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SEO trick or a Google fluke?

by Fleki
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I ran into something interesting, while doing an SEO profile for a potential client.

He has a website, let's call it domainname.com. He only ranks for two keywords - his name (domain name) and this other, very very competitive keyword.

For that one keyword he is #1, right above the local results. This is what makes it weird:

1. he is nowhere to be found for any other keyword or variation of that specific keyword. Even if you add a little "s" and make one of the words plural (the KW has four words total) his website immediately disappears from the top 50 results. Usually my pages rank lower for similar keywords, but I have never seen such a strong #1 position with such a huge drop for that kind of keywords variation.

2. Moz grade for the page and that keyword is "F". There is not a single exact keyword on the page or in the source. However, there are plenty of similar keywords that he doesn't rank for (not in the top 50)

3. Google shuffles between two different pages when displaying the results: www.domainname.com/City and www.domainname.com/contact-us. It literally switched those two pages out last night several times and then stopped.

4. SEMRUSH shows that there are only five keywords that he ranks for, but four of them are his name. The other one is this one and he's been ranked for at least a week or so.

5. There are no backlinks to his website with the anchor text that is the exact keyword. Not in ahrefs or anywhere else.

Keep in mind that this keyword is huge and people pay well over $100 per click. This keyword has 1000 searches per month according to Google Adwords too.

The only thing that I could find on those two pages that is not on the rest of the website is links to the review pages on Google, Yelp, Yello Pages and some other website. They have no more than 2-4 reviews and the reviews are not even all that great.

There are no social mentions or social signals that would tie the website to this specific keyword. Actually there is nothing online that would tie this website directly to this specific keyword. Technically he should rank for 30 similar keywords that are on his website, or somewhere within his backlink structure.

I am not sure where else to look to try and figure this out.
#fluke #google #seo #trick
  • Profile picture of the author ilee
    Maybe he's blocking backlinks from being seen, and has big links with laser targeted anchors pointing at it (with the highly competitive keyword). Do they currently work with another SEO company? You simply don't rank for those keywords by accident, and if you don't know what you're doing.

    As it's only been ranking for the keyword for a week, it could well be that the strong backlinks haven't been clocked by the backlink checkers yet, but has by google.
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  • Profile picture of the author SEO Power
    My responses to your observations:

    1. It happens when the site hasn't gained a good amount of authority in Google.

    2. You can rank for a keyword without including it in your content or title as long as there are related keywords within the content.

    3. Again, this happens when a site hasn't gained enough authority to rank steadily and when new backlinks are discovered.

    4. You can't rely on semrush alone. Use Google Webmaster Tools to find out what keywords it's currently receiving impressions for.

    5. You can rank for a keyword without using exact match anchor text.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ryan3
    You don't need to have a keyword on a page to rank for something.
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  • Profile picture of the author Fleki
    Hey SEO Power, I understand everything you're saying but even with all that in mind this scenario seem impossible. Let's use a different keyword to give you an example:

    PAYROLL PROCESSING ACCOUNTANT CHICAGO - let's say this is the keyword. Let's say it's $150 per click and it has 1000 "exact" searches per month.

    www.BobSmith.com - let's say this is the website.

    1. www.BobSmith.com/Chicago is number #1 result for the keyword above, but so is www.BobSmith.com/contact-us if you perform searches one after another. Google shuffles these two pages, although for 5 times that it displays "/Chicago" you get one "/contact-us".

    2. Turn "accountant" into "accountants" and the website is not in the top 50.

    3. There is not a single exact keyword on the page or in the source, however there are 15 similar keywords "Chicago Payroll Processing Accountant", "Payroll Accountant Chicago", .... , "Chicago Payroll Accountant".

    4. Same with the backlinks - there are plenty of backlinks with those other keywords but almost no or very, very few with this exact keyword that they ranked for.

    From my experience #3 + #4 above will result in at least a few pages ranking for one of those keywords, because a) they are included in the page and b) they are the anchor text. But c'mon, look at this: Screenshot by Lightshot

    8 nearly identical keywords most of which are included on that page as well as the anchor techs and they're not ranking for a single keyword other than the one that's nowhere on the page and very rare in the anchor text.

    I understand all of the things that you guys mentioned, but this is beyond that. There must be some kind of trick that we don't know about.

    Another thing to point out, SEMrush shows that there were over 80 keywords that his website ranked for last year and then they all dropped off. Until this month when he got 5 keywords (4 of them being his name).

    Weird.
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