I am trying to work on my keyword for a product page of mine. The keyword is the name of the product "GuruWax" which is fairly unique (i.e. shouldn't be too much competition). For some reason though, I can't get the page to rank AT ALL for this keyword which is all over the title and content of this page! I got my Press Release as #1 for the launch of this product and even my blog post on it as #2 but the actual page is nowhere to be found in all 16 pages of google results for this keyword. My site is indexed and even has PR2 for several pages (main page and a couple others in it) and several PR1 sub pages. What's the deal?! Site - http://www.detailinggurus.com/ Page that isn't getting in the SE results - http://www.detailinggurus.com/guruwax.html Keyword - GuruWax Thanks in advance for any help!
Your title and description are the exact same, you need to fix that. I see no H1, H2, H3 tags on the page, make some with GuruWax in the subject without being spammy. other than that, build backlinks with the anchor text GuruWax and it'll get there. Outside that, Your lower right hand "sitemap" link sends you to your index page, that needs fixed and would be a good place to have an internal link with the anchor text "GuruWax". Also, you might want to set your preferred domain and stick with the convention. Get your www and non www as well as /index and / (root) redirected. I noticed your "home" link points to /index.html, yet you're link here you're using the / root URL, so I must assume you're not using a strict convention with your url naming. Change your internal linking to the absolute URL rather than relative, add alt tags to your images and title tags to your links.
It most likely has to do with the fact that your site is only PR2. That is quite low. Sites with PR2 usually don't get much search engine rankings. You need to do a lot more work building links and improving the onpage factors that Reseg mentioned. You can't simply put up a page on an unoptimized site and expect rankings.
Interesting suggestions. I added some text SEO (h2 & h3 tags plus some <strong> tags around "GuruWax" in the text), changed the description and fixed the sitemap links. These are all good suggestions and are certainly items that I should have addressed before but do you really think that was completely preventing that page from even being placed in the SERP for this keyword? It seems to me like it would have hurt the placement but it would still have ended up somewhere in the subsequent search results pages.
There's no way to know without having more details such as age of the site, I didn't do a backlink check to see how quality your links are with anchor text "GuruWax". That's going to be a big part of it. Fix the above list and build the backlinks and it should easily be top dog for that word... Woah, wait, I jsut looked and the #1 result is http://www.prlog.org/10128199-guruwax-all-new-premium-concourse-car-wax.html which is a press release on the product. The problem is the press release has the same content as your page... like cut and pasted, you gotta have original content on the page or it's competing with the press release and probably getting tagged a duplicate content due to the low authority of your domain. Add that to you list to fix
Hi Dan. I had another quick look at your website and your blog. Your problem is duplicate content. Your blog page and product details page has the same write-up about GuruWax. Even your press release has the same write-up. You can't get rankings without unique content. I would suggest you re-write the entire page if you really want rankings. Other than that, focus on getting more quality links to this page and to pages throughout your website. You need more domain authority to get good rankings.
I didn't think of that... thanks guys! I just modified the description some. Do you think it is unique enough now or should I modify it more? I guess time will tell. How long do you all suspect I should wait to see if these recent changes impact this? Thanks again for all the help guys!
Google likes unique content, so try your best and not duplicate content. Also, I would send out a new press release with your word "GuruWax" and link it to your website, you need to have strong link building to survive Google. Use this tool for SEO help: www.websitegrader.com. It will tell you what is wrong with your Site as far as SEO, and how to fix it. Best Tool ever made. Check out our site www.softwaretech.com using this tool. We were a grade of 77 when I first used it, and now we are a 95.7, which has actually increased our traffic for major ranking keywords.
Also, put a link in your signature linking to your website from your keyword GuruWax. Forums are the best way to start link building. You have to find forums that are worth the link, this site is actually graded a 99 on link grade.
Press releases and social bookmarks (even articles) ranking before new website happens a lot of times, but within a week or so the site gains the correct ranking. There are some really good suggestions in other posts. You should definitely keep your title and description different and use a different title for each page.
Well chalk this thread up as a great success for Digital Point users! After implementing the advice given on this board the page in question went from not even showing up in the search results for the keyword GuruWax to numero uno! Here is a quick summary of what I did for the benefit of others: -Edited the content to modify it enough to be unique from the press releases. -Added H2 and H3 tags in two places around the keyword "GuruWax". -Added <strong> tags around all other instances of the keyword "GuruWax" in the body of the page. -Changed the meta description to be unique from the title of the page. -Fixed the sitemap link on the footer to point to an HTML version of the sitemap. Thanks all!
1. Fixed Canonical Issue Most people would consider these the same urls: http://www.detailinggurus.com/ http://detailinggurus.com/ http://www.detailinggurus.com/index.html http://detailinggurus.com/index.html But technically all of these urls are different. 2. As for keyword in context on-page optimization, just follow this simple formula: - don't target more then 2 keywords in a page - repeat the targeted keyword 1-2 times in the title - repeat the targeted keyword 2-3 times in the description - include it 2-3 times for every 200 words of content. - higher on the page is better - use h1-h3 headings and include the keyword. So if you have 500 words of text, you should safely optimize for 7-10 different permutations without difficulty. Make sure to use singular and plurals, use italics and bold, and link to the page from other pages in your site with the specific targeted anchor texts. I sincerely doubt you are doing all the above. Just implement these simple tips, use it as a template on your current site pages and you will have success.
Well I am back to where I started from. I had it placed as #1 for this keyword for a while and now it is back to never never land. What happened?
IMO It's just a bounce, happens a lot. Stick to your guns following the above advice and it'll get back up there and likely for good next time. Could be a couple days or couple of weeks.
First, run you site/pages thru a HTML validation checker. There are many errors: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.detailinggurus.com/guruwax.html Second, go to the lower right of the page : notice Shippinga> | Privacy Policy | Site Map Missing from all your pages is the Character Encoding and Parse Mode commands: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <meta HTTP-EQUIV="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> From an On-Page SEO standpoint, you have made it to brief. This makes the density higher than the compeititon. May I suggest: <title>GuruWax Car Wax: Best Premium Carnauba Paste Car Wax Polish</title> <META name="description" content="GuruWax Premium Carbauba Car Wax For The Discriminating Automotive Enthusiast Looking That Concourse Finish - DetailingGurus.com"> <META name="keywords" content="GuruWax Premium Carnauba Paste Car Wax Polish Detailing Gurus"> In your "breadcrumb" section, there are errors. Also, I would add "Car Wax" And I make my breadcrumbs an <h2>. <tr> <td valign="top" width="560"><p align="left"> <font size=2 face="arial, helvetica">[ <a href="index.html">Home</a> > <a href="detailing-products.html">Detailing Products</a> > <a href="waxes-sealants-glazes.html">Waxes, Sealants and Glazes</a> > <strong>GuruWax Car Wax</stroong> ]</font> </img> </td> </tr> Although many say the <h1> is not needed, I would use it. Make the H2 the H1. Add a title attribute to the Image Link. Update the alt attribute with a longer string. Also, GuruWax is a brand name of a car wax. Therefore the keyword phrae should be "GuruWax Car Wax". Change a couple of the "bolded" GuruWax to this. </table> <h1 class="style4">GuruWax Premium Carnauba Paste Car Wax</h1> </div> <p align="justify"> <a href="http://www.detailinggurus.com/guruwax.html" title="DetailingGurus -GuruWax Premium Carnauba Paste Car Wax"> <img src="images/guruwax.jpg" alt="GuruWax Premium Car Wax from DetailingGurus" border="0" width="250" height="259" style="float: left" class="style2"></a><br> </p> <p align="justify"> </p> <p align="justify"> <strong>GuruWax Car Wax</strong> is a concourse level, high quality carnauba paste wax for the most discriminating automotive enthusiast looking for the unmatched look of the best waxes in the world but not wanting to spend Update the Alt attributes of the other two images as well. When you have finished these recommendations, get someone to run a Top 10 Competitor Report for you on the keyword "GuruWax Car Wax" to see what else you can update for the On-Page SEO. ************* Off Page SEO You already know you need more links ************* You will also need more traffic to you site. PM me on this one. Jim
Update: I am still struggling with this. It seems like my pages and entire site is even getting worse. I used to rank on the first page for several key phrases I target and now it seems I have lost all of those. Any insight on what is causing this would be hugely appreciated. These two reports pretty much summarize my frustration! Continued...