I can see competitors ranking for certain long-tail keywords but cannot find them on web pages. What am I missing?
-
Hi there. I'm pretty new to SEO and I've been doing a fair bit of training but there is one aspect I have yet to grasp. When I carry out keyword research, I get all these results and I understand the metrics. What I'm not getting is, when a competitor is ranking highly for say "where can I buy fresh turkeys", I assume that that phrase must appear somewhere on the page, but it doesn't. I realise I'm just not thinking about this in the right way. Can anyone offer clarification, please?
Kind regards,
Bruce
-
Bruce,
No, the phrase does not have to appear on the page and lots of factors determine how a page might rank for the phrase without it being on the page, even things like location of searcher and time of year may influence which site ranks for such long tail terms.
A page might say "I buy fresh turkeys where my grandmother lives" and because of other factors on the domain, it might rank for your search. Or maybe, "they have fresh turkeys where I buy my alien abduction books" and something about the domain helps that page rank for your term.
Things get very squirrely way down at the end of the long tail keywords list. As you learn more, you'll probably begin popping your head up a little higher on that list and figuring out how to beat the competitors, rather than trying to go for the least competitive terms. But that's OK, everyone starts there.
-
Hi Don. Thank you so much for your reply and advice.
Kind regards,
Bruce
-
Google's algorithms are smart enough to know what content is on page. If the page mentions fresh turkeys for sale, your search term should return the site without that keyword on page. It is the purpose of that search to expose places where fresh turkeys could be bought. ?
Many long tail keywords are just phrases and sometimes those phrases make no sense for humans to read. So if your force the term on page it may not allow the rest of the content to be completely coherent. This is not good. Content should be written for human consumption first and foremost.
The best advice is to produce content that is thorough, education and as complete as possible. Then those of the cuff phrases, "fresh turkey near me" "who sells fresh turkey" "fresh turkey stores" will populate search results without those phrases being present on page.
Thanks,
Don Silvernail
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
-
Why is this page ranking #2?
Hello, I am hoping someone can shed a bit of light on why this page http://www.leveragerx.com/physician-mortgages is ranking #2 for "physician loans"? It isn't optimized for that keyword and PA is only 1, DA is 9. Any insight would be greatly appreciated!
Competitive Research | | myriad_ricardo0 -
Rankings w/ 301 redirect.. is this normal?
For http://www. I am ranking for particular KW's/phrases However, when I search just http:// - I am unranked. The http:// 301's to the http://www. Is this normal? Thank you
Competitive Research | | lawfirm0 -
Long tail keywords / Close variations of keywords / Duplicate Content
In a classified site, people usually search for the same item with different keywords which are often very close to each other and point to same set of results: e.g. honda civic for sale
Competitive Research | | razasaeed
used honda civic for sale
civic for sale
used civic for sale
used civic All the above keywords should actually lead to same results i.e honda civic for sale. Our competitor is creating a page for each one of these www.sitename.com/q/honda-civic-for-sale/
www.sitename.com/q/used-honda-civic-for-sale/
... and so on Basically they create a page for each high traffic keyword they encounter where as we have very structure search. How to compete with that ? They are ranking on all these long tail keywords because of separate landing pages though most of the pages are duplicate of each other. 98% same content (all are showing honda civics) Should we go that route OR optimize our single page focusing on keyword with highest traffic and hope google will rank us for the related keywords as well ?0 -
Why is this site ranking so well
I just took over an SEO campaign for a company we recently did a website for. The old company created individual landing pages for each city they service, but they didn't have any original content except replacing the city name. We are in the process of creating completely unique content per page. My main issue is that there is a company with no link profile, duplicate content on every page, no social media presence, etc - but consistently ranks for city + fence company The company we are starting to work with is: http://betterdecksandfences.com/ The company that is ranking for everything is: http://www.alcovyfence.com Any ideas?
Competitive Research | | BeardoCo0 -
Information Overload! Please can someone help me simply, with this specific example?
Hi Guys I am asking a lot of questions lately, so I am very grateful of the community support. Hopefully I can start giving back soon. I am getting myself tied up in knots with SEO on my site. I have read so many articles, and many contradictory opinions that I can't workout which path to go down. So could you look at this specific example and give me a brutally honest kick in the right direction? If you do a search on google (UK) for "Vogue Magazine Subscription" you will see one of our main competitors in position 7,8,9 for Teen Vogue, Luomo Vogue and Italian Vogue. We come in at position 4 page 2 (UniqueMagazines). Why is it that our competitor ranks higher than us, for what is really an unrelated search? I mean, yes Teen Vogue, Italian and Luomo are relevant to those keywords, but surely our page is more relevant? Is it because the competitor has a slightly higher domain authority? We are working on generating content to drive back links, and so get authority. I have looked into so much, generating content, updating internal link architecture, creating back links. What in this specific example should I be looking at? I have analysed our back link profile, it's ok. I did some work on internal links, as our site ranked first for Italian Vogue, which seemed to be due to more links internally pointing at the italian version. What metrics should I be looking at to determine what makes our competitor rank higher? Many thanks if you can help Paul
Competitive Research | | TheUniqueSEO0 -
Determining why an established competitor's rankings have bombed - What's the best way to go about it?
I arrived at work this morning to find my weekly SEOmoz ranking report for a main competitor waiting in my inbox. 90% of the their rankings have tanked in the last day or so by an average of 3 pages - most down from page 1 or 2 where they had been sitting pretty for ages. I'm not in a state of (total) euphoria about this because a) you should be humble enough not to gloat at your enemy's demise, and b) I need to find out what they did wrong so that I don't make the same mistake, too. **What is your first suggested port of call to determine where my (vanquished) foe has gone wrong? How much can I find out? ** I do know one thing - with OSE I can see they've used dodgy blogging services but this, to my mind, would have been jumped upon by Google last year. No? Thanks guys
Competitive Research | | Martin_S0 -
Keyword based link problem on site
So I think I might have identified an issue with a site that I'm trying to get ranked for a specific keyword but, wanted to get some opinions before I started making some big changes on the site. On my homepage I have the keyword that I would like to be ranked for in the title lets say "Blue Widgets - Company Name', also on the home page I have some descriptions of our services including the keywords. I also have a couple of the keyword based links within in the content, navigation and footer. But these keyword based links all point to another page on the site: blue-widgets.htm. If I really want my home page to rank for the keyword "Blue Widgets' should all of these links point to the home page instead of the sub page? I know there are a great number of other factors that contribute to rankings but looking at my competition, this is something that they seem to be doing. The keyword based links within the content, navigation or footer all point to the homepage. I also have a higher Domain Authority than some of the sites that rank higher than me so I'm not sure if building more links is the answer. Of course I always want to build natural links but these sites don't seem to be doing that either. Any comments, suggestions or input would be greatly appreciated.
Competitive Research | | TRICORSystems0 -
In Open Site Explorer, what does it mean when a linking page does not contain any reference to the URl entered?
When running Open Site Explorer on a particular URL, I get a list of linking pages. Many of these pages have a high Page Authority. I am assuming that this is a list of pages that presumably link to the URL I entered. First, is this correct? Next, when I click on an entry in the list I don't see any reference to the URL on the page, even viewing the page source. What does this mean and why is the link in the list?
Competitive Research | | jkenyon1