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How can I work out why my niche site isn't ranking at all, despite low competition?

by d0de
23 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I'll try to keep this as short and clear as possible.

My site targets a literary niche. It has a front page of 1000 words+ completely unique content, and about 30 article pages, each of which has some public-domain quoted text and some unique commentary on the text.

The site is a .co (the former tld for Colombia, now regarded as global by google) that's an EDM for my primary keyword. Primary keyword gets 30k exact match local searches per month

The site has a good number of tier 1 backlinks with good content from ADs, blogs and web 2.0s, and a good number of tier 2 backlinks to those sites

Competition for the keyword seems week. #1 results is a PR0 site (that's stayed PR0 after the latest update). The top 5 results are all PR2 or lower. The backlink profiles aren't great and the content is almost exclusively garbage.

My site is not deindexed and has no warnings in webmaster tools. There is nothing spammy about the site at all. It doesn't carry any ads at the moment and only has minimal 100% whitehat onpage SEO. A similar site I made for a different niche using broadly the same on- and off-page SEO is ranking #2 for it's target keyword.

It ranks in the top 20 for quite a few very low traffic related keywords.

The problem is that it doesn't rank at all for the primary keyword. Using tools it isn't in the top 200 and using manual searches it isn't in the top 1000. The site is about six weeks old and although it was indexed quickly, best I can tell it hasn't ranked for the primary keyword at any stage.

I'm completely baffled as to why it isn't ranking at all. Even if it was #400 or something like that, it would be weird but I'd at least have something to go on. But it just doesn't come up for that keyword in the SERPs.

If you could suggest reasons for this, I'd be super grateful. I'm still new at niche site marketing and this site being a total failure has been a bit of a punch in the gut. I've put in tons of work and genuinely believe the site offers visitors a lot more value than the sites ranking at the moment.

The only possible reason I can think of is that my site gets the "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the x already displayed." when you do a site:mydomain.tld search in google. But the only reason that happens is that it's built using wordpress, so some of the category pages (which only contain blurbs from article pages) don't get listed. But I find it hard to believe this is a problem because it's wordpress's default behavior and the same thing must happen with literally millions of legit sites. I only mention here because I'm trying to be 100% transparent and not leave anything out.

Thanks for your help. This is really discouraging for me because as it stands my site gets pretty much 0 traffic per day.

Thanks!
#competition #google #low #niche #ranking #seo #site #traffic #work
  • Profile picture of the author TheSalesBooster
    Well are you building any back links to it?

    Also why did you choose a .co? I don't know who your target market is, but if your in the US, how many .co domains do you see on google?
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    • Profile picture of the author d0de
      Originally Posted by TheSalesBooster View Post

      Well are you building any back links to it?
      Yes. As I said, I've been using the same backlinking start I've used for my first niche site that got it to #2 for its primary keyword. Tier 1 is mainly blogs, web 2.0 and ADs, all with good content

      Also why did you choose a .co?
      Because it was an EDM and from all the research I've done EDM works equally well for all non-country specific TLDs. Also because I expect pretty much all of my traffic to come from organic google searches and hadn't seen any data that suggests .co domains get a significantly lower ctr than other tlds in SERPs. (I'm open to this being incorrect, but I haven't seen any data yet)

      I don't know who your target market is, but if your in the US, how many .co domains do you see on google?
      Not many, but there aren't many people using .co domains so I don't think that tells you much about how well they rank.

      Basically, after doing as much research as I could I decided that the EDM boost would outweigh using a less common tld. Perhaps that decision was wrong; I have very little experience. But if it was wrong, I'd be interested to find out.
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  • Profile picture of the author TheSalesBooster
    Well since we don't know your website, keywords, how your building backlinks, and what your content looks like what do you want from us? Our guess would be as good as throwing darts blind folded.
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    • Profile picture of the author d0de
      Originally Posted by TheSalesBooster View Post

      Well since we don't know your website, keywords, how your building backlinks, and what your content looks like what do you want from us? Our guess would be as good as throwing darts blind folded.
      I was hoping that the information I'd provided would rule enough things out that there would be a list of possible reasons left over I could go through and try to further rule out. If that's not the case, I apologise; as I said, I'm not very experienced.

      Isn't it unusual? I mean, even if you assume my site is crummy (and its not, but if you assume that it is because you can't see it) isn't it kind of weird that it doesn't appear in the the top 1000 results when it has EDM, unique content and the competition at the top of the serps seems so weak?

      Edit: For the record, my first niche site went from PR0 and domain age 0 to PR3 within a month using the same link-building technique I've been using for this new site
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      • Profile picture of the author Nelapsi
        How old is it and how many links does Webmaster tools say you have? In my experience what you build and what Google counts are 2 different things.
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        • Profile picture of the author d0de
          Originally Posted by Nelapsi View Post

          How old is it and how many links does Webmaster tools say you have? In my experience what you build and what Google counts are 2 different things.
          It's about 8 weeks old, 6 weeks since I added most of the content

          I don't have access to the link count just yet because I didn't realize that webmaster tools doesn't pick up links for
          Code:
          domain.tld
          if they link to
          Code:
          www.domain.tld
          I've only just fixed this problem using preferred domain so it will be little while until I have link data
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          • Profile picture of the author DeskCoder
            Originally Posted by d0de View Post

            It's about 8 weeks old, 6 weeks since I added most of the content

            I don't have access to the link count just yet because I didn't realize that webmaster tools doesn't pick up links for
            Code:
            domain.tld
            if they link to
            Code:
            www.domain.tld
            I've only just fixed this problem using preferred domain so it will be little while until I have link data
            You don't fix this with preferred domain ... you fix this by 301 redirecting your www to non-www (or vice versa) in your htaccess (or your dns):

            Redirecting non-www to www with .htaccess | dense13.com
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  • Profile picture of the author GGpaul
    How is your silo-structure? Are you inner-linking your pages properly?
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    • Profile picture of the author d0de
      Originally Posted by GGpaul View Post

      How is your silo-structure? Are you inner-linking your pages properly?
      I'm not really using an explicit silo structure (I didn't do it with the first site either).

      The main landing page links to the site's category pages, but the category pages are just a small blurb at the top followed by a list of post summaries for posts in that category.

      Basically, the niche is similar to "famous first pages in novels", where each post has the quoted first page of a novel followed by some critical commentary. There are some articles I've used for marketing the site, but they're not a big part of the site's actual content.

      Edit: and yes, there is good inner page linking, both on- and off-site
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  • Profile picture of the author mobapp
    I think you have problem with inner(Inter) linking with your all the pages properly.
    Try to create footer and this footer will apply for all the pages
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    • Profile picture of the author d0de
      Originally Posted by mobapp View Post

      I think you have problem with inner(Inter) linking with your all the pages properly.
      Try to create footer and this footer will apply for all the pages
      Why do you think I have a problem with my inner links? What are you basing that on?

      As I said, my platform is wordpress which by default has great inner links (tags, categories) and I also add a good number of relevant contextual inner links myself in posts
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  • Profile picture of the author d0de
    A squidoo lens I made (which links to my main site) is now ranking at #14 for the keyword I can't get my site to rank in the top 1000 for
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    • Profile picture of the author Lana Holmes
      I'm not sure because I'm new to the whole SEO thing, but from what I've read - maybe it's possible so called "Google Dance"?

      I've read some threads here with similar problems with new sites.

      Most common advice in these threads are: continue building good content and backlinks and wait for 2 weeks-2 months period.

      And this is the big thread here, on WF about Google Dance .

      Hope this probably will help a little.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mr Lim
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author d0de
      Originally Posted by Mr Lim View Post

      .co domain is not a problem, now I kinda wonder why everyone says .co is not best. I used to ranked a bunch .co sites back in last year, some site even score a #1 result. Maybe algo changed since then.
      Yeah I'm pretty sure that's not the problem. Thanks for sharing your experience.

      By having 1,000s' words of content x20, are they all just blank words without illustration? A full of blank contents site?
      Each post is not 1000 words. The front page of the site is 1000 words of unique content. Each post is 100-300 words of public domain content with 100-300 words of commentary/analysis, which is unique and good quality.

      Basically if you focus too much on the ranking term, I can tell you, you're unable to rank for them, this is how "over optimization", and "landing quality" happens.

      Try maximize your on-page term.
      I don't think this is the issue. The front page contains the primary keyword 7 times, 1 of which is primary navigation. The terms appears 1 time in h1 tag, 1 time in h2 tag, one time in h3 and twice in text as part of natural langauge. Front page has lots of other long tail keywords and LSI stuff, but nothing spammy and no keyword stuffing
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  • Profile picture of the author tanshi
    You said it's a WordPress site.

    I am a SEO consultant and lately I noticed many of my clients' websites dropped in rankings or fail to rank because of an over-use of H tags (H1, H2, H3, etc).

    With WordPress theme it happens because the themes are not built properly - they have H tags in the menu, many H1 tags on the homepage, etc.
    Also incorrect nesting of H tags can be a problem. (H2 tag suld be nested under a H1 tag, H3 tag under a H2 tag, etc)

    Use this tool: The W3C Markup Validation Service - enter your home URL, click on "More Options" and check the box next to "Show Outline".
    Then click the "Check" button and go to the end of the page where you will see the outline of all your H tags.

    Also make sure you are using only 1 H1 tag per page.
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    • Profile picture of the author d0de
      Thanks tanshi, that's a dynamite reply. Coincidentally, I noticed I was using two h1 tags a few days ago due a theme error. Fixed the problem then. Currently, I have one h1 tag, five h2 tags and nine h3 tags on the front page. Does that seem reasonable?

      Google's cached copy of my homepage is yet to update to reflect the change in h1 tags, so I'll have to wait and see if it has any effect on my ranking.

      Thanks!
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      • Profile picture of the author tanshi
        Originally Posted by d0de View Post

        Currently, I have one h1 tag, five h2 tags and nine h3 tags on the front page. Does that seem reasonable?
        It really depends on how much content you have on the page. You said previously you have more then 1000 words on the page. And 15 H tags.
        If you keep the number of H tags proportional to the amount of plain text outside H tags you will have no problem.

        Personally I choose to have at least 150 words in plain text per 1 h tag.
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  • Profile picture of the author tanshi
    And again, make sure none of the H tags are in the menu. I think they trigger an over-optimization penalty if the same h tags are found on all the pages of the website.
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    • Profile picture of the author d0de
      Originally Posted by tanshi View Post

      And again, make sure none of the H tags are in the menu. I think they trigger an over-optimization penalty if the same h tags are found on all the pages of the website.
      Really? Don't most website have some of the same h tags on all pages? The most common h1 tag I've come across on websites that rank is the title of the site, on every page :confused:
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      • Profile picture of the author tanshi
        Originally Posted by d0de View Post

        Really? Don't most website have some of the same h tags on all pages? The most common h1 tag I've come across on websites that rank is the title of the site, on every page :confused:
        Yes, that is true, many websites use the H1 tag to place their website title in there. But I consider this a mistake.

        It's ok to have your site title in H1 on the homepage, but on the other pages it's not such a good idea.

        The H1 tag is meant to be the title of your text content. And since the pages on your website have different content logic is to have different titles/h1 tags.

        Also, best on-page seo practices recommend to have a correlation between the page title (what you have in <title>...</title>) and the H1 tag. They must resemble, keywords used in both are considered important.
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  • Profile picture of the author marketwarrior06
    Banned
    I think the site is new and may be the competition level is changed. Otherwise its not possible. Because low competitive keywords are really easy to rank.
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  • Profile picture of the author MatthewWoodward
    1. How old is the domain?
    2. How long have you been link building for?

    Just because it has worked with great success for 1 site, doesn't mean you can repeat that success with others.
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  • Profile picture of the author TryBPO
    I like Tanshi's advice...cutting back on the h tags may help.

    Here's another thing you can try:

    Search Google for: <"primary keyword" yoururlhere.com>

    If your site doesn't come up on the first page it's likely your site is considered over-optimized. This can be adjusted on-page (as Tanshi has mentioned) or you can look at your off-page seo as well.

    If you've built too many links with your exact match phrase as an anchor it means your "soup's too salty". The way to fix this issue is to simply add more soup. (i.e. more links WITHOUT your primary keyword as the anchor)
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