Need some help understanding SEO - Please help before I lose [pull out] all my hair
-
I'm new to SEO, and am stubbornly trying to educate myself. I have a telescope shop in Canada, it's a small business that we run on the side. We're driving lots of traffic through FB and our outreach programs but I really want to increase our presence on search. We released a new website back in January and it killed some of our rankings. We're working our way back with a very specific set of efforts on regular SEO:
- Metadata and titles, although it seems that's not super relevant
- Building high quality backlinks and eliminating any spammy backlinks
- Rewriting product listings so that they are original content though I'm not sure how important this is in e-commerce
- Writing high quality articles and blog posts
- Working relevant keywords into our product pages and titles
I understand that good SEO is about pushing on all the levers, and trying to make sure that your site is as valuable to the end user as possible. We're making some good progress, but I'm puzzled by the #1 shop in Canada. They don't put any apparent effort into SEO and they still rank #1 on every key product we compete with them on. I've worked with two separate, highly ranked and regarded SEO firms on this and neither has been able to tell my why this other site ranks so highly. Here's a specific example on a popular product that we both sell, the Celestron NexStar 8SE.
Here’s the link to Telescope Canada’s page for their Celestron 8SE:
https://telescopescanada.ca/products/celestron-nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope-11069
Here’s a link to the Celestron 8SE page from the manufacturer website:
https://www.celestron.com/products/nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope
Telescopes Canada has just copied and pasted. There is no original content aside from adding the shipping and return policy to the tab, and having some options for selecting accessories on the page.
Here is our page:
https://all-startelescope.com/products/celestron-nexstar-8se
We have higher page authority, higher domain authority, and they keyword analyzer in moz says that our page is higher quality than the Telescopes Canada page. I can’t find a single metric on any tool (ubbersuggest, Moz, ahrefs, semrush) that says Telescopes Canada is a better site, or has a better NexStar 8SE product page.
But they keep ranking ahead of us, and right at the top of google search. Our titles are good, our metadata is good (but I don’t think that’s been a serious ranking factor for about ten years). Our text is original, it’s relevant, we have healthy internal links to the page. According to Moz's page ranker it's 20 points higher than Telescope Canada's page. We have invensted in some excellent blog content, we’re adding new products to the website so that we rank for more keywords. All of those things are helping, but I fundamentally don’t understand why Telescopes Canada is #1 almost across the board on every key product in our market. There is something that I’m not seeing here.
Can you see any metric, any tool in your toolbox that indicates why they rank at the top, or even higher than we do for in these search terms specific to that product:
Celestron NexStar 8SE
NexStar 8SE
Celestron NexStar 8SE Canada
NexStar 8SE CanadaI have a feeling it's something technical that I'm missing, but I'm not sure how obvious it is with two 'professional' firms not finding it. I'd really appreciate any help or insight that you can offer.
-
If you need someone to help understand SEO, an SEO agency can help you. Go to find the best expert for SEO.
-
@rohael I wouldn't say hosting is a major factor for SEO, especially when your website loads quickly. If you wish, we can arrange SEO for your website. Email me - [email protected]
-
@nkennett said in Need some help understanding SEO - Please help before I lose [pull out] all my hair:
i took a quick look. Their content is more in-depth than yours. They are getting ranked for 3740 keywords where you are at 2100. Thats a major difference. let me know this helps.
-
@flineo Hello, im relatively new to SEO, wouldn't call myself a beginner but Im stuck on the second page of google for my keyword- restaurant marketing agency Dubai www.upscalemedia.ae
Can you give me some tips on how I can possibly take it to the first page. I heard hosting on a private server may help, what do you suggest?
-
@nkennett I can understand you very well. But take into account that new website usually can take 6 months or longer (depends on the competition) to generate significant increase in traffic. I needed 6-8 months for my homepage until the first top 10 rankings were tracked. SEO Is investment. Rankings are not coming in a few days or weeks. It needs time and during this time you put much effort into this project and never give up.
-
You said you started a new website in January, in the past you were ranking higher? Have you made redirections to new URL addresses?
I would recommend to check issues in Google Search Console, and take a look for internal linking from your posts. Creating cornerstone pages is now a significant ranking factor for SEO. Anyway, try to get at least one backlink with anchor of your keyword.
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
-
Old Blogs
We have several blogs on our site for a range of products we no longer stock. Would you set up a redirect for these - and how long would you keep it in place?
Technical SEO | | Caroline_Ardmoor0 -
Searchability Strategy
We recently had a technical SEO audit carried out and it highlighted how many clicks it took to get to many of our pages (more than 4)). Does anyone have advice on how to create a structure for our pages to avoid this or recommend any articles I can read?
Technical SEO | | Caroline_Ardmoor0 -
Linking to a Resource from a multi-language Page
I have a multi-language page where the content is available in several versions (translated). I want to link to a resource that is only available in one English. Is it a good idea to link to this resource from all language versions or should I better include the link only in the English version of my page? In the first scenario for example a Spanisch and a German language version would link to a page in English. Is this ok or could it be considered spam?
Technical SEO | | ConverterApp0 -
Unsolved Have we been penalised?
Hey Community, We need help! Have we been penalised, or is there some technical SEO issue that is stopping our service pages from being properly read? Website: www.digitalnext.com.au In July 2021, we suffered a huge drop in coverage for both short and longtail keywords. We thought that this could have been because of the link spam, core web vitals or core update around that time period. SEMRush: https://gyazo.com/d85bd2541abd7c5ed2e33edecc62854c
Technical SEO | | StevenLord
GSC: https://gyazo.com/c1d689aff3506d5d4194848e625af6ec There is no manual action within GSC and we have historically ranked page 1 for super competitive keywords. After waiting some time thinking it was an error, we have then have taken the following actions: Launched new website. Rewrote all page content (except blog posts). Ensured each page passes core web vitals. Submitted a backlink detox. Removed a website that was spoofing our old one. Introduced strong pillar and cluster internal link structure. After 3 months of the new website, none of our core terms has come back and we are struggling for visibility. We still rank for some super long-tail keywords but this is the lowest amount of visibility we have had in over 5 years. Every time we launch a blog post it does rank for competitive keywords, yet the old keywords are still completely missing. It almost feels like any URLs that used to rank for core terms are being penalised. So, I am wondering whether this is a penalisation (and what algorithm), or, there is something wrong with the structure of our service pages for them to not rank. Look forward to hearing from you
Steven0 -
SEO - is it site or page
Hi When we're talking about SEO does the search engine only look at the whole site in general or do they look at the individual page when we're talking about SERP? So if you have a keyword "my search term" Does the search engine look at the site first or the page with the term on then rank you or is it the page then the site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
How to lay off your SEO compnay?
I have decided to replace my seo company. The pint is this company has been partly my developer too. So he has set up a demo server of my website. 1- Should I be worried about duplicate material when I end my cooperation with this company(The demo server) 2- Should I be worried that if they do not like it, they go and delete all the submitted materials and destroy my pages rankings? Thanks all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlirezaHamidian0 -
Need Perfect URLs
I'm redesigning a site's structure from the ground up, and am having issues with the URLs. I'd love to have them be perfect, but kept finding conflicting advice online. 1. For my services blog, is it best to have it set up like www.example.com/services/keyword or
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stryde
www.example.com/keyword There seems to be conflicting advice as to keep it short and keep the keyword as far to the left as possible, but also that including the word services would help with long tail phrases and site organization. 2. For my blog section, is it best to have it set up like
www.example.com/blog/keyword or
www.example.com/keyword or
www.example.com/blog-post-title-with**-keyword**-in-it It's similar to the first question, but also adds the question of including the entire post title in the URL or just the keyword. Your help would be greatly appreciated!1 -
Local SEO (Rankings) + UK-wide SEO (national rankings) - achieving both
Hi All, For clients wishing to sell online / generate leads nationally, yet still want to have a local online presence to attract town / county-wide customers, I've often placed Town / County locations within both the Title Tag (or just County if space is limited) and Meta Description, plus within the Hx headings, Alt-text and within the footer of every page. My question is, does adding the location of the client within these fields really infringe their attempts to rank nationally, as some nationally ranked pages have no mention of location while others have their location (Town, County or Both) shown within them? Any help, insight or feedback greatly appreciated 🙂 Happy New Year Tony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tony-Dimmock0