Can You Explain This?

The social pages have more authority. Plain and simple. They probably have more and better links.

The directory links you bought may not even be indexed yet. Most directories do not get crawled all that often. Only the most popular ones get crawled regularly and very deep.

I wouldn't consider pages 9 and 10 as showing up.

OP what are you using to check your SERP positions?

Thanks, guys. Mike, I just checked my Google Search Console and the links are listed. I'm just not sure if Google hates those links because I bought them at 3 directories.

Yukon, I usually use Google in the incognito browser to check my SERPS when my website is new because most of the free rank checking tools only show if your listing is on the first page of Google. Although, Small SEO Tool's Keyword Rank Checker will show results up to page 40.

One of my webpages is already on page 4 with only 1 nofollow comment backlink that I made myself and the keyword it is ranking on page 4 for has a monthly search volume of 9.3k - 11.5k with a ranking difficulty score of 30 according to Moz.

My EMD keyword that I described in my original post only has a monthly search volume of 201-500 with a ranking difficulty of 22 and yet, none of my webpages show up anywhere for that search term.

Also, there is another term I am targeting (with a quality 2,000 word article I wrote) that is searched 11.5k - 30.3k per month with a difficulty score of 15 and my webpage is not showing up on any of Google's pages when I type in that search term. I have a few nofollow blog comments pointing to that webpage.

And, yes, I realize that nofollow blog comment links or any comment links, for that matter, are useless for ranking, but, I'm not experienced at getting quality links from other websites in my niche. How to do that effectively with good results is something I would like to learn.

Could a Google algorithm be penalizing me for these comment links and paid directory links for a brand new site?

Directory links typically hold very little value. You'll need more than a handful of directory links to rank for most keyword phrases.

The Google algorithm is very unlikely to be penalizing your links. It might be ignoring them, but penalizing? Pretty unlikely. If you were being penalized, it would probably show up as a message in your Search Console.

Okay. That's good news.

Now, can you explain why one webpage appears in the SERPS for a keyword with a high difficulty ranking score while my other webpage doesn't appear ANYWHERE on Google's pages for a much less difficult keyword to rank for?

1.Add brand keywords in the Title and Description of pages also use in header tags

2.Target brand keywords in internal and inbound links.

Thanks, Yukon. I used to use SEO Book's Rank Checker and then Firefox wouldn't allow the add-on but I just updated Firefox and it works again! It says my EMD is on page 8 and I just checked and sure enough it's there now. This mystery has been solved.

It's quite simple! All social media has good DA and that's why they are showing up. Continuously build links for your specific webpage. It will be higher soon. Happy working

True. But, building quality links isn't as easy as you make it sound. Anybody can "build a link". But, building quality links is a whole different ballgame.

Awesome. Thanks for the info about the delay setting. I didn't even know about that.