SEO Troubleshooting? Not ranking in Top 50 for "easy" keyword
-
Hi there,
First of all, thank you in advance to whoever steps in to help me with this issue!
So, I have a new site (launched December 2016) in the investing space and have been able to get page 1 rankings on some of my pages.
One of my best ranking pages is for the phrase "what is xiv". The Keyword Explorer has this phrase at a 21 difficulty. My page for this keyword is https://www.projectoption.com/what-is-xiv/. The post reached the first page almost immediately after being published, though I know I shouldn't expect this for other keywords of similar difficulty.
Here is my problem: I just wrote a comprehensive guide (8,000+ words) on a different keyword phrase: "vertical spreads." The Keyword Explorer has this phrase at a 25 difficulty. My page for this topic: https://www.projectoption.com/vertical-spreads-explained/.
However, the page is nowhere to be found in organic Google rankings (not in top 50), and the page has been live for a few weeks now.
I've done my best at optimizing the post, but something leads me to believe there are some issues that are beyond my SEO knowledge. For example, maybe the post is too long, and Google can't figure out what the page is about.
Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your time!
-Chris
-
David,
This seems like the most logical explanation and makes complete sense. Thank you!
I can confirm that I haven't linked to this page from my other website pages as I haven't quite figured out where the link fits best. However, I'll figure that out now and see how it goes in the next few weeks.
Thanks so much for your help, and nice last name!
-Chris
-
"create some backlinks using the keywords" sounds super dodgy!!
You shouldn't be the one creating links to your site.
You have really good content and I don't think you'll have much trouble getting links to your site with a bit of outreach and relationship building with other quality sites in your niche.
Don't ruin your awesome content by link building like it's 2010.
Cheers,
David
-
Hi Chris,
I quickly ran your site through Screaming Frog and found that this new page is not linking from your site anywhere - it's what's known as an "orphan page".
By not linking from the site, it is not receiving any "authority" from your domain and you will have a hard time getting it to rank for anything.
The first thing I would do is to make sure it's linking from your site and check how it's going in a few weeks.
Cheers,
David
-
Thanks so much for doing this.
To clarify, the keyword I'm having an issue ranking for is "vertical spread"
I used the "what is xiv" keyword to compare difficulties. The point is that I'm ranking very well for "what is xiv" but I'm not ranking at all for "vertical spread" when the difficulty is similar.
Page I'm trying to rank: https://www.projectoption.com/vertical-spreads-explained/
Targeted Keyword: Vertical Spread
-
-
Thank you for the reply.
To answer your questions:
1 & 3) Yes. The first thing I do after publishing new content is submitting the page to Google and index request.
- I have not yet received backlinks to this page. I understand that this is key to achieving the highest rankings, but it is a work in progress. Still, I would expect to at least reach the 2nd or 3rd page for this keyword without having any backlinks (since the pages/sites in those positions do not have many links and/or the content is not great).
-
By the way, you have no backlinks so, you should to start to build someones if you dont want to lose your rank
-
In fact I made an audit to your site
https://www.projectoption.com/
and guess what ?
you are in the position 03 for Google USA for the keyword "what is xiv"
you are in the position 80 for Google USA for the keyword "xiv trading strategy"
you are in the position 25 for Google USA for the keyword "how the vix works"So maybe your should check your search console and see what happen.
-
Even if you have an easy keyword that does not mean that everything is done
- did you submit your site to google?
- did you create some backlinks using the keywords ?
- did you check your search console to check if there is an error on your site?
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
-
Use keywords that has another keyword in it for another link
Hi, I have these two links: A1 & A2 and the keywords for them are these: Pest control for A1 Pest control service for A2 is google smart enough to differentiate these two & rank the exact page for them accordingly? or does google guess pest control keyword in A2 link as well? please help me with this issue. & the same with these : termite inspection & termite inspections Arizona!! many thanks Shervin
Technical SEO | | Shervin0 -
Will a google map loaded "on scroll" be ignored by the crawler?
One of my pages has two Google maps on it. This leads to a fairly high keyword density for words like "data", "map data" etc. Since one of the maps is basically at the bottom of the page I thought of loading it "on scroll" as soon as its container becomes visible (before loading the map div should be empty). Will the map then still be craweld by google (can they execute the JS in a way that the map is loaded anyways?) or would this help to reduce the keywords introduced by the maps?
Technical SEO | | ddspg0 -
Is the " meta content tag" important?
I am currently trying to optimize my companies website and I noticed that meta content is exactly the same for all of the pages on our website. Isn't this problematic? The actual content on the webpage is not the same and a lot of the pages don't have these keywords in the content.
Technical SEO | | AubbiefromAubenRealty0 -
Keywords Ranking Dropped
Hi All, One of my website http://www.greenhomepest.com/ were ranking on Google first page for the keywords as mentioned below: pest control in Scottsdale
Technical SEO | | RuchiPardal
pest control in Mesa
pest control in Gilbert
pest control in Tempe
pest control in Peoria
pest control in Queen Creek
pest control in Glendale
pest control phoenix
pest control arizona
pest control az
pest control phoenix az
Pest Control in Chandler But some days before all keywords are disappeared from top 100.I tried to find out the reason but not succeed. Can you please help me to find out the exact reason behind this??0 -
Keyword targeting & differentiation between similar keywords
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around keyword targeting when two keywords are very similar. Here's my dilemma, lets just I sell ACE brand Widgets I'm doing well with “ACE Widgets” queries but not “ACE” How do I fix this since “ACE” is already all throughout the results page & supposedly anchor text is playing a less and less significant role in link relevancy so just getting links with “ACE” as the anchor text wouldn't really help (I wouldn't think) Just a little confused. Thanks
Technical SEO | | SheffieldMarketing0 -
Google doesn't rank the best page of our content for keywords. How to fix that?
Hello, We have a strange issue, which I think is due to legacy. Generally, we are a job board for students in France: http://jobetudiant.net (jobetudiant == studentjob in french) We rank quite well (2nd or 3rd) on "Job etudiant <city>", with the right page (the one that lists all job offers in that city). So this is great.</city> Now, for some reason, Google systematically puts another of our pages in front of that: the page that lists the jobs offers in the 'region' of that city. For example, check this page. the first link is a competitor, the 3rd is the "right" link (the job offers in annecy), but the 2nd link is the list of jobs in Haute Savoie (which is the 'departement'- equiv. to county) in which Annecy is... that's annoying. Is there a way to indicate Google that the 3rd page makes more sense for this search? Thanks
Technical SEO | | jgenesto0 -
"Too Many On-Page Links" Issue
I'm being docked for too many on page links on every page on the site, and I believe it is because the drop down nav has about 130 links in it. It's because we have a few levels of dropdowns, so you can get to any page from the main page. The site is here - http://www.ibethel.org/ Is what I'm doing just a bad practice and the dropdowns shouldn't give as much information? Or is there something different I should do with the links? Maybe a no-follow on the last tier of dropdown?
Technical SEO | | BethelMedia0