Why is my site not appearing for a generic relevant short-tail keyword?

[brianmadden]

Hi,

I work for a lighting retailer and in the past few weeks, our ranking in Google for the term 'lights' has decreased so much that I can no longer find it in the first 20 pages on Google.

We did receive a manual action but the penalty has since been revoked.

However, this seems to be a keyword specific problem as we are ranking #5 for 'cheap lights' - which is obviously more relevant and specific anyway.

The only reason I'm asking is because the company director is asking why it has decreased so much, and I've tried to explain the keyword is too short and generic to bring in good traffic to the site, but he still wants a reason why that keyword in particular has dropped so much.

It is interesting to note that one of our competitors, had a significant drop like ours. However, they seem to be climbing back up the rankings now.

I was just wondering if anyone had any insight into this issue?

Thanks,

Brian

[yourweb]

Just to echo what has been said above.

My opinion - Focussing on the term lights is probably not the best idea - very vague and there is no intent in the search request so it could mean anything.  Cheap lights (you are 6th - 480 searches PM) or cheap lighting (5 + 6th @ 1000 searches per month) are more worthwhile.  Looks like you are ranking for 180+ related terms so focus on them instead of generic words such as 'lights' and you should get better ROI anyway.

From a competition standpoint you are up against the big names such as Tesco and Argos so you need to think a little differently to get past them.

Chasing one single tough keyword can be ten times the effort of going after several with less competition but still give the same results anyway.

[brianmadden]

Thanks for your responses, both very useful.

The URL I'm asking about is www.valuelights.co.uk

[Patrick_G]

Brian,

I agree with what Lumina wrote.

Sometimes when I run into this problem I look at the competition for the term, and then figure out how many backlinks my competitors who are ranking in the top 10 for that keyword are showing/their DAs, etc. the top 10 have, and compare it to my own.

It won't give you a super firm answer, but sometimes it's enough to explain why the top 10 is beating you.

[Lumina]

Without knowing your website's url, it's hard to say. But generally speaking, generic keywords like "lights" are always going to be in a weird flux. So many different companies, mediums, videos, and everything else use that word in some aspect. It's possible that something time-specific (think "holiday lights" for instance) could be taking over the search temporarily, or that your site simply isn't as optimized for "lights" as new-comers. Even news articles and musicians will come up when searching for that term.

Another thing to consider is whether or not whomever's searching has their personal search data enabled in Google. And let's not forget location-based search, which will assuredly have an effect on SERPs. The bottom-line is, there are so many factors in play when it comes to generic search terms that it would be very difficult to tell without a lengthy analysis of your data and that of others.

The good news is, as you mentioned, "lights" likely isn't the most useful search for potential customers. People typically search for something product/service specific when it comes to something like that.