Question for SEO experts!

[DmitryP]

I am checking my competition with all the metrics available and I have no clue why we are not coming up higher in  ranking on Google. It's been 3 months and we've been bouncing between 9 and 7 position. One competitor just came out of nowhere with almost 600 internal links and few external links and occupied 3rd spot.

I've built pretty good portfolio of links with links even coming from Google for crying out loud. My on page optimization is very good, we've even passed W3C with no errors.

At least 3 of our competitors above us have less Domain Authority, Page Authority, Back links for external domains, number of external domains, etc...

Not sure what is going on. We are not really trying to be the top dog in Google all the time, but it is the principle of a thing.

Keyword is Laser Marking. Our domain starts with cms. Don't want to type the whole URL because Google might crawl (maybe a bit of paranoid at this point LOL)

Any suggestions?

[evolvingSEO]

Sure you can email me the report.

dan at evolvingseo dot com

I believe the SEOmoz link data is known to be sometimes not up to date as well as not a complete crawl of the web, although they do say the pages excluded form the opensite index are usually just very low quality pages.

-Dan

[DmitryP]

Where did you get that title tag? I am looking in source code and can't find it.

[DmitryP]

Also data is incorrect. 27 external links really? That is just wrong..

[DmitryP]

Do you mind if I e-mail you report. BTW Now we are ranking #5 in Global results. Keep bouncing around back and forth..lol

[DmitryP]

Thanks for response. Please give me an example of what you mean...

[DmitryP]

Thanks for answer. What Title tag would you recommend?

[RDK]

You're swimming upstream, but it's not impossible for you to break to the top of results on your relatively broad term.  Google wants very narrowly constructed "variety" in the first few results.  Variety is interpreted within a keyword/key phrase's ambiguity (most have some amount of ambiguity).  In your example, is someone who searches "laser marking" interested in the process of laser marking, products (commercial or consumer), etc...   Google decided that they want to include the best example of each at the top.  This ideal is only partially realized, but it's a defined goal in their search quality and I think they hit it more often on broad search terms.

Your site isn't the best match in any of those cases because you offer a variety of laser-related products. Even if your site was dedicated strictly to product laser marking d'absolute, you'd be in a tough spot.  The best you can do as the algo currently exists is position 4 (epilog).

I'd also continue to work on the basics- blah, blah, blah AND inbound, keyword-rich links. Eyeballs on Epilog Dmitry.  You can do it.

[Francisco_Meza]

I don't see anything except a youtube video for cmslasers. If this is your title tag, then no wonder you're not ranking:

Control laser >> Laser Marking, Laser System, Laser Control, 
Laser Solutions, Laser Marking Solution, Solar Industry & 
Wavelength Lasers

Uh, I think you forgot to mention the word laser.

[evolvingSEO]

Dimitry

Go to this tool and run a full report (see image) for your keyword.  I have done so (and would share but the only export is an excel file).

Just looking at the metrics it provides: FB shares, linking C blocks, followed vs no-followed etc - it doesn't seem odd to me at all that google is ranking things how they are.

I'd advise running the report, understanding how the different metrics work and improving the ones that would make the most difference.

Rand has a great post on this tool, which you should use anytime you ask "why are things rankings the way they are?"

-Dan

PjPZyIim

[DmitryP]

good one

[ShaMenz]

Thinking about it in terms of percentages might be causing you a problem...

One thing that can be helpful if you are unsure whether your text reads naturally, is to get someone else to read it aloud while you listen. It's a good excuse for a break and a cup of coffee

Sha

[DmitryP]

I actually thought about that..I am still using olde school mentality of 4% keyword density. Got to scale back to 1% I guess.

Thanks for the info

[ShaMenz]

Hi Dmitry,

On first look, my feeling is that your body text has crossed the line into being over optimized. If you are using Mozbar, try running the keyword highlight tool ... "laser" and "laser marking" are both highly repetitious. If you haven't already done so, it might be worth taking a look at the On-page reports in the Pro App for your site.

Hope that helps,

Sha