How long you've seen it take to rank in small niche
-
Hello,
How long do you see small niche sites taking to rank where they should be for their strength?
Our last site took at least 6 months. Our current site's home page for our main term is stuck at around the 40th page and not moving. It's an exact match domain so it should be on at least page 2.
We have one site in the industry already that carries similar products but it is much bigger with a much wider scope of products. It took a while to rank too.
Our only backlinks I'm working on are Google & Youtube (and DMOZ), we have a facebook fan page. Our site is nicer than the site in position #1. Working on making as many pages as possible 10X content.
Thank You,
Bob
-
This is just wildassguessing... When you metrics are overwhelming, and your content is greatly superior by formal industry standards... but these little cottage industry sites with informal content and a tribe of visitors are beating you.... your best prayer of getting to the top is to be patient and allow Google to observe that your visitor metrics put enough weight on the scale to make your site more credible.
Google will believe rubbish for a while but strong truth can still prevail.
-
Wow, I think that's exactly what is happening. There's a ton of spam being searched for. Really good insight EGOL, thanks a lot!
-
I've had some keywords that I thought my site would shoot right to the top upon publishing a new page. Why? The competition was sleepy little sites that didn't use formal language, had lots of inaccurate and pseudo-information. I thought that my site would roll right over them. However, my site didn't make the top 50. Six months later, still not in the top 50. So, I take a close look and my bet was that the presence of informal, inaccurate, pseudocrap was probably what the masses of people were searching for. I refused to put that stuff on my site - even in criticism - and now, after well over a year, some of my pages in this niche are starting to break into the top 10 and pull a little traffic.
So, you can have weak competitors, even BS competitors, but if they got the language of the niche and a tribe of searchers and visitors behind them, you might have trouble winning even if your metrics are overwhelming.
-
I found a checkbox in our cart today that rel-cononicals www, non-www, index.html, etc. They were separate. Do you guys think this could have caused it?
We also have a lot of these products on another site, this is a smaller, specific niche.
-
Hey Bob,
Organic SEO isn't really my area, but if that niche is really niche, being stuck on page 40 after several months of work raises a red flag for me. Have you dug into Google Search Console to be sure there isn't a problem with a site?
-
It depends on the niche, competition, Quality and frequency of content and also the language. I have been able to rank a site as less as 4 weeks. But Again I could not do scalably across languages and niches.
Unique Quality of content and frequency of publishing goes long way
-
Hi Bob,
You might know that it depends on the niche's difficulty.
In my experience, it ever took less than 6 weeks to rank in the 20s.Also, I presume that you understand that having great content and a great site doesn't neccesarly mean you'll rank higher fast.
As you say the only backlinks you have are just a few, you might need a few more links to go higher. But, just links aren't the ticket to 1st page.
Usually on page optimization plays an important role in the rankings.
Are you sure that your more important pages are correctly optimized for the desired search terms? And just to role out the obvious, are you sure that google is seing your site? Are you getting the correct visibility from Google? What about other search engines?I gave you more questions than answers, it may be that there's something that you've overlooked and missed. Or just that the niche is competitive enough so you wont rank better faster as you think.
Hope I've helped.
GR.
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
-
Can 'Jump link'/'Anchor tag' urls rank in Google for keywords?
E.g. www.website.com/page/#keyword-anchor-text Where the part after the # is a section of the page you can jump to, and the title of that section is a secondary keyword you want the page to rank for?
Algorithm Updates | | rwat0 -
Why does this website rank so well?
We've just taken on a new client who wants to rank well for 'Emergency dentist' related keywords in the London area and they have identified a website that they would like to compete with rankings wise. www.valedental.com I've done a backlink analysis with Open Site explorer and it says that the domain only has 2 inbound links? I've also done a who-is lookup and the domain was only registered in December 2012. Any idea why it is ranking so well for 'emergency dentist' 'emergency dentists' 'emergency dentist london' 'dental emergencies' (when searched for in the london area) thanks in advance for any help Marcus
Algorithm Updates | | dentaldesign0 -
Drop in Page Indexing, Small rise in Search Queries
Hello, I have a news based website so i am creating multiple new posts daily. I changed a lot of the site and got rid of old potentially duplicate content back in feb and had a sharp drop in pages indexed. I know this was because I removed a lot of pages though. However I still have a good 20,000 + pages on my site and my indexing has dropped a further three times since then. From 9,000 to 2,000 a coupe of months ago and then slowly down since April to just 133. It doesn't seem to have affected my search queries yet but surely will if it continues. I am really confused as to how this might happen & how to turn it around. We dont use any dodgy SEO tricks either.
Algorithm Updates | | luwhosjack0 -
Rankings fluctuating by around 10 pages between night and day
Hi all, I'm experiencing something very odd with my website ranking at the moment. My homepage is fluctuating in rank for my main keyword by 10 pages every day and night. So, during the day i am on page 14, 15 or 16 for my main keyword yet by night i am on page 5 or 6. This trend has continued for the past 7 days now and i can't quite understand why this is. I'm using pagewash dot net to carry out manual searches and a ranking tool - both of which produce exactly the same result. Does anyone have any experience of this or why this is happening? My domain is around 8 years old and has around 50,000 pages. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | MarkHincks0 -
Why am i not ranking in the top 50 for the keyword 'cocktails' even though all my other cocktail related keywords are in the first 2 pages of Google???
I have checked the first 50 pages of google for my website www.socialandcocktail.co.uk using the keyword 'cocktails'. It is NOT to be found. However, if I search for other keyword combinations eg cocktail recipes, cocktail bars etc they are all in the first 2 pages! What is going on????????
Algorithm Updates | | cocktailboss0 -
How do I rank higher in Bing/Yahoo?
We are doing really well across the board on Google, but having issues in ranking with Bing and Yahoo. What is different between the three search engines? I have read a few articles that Bing is happier with Flash, and they are more interested in Top Level Domain links, but what else is different? In Google we are sitting on page one for most terms, but are page 2-3 in Bing/Yahoo for the exact same terms. Any help would be appreciated!
Algorithm Updates | | FVdBeuken0 -
How to Recover Ranking from Latest Google Panda and EMD Update?
We have 7 websites with the exact match domains. Our Website has been affected by Google recently updated (Panda and EMD Update). we don't want to do any changes in our existing domains. What should we do? So, What is the exact solution for that. Help Us out! Website Names: http://www.hamptoninndenverairport.com http://www.wingatehotelcolumbia.com http://www.fairfieldinnhotelaurora.com http://www.hamptoninnhotelcrestwood.com http://www.laquintahoteldavenport.com http://www.redroofinnhotelcedarrapids.com http://www.hamptoninnhotelcarolstream.com Thanks in advance.
Algorithm Updates | | CommercePundit1 -
CTR for Google Rankings
I run a local business, and I'm working on ranking for keyword + city. I currently rank on the first page for just about every keyword I'm working on, but only the top 3 for a little less than half. Because the search volume is so low for each keyword (for most cities Google doesn't have an estimated monthly search volume) the grand total of a few searches a month for each keyword + city combination is where I get my traffic. Although I seem to be getting consistently higher in the rankings, I am curious as to how much more traffic I can expect. I read somewhere that sites that are ranked number one are clicked 50% of the time, number two 20% of the time, number three 15% and from there on it goes down fast. Rank 7 and on is below 1%. Probably around 30% of my keywords are ranked between 7-10 and probably about 20% are ranked 4-6. Are the CTR numbers fairly accurate? I understand that there are a lot of influences on CTR, such as title/description, but generally is that somewhat accurate? If it is, I am missing out on A LOT of traffic. I am pulling about 800 unique visitors a month from Google. If I get in the top 3 for most of my keywords, can I expect significantly more traffic? I ask the question because there are many other things I could be doing with my time to help the business aside from SEO. I don't want to be working constantly on SEO if traffic is only going to increase very little.
Algorithm Updates | | bjenkins240