Why is our website ranked lower but beats most competitors in full SERP report?

[urkeman]

We are analysing why our website ranks so low (currently position 8 in serp). We beat our competitors in most areas. Also we produce by far the most useful content. Do not buy links or do any other malpractice. We have been for a long time ranked in top 3 (well mostly 1-2) positions. In the last year we have seen a decline to position 8-10 and we are not sure why this is the case.

Can anyone suggest what we should be focusing on? We are clueless. All the practices we used to "know" now seem obsolete.

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[RobertFisher]

Hello Jane,

You make some really good points here. It is amazing how easy it is to get hung up on one thing or another and miss the real issue. Quality will typically win out every time. I have clients who hire someone to put out a post a day, etc. Focusing on putting out content people want to see or products presented in a way that is not a mirror of everyone else, will always pay dividends. Focusing on business outcomes as opposed to rankings is the other "aha moment"more need to have.

Keep up the great work at Moz, Best,

[JaneCopland]

Hi there,

Just to round off this thread, I would say that Robert is right - often low rankings aren't about what you are doing "wrong" but are about what your competitors have done right that you have not considered. If your SEO practices are out of date (I am guessing here, but things like seeking links from directories, focusing on the minutiae of markup rather than robust site structure and quality, unique content, pushing out small daily "blog" updates that are repetitive rather than writing two or three longer, quality pieces per week, etc.) then your rankings will suffer if your competitors are more up to date.

If you are still seeking links from third party sites with solely "optimised" anchor text (e.g. links saying "Car insurance" pointing to the car insurance page) you can end up with a penalty or poorer rankings as a result, usually at the hands of the Penguin algorithm or a manual action (although if you are still ranking 8th, you do not have a penalty.

[Andy-Halliday]

Michael - I disagree, if you are doing everything naturally then you don't need to worry about Google updates.

If you are producing, good original content then that people naturally link too then Google isn't going to penalise you. All Google wants to do is rank relevant content to keep people using Google happy and not going to other search engines. Play by their rules and you don't need to worry about future updates.

[VIPTourgroup]

I experienced the same.  Its been since the last penguin update for us. We had no manual actions in google but automated actions are very common.  My site was especially effected because i had several sites with similar content from same database. I was forced to streamline down to one site with one database.  I also had to disavow links that may no longer be acceptable to Google's new guidelines.  Check out authorship and content canonical's on your site, these are very big factors with Penguin.  Its frustrating to go from top 10 to below 50 for us. Lost lots of business because of these changes. Just chasing the dragons tail with Google changing the game with every update.

[johnny122]

1/ About links : page and domain authority are not all; anchors text match to keyword can make the difference.

2/ About content/text : try to understand regarding the other results what is the expected semantic according to Google. Besides, a length of 2000+ words will help.

[Andy-Halliday]

Hi Urkeman

I would have to partly agree with Robert, with what are the competition doing that is better what you are doing, but I would also look at the "produce the most useful content" like Robert said that is subjective - have you looked at how much of your great content is generating links to it, it could be as simple as that your competitors are better at using their "less useful content" but getting good quality links to it.

Writing brilliant, amazing unique content is only part of the content strategy you must outreach this content to gain links, mentions traffic to it.

I would maybe look at what links your competitors are getting that you are not.

[EGOL]

All the practices we used to "know" now seem obsolete.

If you have used these on your site they may have generated a reduction in your SERPs.

[RobertFisher]

Urkeman,

There is no concrete answer for "Why?" Please understand you are not the only one who has ever asked this question. The answers are many, but first I suggest you take a step back and understand that what you or I think is "the most useful content" is very subjective. You may not be doing anything outwardly wrong, "malpractice," but still not doing the best in terms of the algorithm and what result it has calculated based on your site.

Is your content regularly changed up? Is your content relevant to whatever group you are trying to reach? Is your on page SEO great? Are your links high quality even if you have more than the other guy? Is your content DEEP, in other words, more than just a rehash of all the other info on the web.

I decided some time back to look at what the sites ranked ahead of me are doing better as opposed to bothering myself with, "Why are they in that position?"

SEO is something that is done over time and requires a semblance of patience. Take your time, look at any possible changes that improve your site in the eyes of Google, Bing, etc. And if you are relentless, you will move up.

Best,

Robert