How do you explain this in this Keyword Difficulty Report?
-
Hello here,
I am trying to understand how my site virtualsheetmusic.com can better compete for the keyword "sheet music download" where we used to be 3rd until a few months ago, and now we are at the 5th spot.
But here is my specific question: I can't find an explanation why two of our competitors are ranked before us at the 3rd and 4th spot. Please, look at the attached image (very wide) which shows the Keyword Difficulty Report for this keyword. You can also download a PDF of it here below:
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/storage/keyword-sheet-music-download.pdf
We are at the 5th spot, and the two competitors highlighted in pink are the ones I am talking about: I am trying to understand why they are ranking better than us, despite our metrics look much better than theirs. In fact, if I look at the metrics in the report, I can't find an explanation to justify their outrank against us, so there must be something else that the report is missing.
Any thoughts about this issue are very welcome!
Thank you in advance for any help.
Sincerely,
Fabrizio[keyword-sheet music download.jpg](http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/storage/keyword-sheet music download.jpg)
-
Thank you Wesley for your comment on the other thread about the Panda. We have decided to put back all the pages in the index and in the meantime try to differentiate and thick them more. Our traffic was down too much as well as our business was suffering too much that we couldn't keep up.
As for the bounce rate, that is pretty much from all our sources. Direct traffic has actually an higher bounce rate right now (58%), and used to be better in the past (38% in 2009), but on the Google side it is now 46.33% whereas used to be 57% in 2009. Referral traffic is about 50% bounce rate and used to be worse in 2009 at 53%. Please, note that in 2009 our business was going great. 2009 was the best year ever and we always take it as the reference the reference year.
I am aware that we need to get that down furthermore, but it is hard to understand how to do it. If I look at our website, I don't see anything misleading or anything for which users can be scared away, but maybe I need someone that can think more "out of the box".
I really appreciate your help and brainstorming!
All the best,
-
Fabrizo, as I just commented in one of your other questions Google Panda is now part of the standard Google algorithm and it isn't a periodic update. You said you were waiting for the next panda update in order to make a recovery. I don't think this is going to work anymore.
A bounce rate of 45% is a very high bounce rate in my opinion. Is this for all pages, the home page, product page?
Where is the bounce rate the highest? From direct traffic, referral traffic or search engine traffic?I think that two things are not very good for your rankings:
1. You are not being found on your products since they are no-indexed.
2. Bounce rate is one of the metrics Google Panda misses. A bounce rate this high is an indicator to Google that users are not finding what they are looking for at your site. If a user types in a query, clicks on your site, goes back to google and clicks on one of your competitors and they look like their site then it is a clear signal to Google that the other site is more relevant for the user on a given query. If this happens a lot then they can lower your rankings.Try to find out where the bounce rate is coming from and try to give us here some more information which we can help you with. If anything was unclear, let me know.
-
Thank you Wesley, actually the only real explanation I have is that we are under a Panda penalization. That's why we have removed some many pages from the index and are hoping to recover in some way with the next Panda update (or Panda algorithm integration).
The bounce rate for our site is always pretty much the same as in the previous years: 45%
Do you think that a Panda penalization could be the "missing" metric here to explain our lower ranking? We have the same kind of problem on many other long tail keyword results targeting specific product pages: we have much lower rankings than many crappy websites!
Thank you again.
-
I don't see that, both external links and linking C-blocks are much lower than mine (I am talking about the sites highlighted in red). Am I missing anything?
-
Your metrics in fact look better than the other websites in the list (the ones in red at least).
In a different question you posted here you mentioned that you no-indexed all of your product pages. This could be a reason since i'm pretty sure your product pages can contain a lot of information which you want to be found on.The overall user experience could be an issue too (Google Panda). Go to your statistics on Bounce rate and overall time on page. Are people happy with what they find on your website or do they leave immediatly?
If they are leaving immediately try to determine why. Is the design of the website not good enough? Are they looking for something completely different in terms of content?
This is a very difficult question to answer without access to information which is not provided in the attached image.
I tried naming a few possible problems.Let me know if you find something and I hoped i helped in some way.
-
External links in and linking C-blocks are playing in their favor. Both are still an important metric to look at.
What keyword is this for?
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Difference keyword tool and related topics
Hello, Can someone explain me the difference between those 2 ? Because to me they are very similar. Thank you,
Moz Pro | | seoanalytics0 -
More complete campaign reports
SEOMoz campaigns include a lot more data than can be sent via email automatically with the custom reporting feature. So what do people do to send that data to clients? Do you not include it? Or export reports manually and send them on? Or something else?
Moz Pro | | antdesign0 -
On-Page Optimization Report: How Are Keywords Chosen?
Apologies if this has already been covered 100 times! Last month I set up a new campaign, and so far the On-Page Optimization tool has only crawled and graded three of my pages so far. I assume it takes time for more pages to be covered? But, here's my real question: I see that the tool is giving my pages grades based on certain keywords, but the tool itself seems to be deciding which keyword to use in grading each page. To use a made-up example, my example has a page about leather gloves, a page about wool mittens, and a page about cotton mittens. The last one is supposed to be optimized for the keyword "cotton mittens," but the tool is grading it based on how well it's optimized for "wool mittens." I can go into the drop-down at the top of the page and change the keyword that the page is graded on, and that gives me a new grade, but only for that instance. The next week, the tool is back to giving the page an F for "wool mittens." Is that because the tool decides that "wool mittens" is the keyword for which the page has the best chance of ranking, no matter what my intentions are? is there any way to permanently tell the tool that I want the page to target "wool mittens" as its main keyword? Thanks in advance for your help!
Moz Pro | | ScottShrum0 -
Seomoz keyword research
Hi, does seomoz have keyword research tool? or any plan to have one in near future?
Moz Pro | | imsameer0 -
How do I finde out how my company ranksfor each keyword compared to their competitors?
Is there a tool or way to see how my company ranks for each keyword compared to the competition.I am new at this and am wondering if there is a tool for this and how to use it . Answers please in very laymans terms. Thank you.
Moz Pro | | poweradmin1 -
Discrepancies in link reports from SEOMoz and OSE
Hello, I am trying to understand the link profile of my site. In the competitive analysis from SEOMoz, it shows 22K+ of links, with about 900+ being external followed links and 800+ internal. Webmaster tools shows a similar number of external followed links, but the link report from OSE only shows about 150 external followed links. This brings up several questions: Where is this 22K total links coming from? Why is there such a difference in the SEOMoz competitive analysis and the OSE report? Why does the OSE report show some links as not followed, while Webmaster tools lists them as followed? Am new to the off-page aspects of SEO, and I have to say the discrepancy in data from different tools is by far the most challenging thing for me. Would welcome general advice on this topic as well. Thank you!
Moz Pro | | LynnMarie0 -
Do keywords in drop-down menus count?
In running one of my campaigns in SEOMoz Pro, it was recommended that I reduce the amount of times a keyword is used to 15. On the actual page, there are fewer than 15, but when you include the number of times it is used in drop-downs from the nav bar, the number is 53. I know there is really no hard and fast rule about how many instances of a keyword make for keyword stuffing and the drop-downs only use the term where needed. Without it's use, it would be difficult to navigate the site. Is this a problem or should I focus on more important fixes?
Moz Pro | | rdreich490 -
How do I get my crawl report?
I received a message that my crawl report is complete with a link - went to the link however - when I click on the icon that has the report name and the complete check mark nothing happens looked around can't find the results. Need to bid on this job so it would be helpful to know where to get it. Thanks for all you do. Wickey
Moz Pro | | Wickey0