SEO Tycoon

**SpankyAndy** · 08-19-2009, 03:49 PM

Hi all !

I'm looking for a bit of Google related SEO advice, so I hope I'm in the right place...

Our site's home page is on page 4 of google.co.uk results for the key phrase "clip on earrings" while http://www.@jf@shionjewellery.co.uk/...clip-c-84.html (replace the @'s with the letter a) is on page 45 for the same phrase.

Most of our other category pages rank very well for the respective key phrases, with some at the top of the first page. Can anyone please give any advise on why this one category page appears to have been thrown out of the rankings? I was thinking it may have been keyword density, but that doesn't hold true for the other categories.

Any help is much appreciated !

Cheers

Andy

**chrishirst** · 08-19-2009, 03:55 PM

keyword density doesn't exist so that's out of the frame.

it's there because it's not as "important" as the "home" page is for that phrase.

**bigcat1967** · 08-19-2009, 04:10 PM

I agree about throwing KW density out the window.

How competitve is your nich?

**SpankyAndy** · 08-19-2009, 05:19 PM

Not massively. Google's organic keyword tool estimates 1800 visitors per month based on that key phrase. There's a lot of sites selling similar products, but I don't think competition is an issue, given the home page ranks fairly well.

I've only just really started optimising the site, but I'm finding it odd that this one particular category page fails to rank for the keywords, while the others do fine. It seems that the one page has been penalised, but I can't figure out why. I emailed Google for a reconsideration request, to which I got a very generic "We've reviewed your site, please wait to see if your site changes in the search results" response and didn't explain any potential problem(s).

I'm confused !

**chrishirst** · 08-19-2009, 05:40 PM

It isn't "penalised" and there isn't a problem.

This is simply "how it works"

Every page is an independent entity, they "rank" where the algo puts them, some data centres may have the page higher some lower. Next week the "problem" page might be on P1 and the "home" page could be on P10.
Tomorrow every page in the site may disappeared.

Rankings are a pointless way of deciding how well you are doing, measure something tangible such as conversions rather something so vague and unstable.

**SpankyAndy** · 08-19-2009, 05:59 PM

Sorry, you've missed my point. I'm not using the rank/position as a measurement in any way whatsoever, as clearly, a measurement of this sort is of no use. The key phrase is very specific to the product and the best way of driving a relatively large amount of targeted traffic to the products.

All the statistics I've gathered from the site show that visitors that are taken directly to a relevant category page spend longer on the site and therefore are more likely to make a purchase, rather than visitors who are taken to the front page when searching for a specific term and are much more likely to bounce.

The only keywords that drive visitors to the site via Google are keywords where the site is listed in the top half of the first results page, hence why the position is so important to me.

All the other category pages rank well, except this one, so I would make the assumption that there is something very different about this one page that is causing the anomoly, but unfortunately I can't figure what it is. I feel I've been looking at it for so long that I now can't see what it is, even if its blindingly obvious!

**chrishirst** · 08-19-2009, 06:41 PM

Certainly a more focussed page "above the fold" in the SERP has a greater chance of gaining click throughs, however you miss the point. Just because You do not see it on P1 in the dacentre you are looking at, does not mean this is the case for every searcher, you could have two machine side by side in the same office, on the same IP, running exactly the same queries and see different results.

To work out why any page "seems" to be different is an exercise in futility, just because the pages have an identical structure, exactly the same markup around the various text elements does NOT mean they will be treated the same by search engines there are far too many variables for that.
This is where the formulaic optimising practised by so many will fail, each page, each subject, and each phrase may need something a little different. This is where the REAL skill is in SEO, not in knowing how to beg links or spam "social network sites". But in actually optimising of pages to get conversions.

**jj1** · 01:05 PM

Is that page in the supplemental index - either because its content is very similar to another page (your website or another), or because of very low page content or because very little link juice goes to it? There are different tools for checking which pages are in the supplemental (google for them).

**John LA** · 08-25-2009, 07:47 AM

It all depends on your keywords on how competitive it is. Niche doesn't matter as long as you have he right keyword in hand, you can dominate the Google search results.

**caitlincalida** · 08-25-2009, 07:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

It isn't "penalised" and there isn't a problem.

This is simply "how it works"

Every page is an independent entity, they "rank" where the algo puts them, some data centres may have the page higher some lower. Next week the "problem" page might be on P1 and the "home" page could be on P10.
Tomorrow every page in the site may disappeared.

Rankings are a pointless way of deciding how well you are doing, measure something tangible such as conversions rather something so vague and unstable.

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Thanks for sharing good information.i did not know about that.

**francis84** · 08-27-2009, 02:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

It isn't "penalised" and there isn't a problem.

This is simply "how it works"

Every page is an independent entity, they "rank" where the algo puts them, some data centres may have the page higher some lower. Next week the "problem" page might be on P1 and the "home" page could be on P10.
Tomorrow every page in the site may disappeared.

Rankings are a pointless way of deciding how well you are doing, measure something tangible such as conversions rather something so vague and unstable.

I agrree with Chris. Fluctuation in SERP are just normal.