I'll try to keep this short For 2 years, I've been trying hard to rank for a 3-word keyword term on Google.com. This niche term gets an insane amount of searches per day (something like 650/day). The competition for the term isnt too bad, at about 3.5 million pages. I own the exact keyword as a URL, and have been link building, content building, etc for two years. Google just refused to list me at all for the term. My guess is that I over-optimized for the term, so I toned it down a bit. I'm ranking #1 in Yahoo for this term, and it's getting me a lot of traffic. As for Google.com, I'm still not even on page 50. Just recently, I checked my Google Webmaster account and saw that it said I'm ranking #9 for this term! I was overjoyed. I checked Google...and Webmaster was wrong. I went back about 10 pages and still didn't see my site. What the hell?? I let another couple weeks go by. Webmaster still says I'm in the #9 position for this keyword. Not only that, but I'm getting a small amount of hits in Google Analytics for the term -- how is that possible? I actually took the time and searched the first 50 pages of Google for this term, and I know as a fact that I'm not listed for it. Does anyone know of a good explanation to what's happening? Is Google testing my site for this keyword a couple times a week or something? How on earth is anyone finding my site on a Google search, and why would Webmaster say I have a page 2 ranking, when it's definitely not there?
An insane amount of searches per day varies by niche. 650 a day may be great for one niche while a drop in the bucket for others. Google has many datacenters that serve many countries. You could rank number 9 in one datacenter/country and nowhere in another. This is more common for highly competitive and/or regional keywords. You can do a multiple datacenter search or go to Google's country specific search engines and you may be able to find your listing in the SERPS.
One more thing I should probably mention - this is a .us domain - every single other variation was already taken at the time I got it For this niche, 650/day is a lot of search volume.
Well, basically it isn't accurate. You're not alone, GWT shows one of my sites @ position #6 last week on google.com for a phrase that Google says got 2,642 searches PER DAY in Feb (using exact match query on Google's keyword tool). But we're actually #15. However, over the last few weeks I've caught us on the first page for a very short period each day (like 15 mins). It's very easy to catch with real time reporting and seeing a big spike in traffic from that term. So maybe they're testing the sites by throwing them on the front page for a little while and that's the position GWT reflects.
Nobody is going to know what the problem is because we don't know your site and we don't know the keyword. There must be something wrong with the content on your site or you're getting a lot of low quality garbage links. Like I said, no one will be able to solve your problem. There is no such thing as an over optimization penalty if the links are quality. If you're getting a lot of site directory crap links, then it would explain why you're doing well in Yahoo! and not in Google.
Great point. I am always surprised when people want these type of things specially understanding the situation we are going through with Google. Besides - I have been having same experiences with GWMT account and actual SERP since last couple of months. I tried to figure it out - and finally decided that there are two servers - for US and global or so to say Global and your country of origin server. This problem does not get solved even if I set my Search location to global or local IPs. You can be well assured though - you site is having great SERPs somewhere ---in some locations/corners - on this planet. Sooner than later - that result is going to get settled and propagate across regions and IPs. Cheers
Are you saying that his domain extension has anything to do with rankings at all? If so you may want to remove the "SEO Professionals" link in your signature if its yours...
I doubt that you would have problems based soley on a .US domain. It worked for del.icio.us. Are you on a server in your primary target country? Is it a dedicated server or shared? Describe the type of links you are getting including type of site, anchor text, depth of link (to home page or deeper?), etc. Are you in the Yahoo directory and the other directories that are widely consider to be strong? Does your code validate at validator.w3.org/ ? Does your web site do well SEO tests like the one at www.grader.com? Do you have a significant amount of internal linking?
Hey all, here are some answers: -I'm in the US, hosted on a US server, using a .us. The site only sells products within the US. -It's a dedicated server, but the other sites on it are basically either stale or very small with little activity. -As for links: they're links from blogs, articles and social bookmarking sites. I did my best to make sure the anchor text pointing back to the site was natural, instead of having a million links with the same keyword pointing to the site. -Not in Yahoo directory, but am seriously considering it. -The code does validate @ w3. -I haven't tried grader.com - will check it out now. -My internal backlinking is probably the best aspect of the site. Every page has breadcrumb navigation, and I tried to link pages to similar ones, or deeper links. -I didn't do any keyword stuffing, but tried to keep at least a 5% saturation, especially on the home page. My home page ranks for itself, so it's not a Google penalty issue. It also ranks #1 for "threewordkeyword" (the keyword without spaces) but does not appear whatsoever for "three word keyword" (keyword with spaces). I'm absolutely clueless as to why this is happening. As for my competitors who are raking on page 1 for the keyword term, they've all been around since the late 1990s and have shitty websites that haven't been updated since back then, which really makes me angry. It's like they're superglued to the top of the page.
Your ranking report from google webmaster shows results from web search, blog search, image search, etc from different google datacenters. Choose web search and the datacenter you are interested in ranking. If you'd like pm us the URL and we could give you our humble opinion.
delicious is an exception. FightRice, if your such a genius, maybe you can enlighten me why on all serps on almost any niche we can see 80-90% .com, .net, .org, and lately, .info, and just 5% .pro, .cc and .us. BTW, Obama has won, there's no need of any more support.
When checking web master tools you should make sure that you are selecting the "WEB SEARCH" option, and not the blog search unless you are targeting blog search and not web search... also I have site that has mobile search listed in web master tools... I was under the same misleading information, basically I almost threw a party when i checked web tools when i found out I was ranked #9 for a keyword that gets 2000/searches a day, and is my biggest competitor... so check the settings and make sure that you are looking at the correct results.... btw i am supposed to be listed as 24 no but i dont think so =[:: my 2cents....
Of course extensions matter, I completely agree with you. The problem is most people on here think they know seo because of the useless blogs they have been reading over time, but they never bother to test anything out. As for Markn36, Nobody can even try to help you with out looking at your site first. It looks to me like you don't have solid links, which means not much site authority. To rank for high competition Keywords you need site authority. You said you were considering submitting to the Yahoo! Directory, well go do it now. This will help with your over-all site authority for your topic.
I agree with snowbird that you must be no. 9 in some other country other than the one you are checking on. I assume you are checking on google.com. I also see that you are using google analytics. Try also using Google webmasters as it would tell you in which other countries you are featuring for that particular keyword. I would give you an advice. Since you over optimized your site at one point of time, you have most probably been penalized by Google. If you have toned down your site as you said, you should request for a reconsideration of your site. You will see much better and expected results after 2-3 weeks of your reconsideration request.