Have there been recent changes to the On-Page Grader tool?
-
I use this page all the time to grade my primary and secondary keywords and for four years now have consistently managed to achieve A-C grades for all. Today however, I noticed I am flagging F grades for 50% of the keywords.
I do make a note of the initial grades for all pages (as the majority of the keywords I grade using the tool are NOT added/tracked in MOZ 'campaigns'). To make sure I wasn't going mad I went back and graded some keywords I had achieved A-C grades for just 6 days ago. The changes are as follows:
- keyword 1 initially graded an A - 6 days later is still an A
- keyword 2 initially graded C and is now graded as an F
- keyword 3 initially graded C and now an F
- keyword 4 initially a C grade and now an F
- keyword 5 initially a B grade and has remained a B.
Out of interest I then went and added one of the keywords that is now graded an F (but last week was a C) into the 'Add and manage Page Grades' section and graded once again - it's now grading this as a C. I then removed this keyword from my tracked keywords and graded again using the 'On-Page Grader' tool and ... it's back down to an 'F'.
Please could you shed some light on what's going on? I don't want to track each keyword I grade over time but I do want the parameters for grading to remain the same if I use the 'On-Page Grader' tool - what's changed?
I haven't received any alerts about any changes to the tool so if anyone could shed some light on any changes I would appreciate it.
-
Hi there!
My name is Erin, and I'm on the Moz Help Team. Thanks for reaching out! I'm happy to hear you already submitted a ticket! That will be a better place to troubleshoot this issue, and it'll keep your campaign details off the interwebz. We're all about transparency, but we still want to respect your privacy!
I love the keyword format you used in your initial post! If you haven't already done so, it'd be super if you could give us that information in the ticket, with all the applicable keywords filled in.
We looks forward to following up with you via your ticket! Happy Wednesday!
Erin
-
Many thanks Andrew.
I have just submitted a ticket about this issue as I wonder if you could be right. Will keep you updated.
-
Ah, I missed your experiment with the "tracked" vs "untracked". That to me sounds more of a bug report/troubleshooting than an algorithm change.
-
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your response. Currently the following factors are flagged as not being met:
-
Broad keyword use in page title
-
Exact keyword used in page title
-
Keywords in image alt attribute
-
Use keywords in your URL
-
Keyword is at beginning of page title
-
Optimal use of keywords in H1 tags
-
Includes a rel canonical tag
Based on my experience of using this tool for 4 years we would generally receive around a 'C' grade for a secondary keyword which has met all criteria apart from that listed above (used 14 times in the body and once in an H2 for a 2000 word page) - which is what we received when grading the page using the On-Page Grader just last week. Since then, no content has changed within the page and when I graded the page again today we received an 'F' grade.
As I mentioned in the original post, I then added this keyword to my campaigns as 'tracked' and graded this keyword again - it then received a 'C' and outlined the exact same factors I listed above as having not been met. When I then deleted the keyword from my 'tracked keywords' again and graded once more, it went back to being an 'F'.
It seems that the On-Page Grader is only really accurately grading tracked keywords, but I'm unsure as to why?
-
-
I haven't heard of anything changing in the Moz grader.
Generally the keyword grader gives you an itemized list of reasons for failing. If you click into one of them, what criteria are contributing to your lower grades?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Site Crawl 1-page 301 status error but httpstatus.io says its 403
I am trying to run a site crawl for my website and MOZ is only resulting in 1 page crawled with the home page URL Status Code of 301. However when I run it in httpstatus.io it is giving me a 403 status error. Im curious as to why MOZ is saying its a 301 and httpstatus.io is saying 403. Is there anything I can do in MOZ first to get the site crawled before asking my developers to look into the 403 error?
Moz Bar | | JohnConover0 -
Moz Crawler fails on the first page
Hi guys, Can anybody shed some light, I'm running a crawl on a client's website but it's failing on the homepage and not crawling any other pages. It appears to be throwing an 804: HTTPS (SSL) error and then terminating the crawl. Now, the page in question was serving up mixed content up until about 4 days ago, but has since been fixed. I read that we should wait at least 48 hours before initiating another crawl to avoid hitting a cached version - which I did, but it still appears to be having issues. Is there anything specific I can do to get around this issue? I'm on a trial account and this feature is one I'm keen to test, so there is a bit of a time constraint. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!
Moz Bar | | philipdanielhayton0 -
Title tag not registering on page optimization
I added a link to the "page optimization" section at moz. When I submit the url to be reviewed (click "optimize") it doesn't find the title tag, although it is definitely there e.g this page
Moz Bar | | digitalalchemy
http://naamanewman.co.il/photosGalleryID.aspx?id=34 Anybody as any Idea why is that? Maybe the tag placement on the DOM (it's not directly under the opening head tag).0 -
Is Keyword Difficulty tool algorithm changed ?
I'm very confused about this. From today, I realized that your algorithm for this tool changed. For example, I have search KC for this keyword before: suitcases for kids has KC is 23. But today I checked it again and it's 43. How can I deal with this new data? Is KC is good for determine that a keyword is easy to rank for ?
Moz Bar | | trungbq060 -
Grade my page does not work
When I want to grade this page, I get the message that page is not accesible 😞 https://www.kbc.be/site/Particulieren/Verzekeren/Uw_vrije_tijd/Uw_reisverzekering_Vakantiepolis
Moz Bar | | KBC0 -
Moz keywords tool obsolete?
It looks like Google is going to encrypt all user searches, rendering entire sections of SEO tools useless like portions of Moz. What's Moz's reaction to something like this? http://blog.hubspot.com/google-encrypting-all-searches-nj
Moz Bar | | BlueLinkERP0 -
On-Page Grader Levels
I see that On-Page Grader reports include a numerical number such as the following: Keyword Usage for audio book gift certificates = 15 I improved this page (http://www.audiobooksonline.com/audio-book-audiobook-gift-certificates.html) from 3 to 15 today. What is the maximum "grade" possible?
Moz Bar | | lbohen0 -
On page grades - quick question
My hardwood flooring client just added carpet, luxury vinyl, ceramic tile, area rugs, design, and ceramic tile to his lineup - joy, joy. He really thought the months and months of working together and creating a bunch of solid, original content and promoting it and building links and seeing great results for Hardwood Flooring means he would instantly rank well for ALL flooring. I digress, sorry. I am trying to understand the on page reports a little better. When I grade the new carpet page on his site for the keyword 'carpet' it comes back with an A - when I grade it for 'Carpet, city name' it comes back with an F. Which should I be targeting for best results? 95% of my clients are concerned about local results and not getting business other than within 20-30 miles of their office. Any guidance in understanding on how BEST to utilize the on page reporting would be greatly appreciated! (I did watch the video and check out the guide) Thank you in advance for your time! Matthew
Moz Bar | | Mrupp440