Ranking problem.
-
Hello,
Using Moz I can see that my ranks for my site ZenPlugs.com for keywords such as 'ear plugs' and 'molded ear plugs' and several other keywords aren't as high as other sites with similar DAs. I can't see why, am I missing something?
Many thanks,
Toby
-
Toby
There are two parts to optimizing titles and meta descriptions. Deal with the later first - Meta descriptions should firstly be optimized for clickability as they hold no significant SEO value. So use your 156 characters to create a great CTA.
Titles however are a different beast as they hold significant SEO value. In creation of the perfect Title you need to weigh two competing factors - SEO -v- Clickability.
In the title SEO has the priority or should come first - hence identify the keywords chasing. Then you work out the most clickable way to present those words. Here is a link to another post that answers your question. http://moz.com/community/q/how-should-be-a-perfect-seo-title-description-h1-and-h2
Moz has a snippet tool you can use. https://moz.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool Before getting to that use Semrush or another keyword tool your prefer to identify the keywords you are chasing and than start playing with the snippet tool.
Let me know if you have any questions. If you create a title and a description - happy to review it for you.
-
I have been working my way through the Technical Site Audit Checklist by Geoff Kenyon which tells me to make sure 'Important pages have click‐through rate optimized titles and meta descriptions'. How would you do this?
-
Hey Toby,
So many possibilities as to why this could be.
However, I would not use SEMrush right at this second because they recently changed their algorithm and with that, they show a lot of site pages that have low content ratios, when they actually aren't too bad.
An example... I am doing some work on a client site this week and next. 2 weeks ago, they ran a crawl and it showed just over 300 pages with low content ratio. Last week it showed over 1,400. After they spoke to them, it does indeed seem to be down to their update.
I would instead suggest trying Deepcrawl. Why? Because you are able to adjust thresholds (as shown in the attachment) that give you control over a healthy threshold rather than something that is just too sensitive. You also get a lot more useful data (IMO) so at a glance, you can see what is going on.
Outside of this, it is always difficult to try and put your finger on why someone ranks above you and if you put two identical sites side-by-side who have identical DA, then you can start by looking at the trust the site has within Google. The article at Backlinko is a very interesting read and I suggest grabbing a coffee and going through it.
If you haven't already, download ScreamingFrog because this is seen as a de-facto standard for any SEO. Something every SEO has in their toolbox.
I would also suggest reading this article by Bill Slawski on how Google may classify sites as low quality. Some great insights in there.
Let me know if there is anything else.
-Andy
-
Thank you! I'll get cracking.
-
Thanks for linking to my post even 2 years on. I should really do an updated version.
But you're essentially right - there are many reasons beyond PA & DA why a site ranks or doesn't rank, outranks you or simply doesn't show up. PA & DA have a place in ranking sites and pages against each other but not for how they rank based on a particular keyphrase.
Think about it like this. Moz.com is a very authoritative domain, right? Not so much about pizza and learning French, though.
So we can start with PA & DA but we need a lot more information to determine how a site will rank for a given keyphrase in a specific version of Google searched by a particular user.
-
Toby
A conundrum we face daily. Working through the long lists detailed above is arduous work and I will suggest a start.
If you have access do a site audit with moz or semrush. If access to moz review the moz trust score. After a site Audit you should have a better understanding of some technical issues but there are two factors that I address asap page speed. Just checked your on tools.pingdom and it was below 2 seconds which is excellent.
The second aspect which I suspect has high relevance is bounce rate. I would imagine bounce rate could be a factor for your site from a quick look at the home page. I am not sure whether the site is a shop, info brochure on ear plugs etc. I did not see a CTA. So if your bounce rate is above say 50% I would be studying GA for behavior on the site. Work out what page customers are dropping off, and then dedicate your self to getting the customer to move to the next page. Follow them all the way through to a conversion. If not enough traffic ask family or friends - though they can be brutal.
There are plenty of other items on your list - but understanding your customer and how they are interacting with your site is vital - and creating a deep connection with the right customer is integral to sustained success. If people have a good on site experience they will talk about your site and come back.
Ask away for clarity on any point.
-
Thank you, very helpful!
-
Hi Toby,
There are various other factors that affects ranking apart from DA & PA so it is not the best way to judge ranking only on the basis of same or similar DA.
Please check similar below thread so you can get whole idea on this.
http://moz.com/community/q/higher-pa-and-da-but-lower-ranking
https://moz.com/blog/going-beyond-moz-metrics-to-answer-why-is-this-site-outranking-me
Hope this helps.
Thanks
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
-
Best way to give away rank?
We have a set of branded and unbranded keywords that we want our product site to rank very high for. Right now, our support site owns the first page of rankings for most of the keywords we care about. What is the most efficient way to give the rank currently enjoyed by our support site to our product site? Both have very high domain authority and tons of backlinks. Here are some factors that might apply: Support site has lots of copy including these keywords, while product site doesn't (yet) Support site doesn't currently include a lot of links to the product site (and vice versa) They're on the same domain -- support is at support.domain.com, product is on www.domain.com Support site has many more pages and their URLs are more semantically related to keywords I know there are lots of structural improvements implied by the above -- on the product site, increase the amount of copy (and landing pages) focused on keywords and significantly improve internal links, etc. But I'm wondering if the fact we control both sites gives us any options we wouldn't have in a competitive situation?
On-Page Optimization | | hoosteeno0 -
Is it better to try and boost an old page that ranks on page #5 or create a better new page
Hello Everyone, We have been looking into our placements recently and see that one of our blog posts shows on page #5 for a popular keyword phrase with a lot of search volume. Lets say the keyword is "couples fitness ideas" We show on page 5 for a post /couples-fitness-ideas-19-tips-and-expert-advice/ We want to try and get on the first page for that phrase and wanted to know if it is better if we did one of the following: 1. Create a new page with over 100 ideas with a few more thousands of words. with a new url (thinking /couples-fitness-ideas) 2. Create a new page with a new url (thinking /couples-fitness-ideas) with the same content as the currently ranking post. We would want to do this for more freedom with layout and design of the page rather than our current blog post template. Add more content, let's say 100 more ideas. Then forward the old URL to the new one with a 301 redirect. 3. Add more content to the existing post without changing the layout and change the URL. Look forward to your thoughts
On-Page Optimization | | MobileCause0 -
Problem with meta title
My web is http://www.canexel.es, is supported by wordpress and I'm having some problems with the meta title. Google SERPS shows “Canexel: Casas de madera canadienses“ when I config the snipped to show “Casas de Madera canadienses – Canexel” I use SEO yoast plugin. I dont know why it is showing the name of the company followed by a colon at the beginning. The home page is the only one that is having that problem. Thx!
On-Page Optimization | | Canexel0 -
Impact of number of outgoing links on Page Rank of an optimized page?
What is the current best practice on preferred number of outbound links on a page you are trying to rank with: According to online resources form a pure page rank perspective a high number of outbound follow links can have a negative impact not only on child pages but also the page itself
On-Page Optimization | | thomaspro
http://pr.efactory.de/e-outbound-links.shtml Other resources suggest that particularly placing high quality outbound links on a page (nofollow) increases the trust and authority of a page Are there any other elements to keep in mind? Is the best practice to avoid any follow links on a page you want to rank well in Google for? Thanks /T0 -
Many canonical warnings. Is this a problem?
My site has over 80 canonical warnings. The report states the url is for example http://www.musicliveuk.com and the 'tag value' column says http://www.musicliveuk.com/ Is that a good thing? I'm new to seo and am running my site on wordpress with all in one seo pack. Does this mean the seo pack has automatically added canonical tags to my pages? If so why is it showing as an error? I am also getting lots of 301 permanent redirects and I haven't set any up manually. I'm getting them for every page on my site from the normal url to a url with a slash at the end.
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Is ranking hurt by slow moving product
I sell B2B industrial products. I have 300 products on the site. Some products are seldom purchased and the brand name is not significant for these products If the title page is the right wording and length, and there is a valid product widget -1-1-1 but nobody has bought one in 5 years due to it being a niche product, but they could and it's a profitable sale. Question: Is** overall site rankin**g **being hurt **by valid content ( Description, Part # and Price and it can be checked out in the cart), but is is never/seldom searched for.?
On-Page Optimization | | Wales0 -
We dropped from a page rank of 4 to 3
We dropped from a page rank of 4 to 3 because of the Google Freshness update. Are there any insights anyone can give me? Our site is www.totalvac.com
On-Page Optimization | | totalvac0 -
Does targeting more than one keyword or keyword phrase effect rankings?
Hi, We have a homepage where we are targeting three main keywords. 'Cheap books', 'buy books' and 'used books'. We are ranking well for cheap books and making progress on the more competitive buy and used. My question is how many keywords can you reasonably rank for on one page. We are targeting other keywords on other pages and having some success - but is three the maximum or is that too many?
On-Page Optimization | | Benj251