Weird behavior with site's rankings

[Mcurius]

I have a problem with my site's rankings.
I rank for higher difficulty (but lower search volume) keywords , but my site gets pushed back for lower difficulty, higher volume keywords, which literally pisses me off.

I thought very seriously to start new with a new domain name, cause what ever i do seems that is not working.

I will admit that in past (2-3 years ago) i used some of those "seo packages" i had found, but those links which were like no more than 50, are all deleted now, and the domains are disavowed.
The only thing i can think of, is that some how my site got flagged as suspicious or something like that in google.

Like 1 month ago, i wrote an article about a topic related with my niche, around a keyword that has difficulty 41%. The search term in 1st page has high authority domains, including a wikipedia page, and i currently rank in the 3rd place.

In the other had, i would expect to rank easily for a keyword difficulty of 30-35% but is happening the exact opposite.The pages i try to rank, are not spammy, are checked with moz tools, and also with canirank spam filters. All is good and green. Plus the content of those pages i try to rank have a Content Relevancy Score which varies from 98% to 100%...

Your opinion would be very helpful, thank you.

[RuthBurrReedy]

Hi Nikos,

It's important to remember that Keyword Difficulty scores are a Moz metric, not a Google metric - they are based on Moz' ability to judge how well other sites are competing for that term, and may not capture the entire competitive landscape (since nobody except Google knows everything that Google looks at).

Based on your ability to rank well for some terms and not others, it doesn't seem likely to me that you are under any sort of penalty, so much as that Google just isn't ranking you for some terms. In addition to the Keyword Difficulty scores for each term, take a look at which sites rank for the term (you can do this in the SERP Analysis feature of the Keyword Difficulty tool. Ask youself:

• What kinds of sites rank for this term? For example, if you are an individual business, but all of the sites and pages that are ranking for that term are aggregators or lists of multiple sites, it may be that Google has determined that an individual business site is not a good fit for that query. Similarly, if your page is a blog post and no other blog posts appear in the SERP, Google may have decided that a blog post isn't what people are looking for when they search that term.
• What is the search intent of the query? Based on the other pages that rank, what is the question or task that Google has decided users are trying to answer or complete when they search this term? Does your page do a better example of helping answer that question or complete that task than the other pages that rank?
• What types of content are ranking? Do they all have rich snippets? Are there images, video, shopping or maps results? All of these will tell you more about the kind of content Google thinks will match this query.
• Is there a specific page or website that is ranking for that term that you think you could push out of the top 10? Look for areas of opportunity. For example, maybe there is a site with high authority, but the page that ranks has very low page authority and doesn't fit the query very well. Try to create a page that is better than that page, specifically.
• How closely is the phrase related to your niche? You can tell from the keywords you are successfully ranking for, which topic areas Google is associating with your site. If you have a whole site about chocolates, it will be harder to rank a page about asparagus, even if the difficulty score is lower.

Also, don't forget to continue promoting your content to earn high-authority links to individual content pieces. Where it makes sense to do so, you may also want to link internally from some of your more popular and successful pages to some of the pages that are struggling.

I hope that helps!

[Mcurius]

Hi!
I have the same question as before
If someone has an idea, i would love to hear it

[MattRoney]

Hi Nikos! Did EGOL answer your question? If so, please mark his response as a "Good Answer." If not, what questions do you still have?

[Mcurius]

Thanks for your answer.

User experience was one of my first concerns. So i purchased a bootstrap theme, which actually looks very good and is very user friendly. You can check it here. The pages i try to rank for, looks very similar to that one.
Time on site and Bounch rate
Average Bounch rate is 60% , and average time on page is 4 minutes, and 10 seconds (average last month metrics). My site is actually a review site if that helps you somehow.

I receive often link requests from other webmasters (meaning other people think my site looks, and content is good), so overal, i don't think my site deserving those rankings. Unless some "old sins" are chasing me.

[EGOL]

my site gets pushed back for lower difficulty, higher volume keywords, which literally pisses me off.

We often focus too much on competitive metrics and not enough about the presentation that we are making to our visitors.  Many search professionals believe that google is looking at the behavior of visitors, how long they stay, how far they scroll, the number who click in, do they bookmark, do they share your site with friends... and more important... Are They Asking for You By Name in navigational and domain queries?

This is much of the "machine learning" that Google has patented and what they say they are using in some of their new algorithms.  I've believe that this has been important for a long time and was willing to stick my neck out  about it and bet my ranch a long time ago.

lower difficulty, higher volume keywords

The numbers you are looking at are not based upon what visitors think of your site and how they  behave, they are based upon completely different things.  I don't think that Moz or others who publish keyword difficulty estimations have very good abilities for determining how visitors behave.  Google is the one who has that data, both from the SERPs and from Chrome, and from the engagement platforms like bookmarks and + and other things that they either control or can count.

Keyword difficulty is a brute force metric.   Visitor satisfaction is much more discerning and very hard to measure.

which literally pisses me off.

How do your visitors feel when they try to use your website?   Compare your site to the sites at the top of the SERPs.  Do they have better content?  Do they give a better visitor experience?  Do they have a broader menu?  Is their design better for navigation, comfort of reading, scanning, sharing, and all of the things that people want to do on a website.  How do visitors feel when they click in.

Lots of people believe that it is really easy to earn good metrics.  Really easy.  But it is harder than Hell to please your visitor.  How are you doing there?   Take a look at be honest.