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

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.

2. 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).

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