SEO Advice

I have been working on Improving the rankings for a website.

I noticed that there were 6 keywords from 3 different
categories targeting the homepage.The homepage was ranking for these keywords
but the rank was 50-80.I wanted this site to rank on the first page for each of
these keywords.

I created three
pages in January 2016,one for each category-so each page has 2 keywords
targeting it.I linked all these pages from
the home page so that the existing link juice will be passed.

But the funny thing is,still (end of april 2016) the homepage is ranking for these keywords
but the ranking has dropped significantly.The new pages are also not ranking.

What could I be doing wrong?

Please see ranking reports below

I was facing same problem. Then I start working on other keyword. So i suggest you to change your keyword.

trying to compete on keywords where a lot of other people are producing a lot of more relevant pages

One of the best advice i would like to give improve website rank is review your site for duplicate title elements. Do quick check od duplicate title element using google webmasters tools. This can indicate duplicate pages, and bad title element structure.

Content. Create better content. Your ranking will hardly reach the front page if Google crawls your keywords, and then finds out that your content isn’t so good. That tanks your SEO Ranking.

Focus on better keywords - analyze - apply new keywords - rinse and repeat.

Agreed. I don’t know if you’ve tried semrush, but it can show you how the competition is ranking, which can in turn help you better narrow down the keywords you should actually be targeting. Also, are these keywords really generic? Just because they have a large search volume does not mean that they are helpful. Try using more long tail keywords and see if your ranking improves.

Seems to me the money would be better spent on hiring content writers to write about what the site is about than it would be to try and write content around some supposedly “magical” words

3 Likes

When writing content you always write for the reader first and not the search engine. That’s rule number 1. But since the op asked about what might be going wrong with his or her keyword strategy, my answer regarding keywords was related to his or her question. But if we want to change the topic to content writing, I would be happy to talk about that too.

2 Likes

I guess that’s my problem. I don’t consider content and keywords to be different topics.

True, as a contrived example, if my page was about “big red widgets” I would take care to make sure the content text didn’t only refer to them as “things” or “items” etc.

I’ve always felt that well written content will automatically incorporate the words of interest that users are likely to search for.

If I felt that more users might be searching for “large crimson widgets” instead, you’re saying it would be better to change the content to at least include those words?

2 Likes

I think that the entire concept of SEO is based around writing optimized content. Yes the content needs to be well-written, informative, and written ultimately for the reader first and in a way that helps to build a good brand image. The content should be able to speak for itself. Keywords are a part of content writing, you are correct, they are there to optimize the content. I think most of the keywords that people end up ranking for are actually quite easily and naturally included within their content because they are the types of words they would be using to describe their services or products anyway. Something as awkward as “large crimson widgets” would certainly be a no-go. You wouldn’t ever want to include anything that undermines your content and makes it unnatural.

There is an art to writing well optimized content. It isn’t all about keywords, but keywords are an important tactic that go a very long way. You can have the most beautiful site with superior written content, but if you don’t rank in the first two pages of the Google SERPs, then very few people will actually visit your page. We are all too lazy these days to click past Google Results page 1. That’s just the way it is.

So, in my opinion, intelligently optimizing your content doesn’t detract from your content, it only makes it that much better and more effective. It’s like putting whip cream, chocolate sprinkles, and a cherry on top of your ice cream sunday. Yes you ultimately want ice cream and that was the entire purpose that you set out for, but those extras just make it that much better.

Hi Felgall,
Thank you for your reply.If what you are saying was the case,my Homepage would not have ranked either.The issue is after the homepage getting ranked,the rankings are not getting transferred to the more relevent pages.
Any ideas?

p.s—actually after readnig through the posts I realise that this applies to most of the posts above.I appreciate you all taking the effort to reply,However perhaps I have failed to communicate the above point properly.

I’m still slightly unclear about the situation you’re describing.

You had a home page which ranked for six different keywords, but not well for any of them. For example, your page was about pets. So you created three new pages - one for cats and dogs, one for rabbits and hamsters and one for goldfish and canaries. So each page targets two keywords.

So what did you do with the home page? Did you rewrite it to a general introduction about pets (to stick with my example), or did you leave it as it was, with the text targeting all six keywords?

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