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Ranking #2 and I didn't even try. Why?

by honed
6 replies
  • SEO
    • |
A site that I have been working on for 4 months has 20 keywords and all are ranking well with half on page 1.

I've got pretty good on page SEO on every page. It's a WP site and have done all the things you do, I have cacheing for speed, H tags, the alt tags, linking to authority sites (w/nofollow) and interlinked within the site with anchor text etc. The site and pages have good content and highly relevant to the visitor. Bounce rates are <30% and they spend an average of 2:30 on the page.

Here's the thing that has me scratching my head. I have done nothing, at all to one keyword and page on the site beyond SEO. I have not built 1 link and it ranks #2. It's not a hard keyword, but middle of the road with 1,800,000 results, so I can't figure out why the rank is so high. It was a joke, as that was the keyword that they didn't care about that much, yet it was at 50, 30, 18 and now 2. A serious W T F ?

My guess is that so much of the site ranks that that link has 'come along for the ride'. I thought I'd throw this out there to see what you all thought, as I'd like to know so I can duplicate this on the hard keywords!

Anyone have a better explanation as to why?
#ranking
  • Profile picture of the author MrWonton
    Don't look at the total results number as it doesn't really mean much. What's the search volume of the keywords (in exact match)? This is a much better metric to use to gauge site performance.

    Good job though. Focus on quality and the linkbuilding is done for you!
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    • Profile picture of the author honed
      Originally Posted by MrWonton View Post

      Don't look at the total results number as it doesn't really mean much. What's the search volume of the keywords (in exact match)? This is a much better metric to use to gauge site performance.

      Good job though. Focus on quality and the linkbuilding is done for you!
      30,000 exact match. Hmm I never looked at it before, lower than I thought, but I really haven't looked at it as I said.

      Thanks!
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    • Profile picture of the author Bryan V
      Originally Posted by MrWonton View Post

      Don't look at the total results number as it doesn't really mean much. What's the search volume of the keywords (in exact match)? This is a much better metric to use to gauge site performance.

      Good job though. Focus on quality and the linkbuilding is done for you!
      Total results don't mean much, but search volume doesn't tell you competition either. How's the on/off page seo of competition for that keyword?
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      • Profile picture of the author honed
        Originally Posted by Bryan V View Post

        Total results don't mean much, but search volume doesn't tell you competition either. How's the on/off page seo of competition for that keyword?
        Those around me have decent to good on page. #3 is good and has built links with the keyword. There are a few large corporate competitors that it is ranking above as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author NastyBlast
    Originally Posted by honed View Post

    Anyone have a better explanation as to why?
    I do not have a definitive answer I do not think anyone would. Some of your ascension maybe do to what I might now describe as the genocide of spam sites ( sites that have been using automated spam software to create back links ). the domain-body count is quite high now as Google panda has decimated many sites.

    So that could be part of what helped you. Otherwise, I have been watching Google for about nine years and I have seen stranger things.

    one thing that might explain your achievement is that I recently witnessed what I can only describe as a word cluster. One of my clients is a big player in the arts and crafts industry. they have both retail and wholesale websites. The wholesale website Seo was moderate. The retail Seo was like ok. However, the retail site was NEVER optimized for wholesale. The word wholesale only appears in 1 page out of 495.

    Yet, The retail site ranked #1 for wholesale ( once again having never been optimized for wholesale). no optimization, no keywords, no link campaigns, nothing.

    The only connection I could see was that both the retail and wholesale sites were hosted on the same IP C-class and that Google had associated them resulting in a word cluster of for the key term "wholesale supplies ".

    so if you have similar sites on your server or within your C class you may be getting the unexpected benefits you are seeing due to that
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    • Profile picture of the author honed
      Originally Posted by NastyBlast View Post

      The only connection I could see was that both the retail and wholesale sites were hosted on the same IP C-class and that Google had associated them resulting in a word cluster of for the key term "wholesale supplies ".

      so if you have similar sites on your server or within your C class you may be getting the unexpected benefits you are seeing due to that
      I'll check that out. That's a good thought.

      I don't think that I'll find anything new, but there has to be a reason. Yours is plausible.
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