Rankings Last, google says no flags

[AlanMosley]

I have a site thatsit.net.au I have never really promoted, but it used to
rank ok, the other day I decided I should spend some time on it as its my own
site and potential customers expect to see my own site rank well. I did a bit
of checking and in Bing I come up in first 4 for Web Development Perth, that is in
the .au TLD for Australia,
but in Google I am like 700+.

If I take this line out of my home page and put it in quotes “a local Perth web development company”  I see I am the only person in the world to have
this long tail query in both Bing and Google. If I search for the same without
quotes in Bing I come up first. If I do so in Google, I come up absolutely last.
I thought I must be flagged, but Google have replied that there is no manual
action taken on my site.

I have no answer for this, It is hard to believe if I am the only person in
the world to have a long tail term that I would come last for it.

Any ideas? I hope Matt Cutts reads this, and can come up with an explanation
besides write good and useful content.

[AlanMosley]

I agree link count is not the end all, but when Gianluca said I had only a few links
the focus was on that, where I don’t think that is the case and wanted the
focus back off that. To say that he had a point would also go against the statement
the number of links not being important rather the quality. OSE explorer I
found never has many links for new campaigns, and only having 5 campaign slots,
I did not have it loaded until a few days ago. I believe it finds the pages
relevant to the campaigns, that my understanding based of observation only, I expect
to see more next crawl . But I don’t think links is the problem. As I stated I was
number one for my company name, now I came no where, with the same or less
links.

As for
Bing and Google not having a correlation I disagree, they do correlate very
well, it’s not a rule, but if you rank well in one you will rank well in the
other. I have always seemed to rank better with sites in Bing than Google, but generally
if I make progress in one I make progress in the other. To say the comparison
is completely worthless does not hold water

Look at
all the factors I have mentioned and I think, there is something wrong, take my
point about my company name, I Used to rank number one, now I don’t rank at all.
I made a site thatsitsolutions.net.au, with no links only a few days old, ranks
number 4.

Imagine you search for a query, how to make pumpkin pie, you would expect some page with that exact phrase to be more important than a page that just happens to have those words in the content. This is what how search engines work, they work on meaning and relevance, not just matching words. If I was looking for a local Perth web developer I would expect the exact phrase to rank higher then a page with the words spread throughout the page.

As for the being my site, I have many sites and built and promoted many more, I am not sentimental
about my site, I am concerned that it has dropped out of the rankings to last
place.

I have mentioned
that I don’t even rank for my company name where I had been number one for
years, that is not normal. That and all the other points I think I have a very
good case for being concerned.

I hope
that it’s just a temp problem, that’s all I can say. As for actions I can take,
I think the best action I can take is try to work out why my rankings have dropped,
I really don’t think that doing a bit of link building is the answer. If you
have any specific action items that can explain the drop then I’m all ears, but
I am not asking for SEO help, I have done very well in SEO besides this
problem.

[RyanKent]

In my experience link counts are a meaningless metric. You have twice mentioned having 500+ links. Many individuals can change a single forum signature and gain literally thousands of links overnight. One of those links has some value and all the rest combined have almost no value.

The important consideration is number of unique linking root domains, and the statistics of the pages which link to you. Based on OSE, your site lacks any real off-site support. In looking at your site, there is no social engagement either.

I can point out that OSE can be up to 60 days behind, but you also mentioned you have not done any recent SEO work for the site so I presume that means no recent link building.

I agree with you that your site deserves a better ranking, but you also need to acknowledge there are a LOT of sites out there with good enough content to earn rankings ahead of you, and many with more off-page support. Even this SEOmoz Q&A thread with an exact phrase match only ranks around 500 for the phrase search.

i should state once more i rank very very well in bing

I used to make that comparison but I learned some time ago it is completely worthless. I have repeatedly found instances where I ranked as #1 in Bing and not in the top 50 for Google, and vice-versa. Bing and Google are two separate companies which pull data independently and have completely different algorithms and standards. The results tend to line up only for the best sites.

Have look at page 50 or 60 you will see some that are hard to believe the should be above me

I did exactly as you asked, and I disagree. I already mentioned this Q&A which beats your page clearly on the offpage factors.

At the bottom of page 50 of Google.com SERPs for "a local Perth web development company" is the following result: http://www.exa.com.au/local-web-services.php

It is not a great result. I see link spam on the page along with other SEO issues, but that page also has a DA of 69, PA of 41 and should definitely outrank you (my opinion).

I know this is your site. I know you have put time and effort into the site. My best suggestion is to take a deep breath and a fresh analysis of your site. You have plenty of opportunities. If you wish shoot me an e-mail Ryan@Vitopian.com and I can share some specific action items I noticed. I assume you have noticed many of them as well.

[AlanMosley]

See image, I have over 500 links. Many with keywords in link
text

I understand the difference between broad and exact and phrase,
having the exact is usually best phrase second and broad last. Having the exact
match you would not expect to come last. You would expect to come first if you
were the only one to have it.

I did test on this, and never did I get such a bad result
from any other site. Some times you may not be at the top, but if you have the exact
you can expect to be, well not last.

Take the term Web Development Perth, I have it in my title, I
am well optimized for it. Yet I come 700+ out of 800+, and yesterday I was last
again.

Let’s not forget, I ranked ok until recently. Somebody has
to come last for each term, but to come last so often, well what are the odds
of that.

Even for my company name ThatsIT Solutions I used to come
first. I now come 900+ out of 1000, I made a site a few days ago with no links
that comes 4th for the term.

Have a look at some of the sites that beat me, not at the top of cause they will be well optimized, have look at page 50 or 60 you will see some that are hard to believe the should be above me.

i should state once more i rank very very well in bing,

I only hope this is a temp problem

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[RyanKent]

Hi Alan.

When you use quotation marks, that triggers Google to use a particular algorithm which only seeks exact matches. Web pages are scanned looking for the exact quote, and results are returned which match. It changes the search results completely in a similar manner to how local search uses a different algorithm then universal search.

When you remove the quotation marks, the entire body of a web page is considered. Google's algorithm then determines relevancy based on off-page factors and on-page factors. It is a completely different world of search. I believe you understand this aspect, but still are having difficulty believing the results, so I will add a bit more detail.

The attached image is from page 10 of Google.com results. You can see your search query at the top "a local Perth web development company". Take a look at the bold text in the search results. Notice that "companies" is a bold word meaning Google considers it a match for your query. Also notice that "design" is a bold word. Clearly Google feels "design" is a match for "development" in this circumstance.

I was trying to take a look at page 50 of the results and landed on page 48. I noticed your SEOmoz Q&A is at the top of page 48. See image #2. Your site is much better optimized for "Web Development Perth" but since the entire phrase is considered and offpage is 50%+ of SEO, you can clearly see how the DA of the SEOmoz site comes into play.

Your page is optimized for "Web Development Perth". At first glance it seems to me you should rank better then 700, but with so much competition, Gianluca's suggestion that not having enough quality offpage support seems valid.

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[AlanMosley]

I just checked Bing WMT and I have 500+ links from a variety
of domains including SEOMoz, many with my keyword in link text, but even if I had 2, I would not expect to come last in the world for a long tail term that only I have on my web site in the whole world.

The fact that I come up first in Bing and the fact that I ranked
quite well not long ago, did you read my post?

I also have another site that ranks relatively well for the same
term that has very few links and not optimised for the term.

No it is not normal to come last under such circumstances.

[gfiorelli1]

Hi Alan...

did you think that maybe it is not the on page optimization failing, but the off site one?

The SEOmoz toolbar tells me that your site has 3 root linking domains linking to the home page for a total of 9 inbound links. Then, checking further with Oper Site Explorer, what I see is that really are just 2 the followed backlinks owned by your home paege from 2 root linking domains.... ah! the anchor text of the links is usually your domain name.

These numbers are surely not enough in order to compete with the sites that rank in the first page in Google.com.au for the "Web Development Perth" query:

1. interweb.com.au > 646 root domains linking the hp
2. cluedesign.com.au > 400
3. sumo.com.au > 332
4. perthweb.com.au > 348
5. apiix.com > 51 (but high mozRank)

and so on.

Also the sites in second result page have at least 30 root domain name linking.

What do I want to tell with this? That before going directly to the conclusion that your site had been flagged, penalized, hacked or what so ever dramatic event an SEO can imagine, we must always consider if the problem is not simpler, as it seems to be in your case. From what I've seen, it is not Google flagging your site, but your site not being enough optimized on the web popularity side. Try to engage more and obtain more links from more root domain names and also more social signal, and you will see Google rewarding your job with better ranking.

Ciao