly spam.
The issue is that it doesn't rank for 'Donate', at all really. For 'Donate Online' and 'Donate Canada', it ranks roughly #3-4 across major Canadian cities, but we're not even in the top 100 for 'Donate'. There are pages and domains that are way less optimized, with much weaker backlink profiles, that are ranking well ahead of us. It's not a noindex or robots problem, as the page ranks fine for many other terms. We also have a strong domain with around 660k backlinks according to MajesticSEO.
Here's the URL in question: http://www.redcross.ca/donate
I'm hoping someone can help us diagnose what could be going wrong with this term specifically and how we can get this page into the SERPs where it belongs. Any suggestions are welcome.
Thanks in advance!
-
You're probably not using google.ca. It ranks slightly lower on google.com.
-
Hi Keri,
See my response to Andy below. I agree that the keyword isn't essential, and not even that great, I'm just more curious as to why; actually ranking it for the term isn't as critical as my initial question made it sound
-
Hi Andy,
I fully agree with both of you. I should've prefaced the question by saying that this isn't a big issue on my end, just something I found very strange. Still hoping to diagnose it, just so I know how to deal with the problem if it comes up down the road with a more relevant intent-heavy keyword. Sounds like the consensus might be 'it's just too broad.'
-
Hi Josh,
Keri has asked the same question I was thinking about when reading this.
One thing to consider around this is that SEO isn't just about getting people to your site - it's about getting the right people. I personally would be looking for phrases like "charitable donations", "charity donations", "donate to charity", etc. Those people that are searching for those phrases have one clear action in mind, whereas "donate" could be anything, including people just looking for general information.
-Andy
-
I'm going to answer your question with another question. What kind of value does a referral for 'donate' give you? Is such a broad keyword one that is going to bring you in the right type of person, or are you better off building content regarding the terms that convert better or target more qualified searchers?
-
Personalization?
I have you at 5-6
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
-
Webshop landing pages and product pages
Hi, I am doing extensive keyword research for the SEO of a big webshop. Since this shop sells technical books and software (legal books, tax software and so on), I come across a lot of very specific keywords for separate products. Isn't it better to try and rank in the SERP's with all the separate product pages, instead of with the landing (category) pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
Keep ranking homepage for target keyword, or switch to another page?
Hi Moz Community! I've researched Moz to find the answer to this question but nothing for my situation. I'm hoping some experienced SEOs can help me out. Here's the situation: I'm up against some fairly stiff competition for my main keyword - the front page is dominated by major manufacturers with high brand recognition and loads of money, where as my client is a much smaller manufacturer trying to compete. However, their DA is only 37-53 so not impossible to outrank... just many links and a significant advantage. We've honed in on a keyword that still drives good traffic, that's a great term to drive paying customers, and that we can get competitive with. My strategy was to attempt to rank my client's _homepage _for this term, rather than a specific product page, as I knew that they'd have many more links and social shares of their main site. (I've been successful with this strategy before). We've risen 60+ positions for the keyword in the past 3 months, to position 12, but we seem to have plateaued for the past month. We're ranking in top 5 positions for a number of our other keywords, so I know we're trending well. However, I'm concerned that despite our quick rise to #12, I may have made a seemingly fatal decision to rank their homepage for our target keyword term. After we had plateaued for a while, I did a more thorough side by side comparison and found that 8 out of 10 competitors on the front page have 2 main things we don't (and can't, because we're ranking the homepage)... 1- The keyword in the url (they're ranking for product pages, i.e. homepage.com/keyword-here/) 2- Their keyword comes first, or early in the meta title. Ours is _supposed to _, but as you know- Google can do what it likes with your homepage title as it's your brand, so they've put our company name- _then _the keyword we added in the title. e.g. Our Company | The Term We're Ranking For We've done a lot of work, and gained many reputable, high quality links, and we did see a significant rank increase across all our pages. My question is- did I shoot myself in the foot? Or is ranking the homepage still viable in this situation? If ultimately this is going to be impossible to get in the top #5 spots, what can I do to fix it? We've already gained a PA of 38 on the homepage from our work. Or would you let it go and just keep working at it, expecting that eventually we'll break onto the front page? Thanks in advance! Let me know if you need more info. I tried to be general with terms/site for my client's sake.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheatreSolutionsInc0 -
Search engine keyword rank - easiest way to check the keywords that rank across website
What is the best keyword ranking tool you have used? I have used various tools by which I am expected to identify and input the keyword I want to track... However, recently I was introduced to Searchmetrics, which I think automatically pulls in the keywords a website ranks for, without the need for manual input from the SEO (I haven't used this tool yet, so apologies if I am incorrect!). Do any other rank trackers work like this? Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart1 -
Will using my Homepage as a KW target improve my Inner page Ranking?
Hello your help please! I have 2 KWs that i have targeted Inner pages for and they have got them to page 2 in SERPs, but now its getting difficult to move them up to page 1. Will targeting the home page with a higher authority, for the same terms, help or hinder the inner pages current position? Many Thanks Ash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep10 -
How to optimize on-page for a large service area?
Hello Everyone, I'm in the process of setting up a website for a plumbing company that services a relatively large area in Michigan. They have physical locations spread out across the area, but they want to optimize for other areas as well. Naturally, I set up pages on the site with unique content relating to the town/area. I understand that these may not rank locally, but we can at lest shoot for organic rankings in this area. My question here more relates to how to link these pages in the site. Should I have a bunch of footer links with something like city, state, zip as the anchor text. Or should I create an "Areas Served" page, and link out from there? I don't want to appear spammy, beaus this isn't what i'm trying to do, I just want to make sure this is done right. Thanks Zach
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seolinktools0 -
On Page Rankings dropped without any changes
What could have factored into some of my key words dropping from an A to a C on my on page rankings. I am not sure how it happened because there were not any chages made. Thanks, Boo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0 -
Pages that were ranking now are not?
Hi Folks Noticed something strange just now pages that were ranking on position 10 on Google for searches such as 'ufc trainer kinect best price' at the start of this week are no longer ranking? Is what has happened to the site the famous google dance or sandbox effect as the site only officially went live on Monday If this is the case what is the recommended course of action to get back ranking competitively again? as I have no idea on what has gone wrong as I has always tried to follow best practice from these forums and the SEOMOZ and YOUMOZ articles My site is www.cheapfindergames.com Many Thanks Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ocelot0 -
Noindex term for pages
I have a client who has a virtuemart site and all of the "ask a question on this product" had been indexed on google. I have managed to get a noindex meta tag into the ask a question page, will these be dropped from the index next time they are crawled and google sees the noindex?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webseoservices0