What Am I Missing??

[brightgravity]

Hi guys

Bit stuck here. I've got the homepage of an ecommerce site I am doing seo for to go up in ranking, and I've got once of the category pages to go right up also. But there is one more category I have been working on too (for over a month now) and it just will not show up in google at all. It is indexed, but I have hunted through the first few hundred results and cant find it for that keyword.

I have done on site and then built a load of tiered links, as well as some manual blog comments. Isn't this a bit odd? What can I do? I am still building links but it just seems so weird that it wont budge for a fairly non competitive keyword (this is google.ie too) when I got the homepage to jump from #3 to #1 using the same tactics on a more competitive keyword.

One weird point to note is that when I first got the work I used cute rank and it said they ranked #53 for this keyword. But when I looked I noticed #53 was a similar but different category page, it obviously just showed up as the only results in cute rank. But now that isn't in the top few hundred either and hasn't been for weeks. And I've not been linking to that one. Weird!

How would you guys move forward with this and try to get the category to rank? It just seems like theres a missing piece to the puzzle lol.

Thanks for any help

[mattjay]

i had a very similiar question about putting an a** load of effort into a sites page and getting nowhere lol. sometimes google is just a mystery to me i'd like to think i'm not an seo newbie, but sometimes i do what seems to be everything right and get zero. i know someone very knowledeable will be able to answer your question...there's got to be a detail somewhere missing...

[brightgravity]

Originally Posted by mattjay

i had a very similiar question about putting an a** load of effort into a sites page and getting nowhere lol. sometimes google is just a mystery to me i'd like to think i'm not an seo newbie, but sometimes i do what seems to be everything right and get zero. i know someone very knowledeable will be able to answer your question...there's got to be a detail somewhere missing...

Lol its so frustrating! And so strange. Makes no sense, so like you say I must be missing something. Hopefully someone will be able to suggest something

[chinmokuyuuki]

If your On Page SEO is in good shape the only thing left to do is boost your Off Page SEO, meaning Backlinks and lots of them.
However you said that the category keyword is less competative than your primary keyword? If thats the case, maybe you should check your On Page SEO again.

[brightgravity]

yes thats the right. and the on-page seo... I did exactly the same as I did to the other category which has shot up the rankings and stayed there, so dont know what else to do really..

[dburk]

Hi brightgravity,

Where are you ranked using the allinanchor:keyword operator? (Replace keyword with your targeted keyword)

If your allinanchor: position is higher than your standard search ranking then you need to improve your on-page SEO.

If your allinanchor: position is lower than your competitors' then your competitors are doing a better job of promoting their web pages. In this case you need to do more promotion of your web page using meritorious link building.

[brightgravity]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi brightgravity,

Where are you ranked using the allinanchor:keyword operator? (Replace keyword with your targeted keyword)

If your allinanchor: position is higher than your standard search ranking then you need to improve your on-page SEO.

If your allinanchor: position is lower than your competitors' then your competitors are doing a better job of promoting their web pages. In this case you need to do more promotion of your web page using meritorious link building.

Hi Dburk thanks for the reply.

It just doesnt rank at all. even with allinanchor I cant find it. and its been a month now.

as regards onpage, I did the same as I did for another category which jumped to #12 in a couple weeks, from not being in top 100.

I dont want to build too many more links as I dont want to overdo it. Its so strange, just dont see why its no where to be found

[dburk]

Originally Posted by brightgravity

Hi Dburk thanks for the reply.

It just doesnt rank at all. even with allinanchor I cant find it. and its been a month now.

as regards onpage, I did the same as I did for another category which jumped to #12 in a couple weeks, from not being in top 100.

I dont want to build too many more links as I dont want to overdo it. Its so strange, just dont see why its no where to be found

Hi brightgravity,

It sounds as if you have substantial competition for this particular keyword. Take a look at the backlinks for the pages listed in the top 20 positions of the allinanchor: results. If they all have stronger backlink profiles than your page then you need to seriously step up your promotional efforts, or move on to other keywords.

[brightgravity]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi brightgravity,

It sounds as if you have substantial competition for this particular keyword. Take a look at the backlinks for the pages listed in the top 20 positions of the allinanchor: results. If they all have stronger backlink profiles than your page then you need to seriously step up your promotional efforts, or move on to other keywords.

well the keyword is 'cutlery' and it is google.ie I am trying to rank for. Competition really does not look tough at all, thats why I'm baffled by this. Cant really go back to them and say I can get your site to #1 for a competitive word and can't rank an easy category. Even if it was tough competition, you would expect me to rank in the top few hundred, especially when most of the top100 is articles on .com sites and other junk.

Just really feel like there is something stopping the links from getting counted, either that or I've done something I shouldnt have

[dburk]

Originally Posted by brightgravity

well the keyword is 'cutlery' and it is google.ie I am trying to rank for. Competition really does not look tough at all, thats why I'm baffled by this. Cant really go back to them and say I can get your site to #1 for a competitive word and can't rank an easy category. Even if it was tough competition, you would expect me to rank in the top few hundred, especially when most of the top100 is articles on .com sites and other junk.

Just really feel like there is something stopping the links from getting counted, either that or I've done something I shouldnt have

Hi brightgravity,

How are you defining competition?

Here are a few stats for your your keyword competition:

intitle:cutlery about 1,390,000 results
inurl:cutlery about 1,080,000 results
intext:cutlery about 241,000,000 results
inanchor:cutlery about 23,600,000 results

Local Monthly Searches 8,100
Average Estimated CPC $0.93 - $1.14

Top ranked web page: www. cutleryandmore.com
Inlinks (12,811)
Internal links using targeted keyword About 8,640

10th ranked web page: www. chicagocutlery.com
Inlinks (503)
Internal links using targeted keyword About 107

[brightgravity]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi brightgravity,

How are you defining competition?

Here are a few stats for your your keyword competition:

intitle:cutlery about 1,390,000 results
inurl:cutlery about 1,080,000 results
intext:cutlery about 241,000,000 results
inanchor:cutlery about 23,600,000 results

Local Monthly Searches 8,100
Average Estimated CPC $0.93 - $1.14

Top ranked web page: www. cutleryandmore.com
Inlinks (12,811)
Internal links using targeted keyword About 8,640

10th ranked web page: www. chicagocutlery.com
Inlinks (503)
Internal links using targeted keyword About 107

You are using google.com, not trying to rank on there it is the Irish version google.ie

Its not a doddle, but there is no way they shouldnt be in the top 600 or so, just doesnt make sense.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by brightgravity

You are using google.com, not trying to rank on there it is the Irish version google.ie

Its not a doddle, but there is no way they shouldnt be in the top 600 or so, just doesnt make sense.

Hi brightgravity,

Here are some stats from Google.ie:

allintitle:cutlery about 1,400,000 results
inanchor:cutlery about 23,600,000 results
inurl:cutlery about 1,080,000 results
intext:cutlery about 241,000,000 results
intitle:cutlery +inurl:cutlery +intext:cutlery +inanchor:cutlery about 485 results

That last line is the number of pages that have thorough optimization. That means you have several hundred very serious competitors for this term.

Additionally, this term happens to have a number of keywords that Google treats as the same word.

Use the following search string to see the bolded words that trigger results for the same keyword:

~cutlery -cutlery

~cutlery -cutlery - Google Search

Considering all these factors it will take a significant amount of promotional effort to appear near the top of search results for this particular term.

I would recommend doing research to find worthwhile keywords that include the word "cutlery" in a keyword phrase. Optimize for the most promising phrases that contain your primary targeted keyword within the phrase. You can begin to build traffic for those long tail phrases while building authority for the root keyword. Eventually you will begin to rank for many keyword phrases that include that root keyword, which helps you to eventually rank for the more competitive primary keyword.

[brightgravity]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi brightgravity,

Here are some stats from Google.ie:

allintitle:cutlery about 1,400,000 results
inanchor:cutlery about 23,600,000 results
inurl:cutlery about 1,080,000 results
intext:cutlery about 241,000,000 results
intitle:cutlery +inurl:cutlery +intext:cutlery +inanchor:cutlery about 485 results

That last line is the number of pages that have thorough optimization. That means you have several hundred very serious competitors for this term.

Additionally, this term happens to have a number of keywords that Google treats as the same word.

Use the following search string to see the bolded words that trigger results for the same keyword:

~cutlery -cutlery

~cutlery -cutlery - Google Search

Considering all these factors it will take a significant amount of promotional effort to appear near the top of search results for this particular term.

I would recommend doing research to find worthwhile keywords that include the word "cutlery" in a keyword phrase. Optimize for the most promising phrases that contain your primary targeted keyword within the phrase. You can begin to build traffic for those long tail phrases while building authority for the root keyword. Eventually you will begin to rank for many keyword phrases that include that root keyword, which helps you to eventually rank for the more competitive primary keyword.

Thanks for the info. Didn't realise you can use that search string to find other words which Google treats the same. I thought that with the site being .ie, google.ie would give it more weight over non .ie sites, so I didnt think the competition aspect applied so much if there are lots of .com's etc in the search results.

The thing is, related keywords have a couple hundred searches only, but I see your point, best to start working on those ones.

Is it possible to rank for a keyword that isnt on your page, but part of it is? E.g. 'cutlery' is on the page but 'ireland cutlery' isnt.