Why are my keywords not ranking better?

Thank you for your part in monitoring what is going on with your keywords.

There are a few additional pieces to factor in that may put this in a slightly different light for you. In terms of absolute top 100 rankings what you say is absolutely true and obvious. Depending on how well your site is SEO’d as a whole, as well as the SEO done for individual pages directly for specific keywords, this may improve over the coming months or may never significantly change. Factor in these additional points below as you evaluate.

First, you need to track what additional keywords you are now ranking for compared to the past. Link building is not only about whether your specific keywords rise or fall but also about absolute traffic to your site. It may help if you are able to examine your total keyword list from analytics and/or your log files and determine if you have lately picked up some surprise keywords that you are now ranking well for.

Also, when you read the Ranking Reports that I send over always take note of the Visibility Index assigned to Google as it relates to your keywords. If you click on the HELP button there the software company will give you the briefest of explanations on what that number relates to. My personal understanding is that it loosely corresponds to how many keywords are ranking within the first three pages of Google’s search engine results. The higher the percentage, the more visible you are in the search engine results. People are not very likely to go to page 4 and beyond to see your listing. One, two and three is about the extent of it.

I did a quick review of your reports, quick so I may have made a mistake, but from our first report a few months ago when you had a 0%, over the next few reports you have moved from 0% to 4% in regular steps. There is steady progress. That may help you to see your results in a broader light.

As to your question on actual traffic for a keyword claimed to have 200,000 results, a couple of things to consider.
a. Take those search numbers casually as just a rough guide. A VERY rough guide.
b. Put the keyword in your Adwords account, pay enough for clicks to get some real traffic experience and count the impressions registered for the first month and you will have a more realistic estimate of real world traffic. I suspect you will see a large difference between claimed versus real traffic numbers.
c. Depending on the “expert” we quote, it could be from 50% to 80% of the organic traffic actually goes to the domains listed 1, 2 and 3. And now that Google has been drastically changed around how it displays the first page results it really messes with your marketing. It is much more difficult to rank for 1, 2 or 3 and then expect a corresponding increase in traffic. It is much better to go for a broad mix of keywords. That brings us back to unexpected keywords you rank for. More links, more time, more site content, more significant keyword rankings.
In other words, marketing through Google has become much more complex in the last few months.

I hope this helps you a bit to understand the numbers and their implications for your business.
Jim

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