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Thanks guys!

Glad to help!

Thanks Katarina! Really appreciate your thoughtful response. Jim

Hi Issac, To your 1st point: "Google says it does not use GA as a way of measuring user behavior.  Regarding GA, do you just mean we should use it provide **us **insight that Google will 'pick up' in others ways?" Yes, this is a more succinct way of putting it. While GA metrics are not the be-all, end-all of algorithmic rankings, they do go a long way in explaining why certain sites/pages/content outperform others in SERP's. I know that improving my "time on page" or "bounce rate" has resulted in higher rankings for various pieces of content I have created, although with so many factors in play it can be hard to narrow it down that far. To your 2nd point: That's how I choose to operate. I have found that reducing internal links is a good start when it comes to improving user experience assuming that each link provides value or answers a question. The simplest way I can explain my process is that I sit on a page, look at the links and think, "If I were one of my customers on this page, what questions/needs would I want answered?" Based on the answer to that question, I have an idea of how many links I should have on the page. The "magic number" of 100 isn't something I pay attention to, although it is a good place to start - if you have more than 100 questions (see: links) coming from 1 page, you are probably not condensing your pages enough. Hope this helps! Cheers, Rob

Hi Martijn, Thanks for your reply. Could this be caused by "Disallow: /" in ads server's robots.txt ?

Hi, sorry for the late reply. I don't think migrating to another platform is an option, to be honest, but I appreciate the advice. Thanks.

Very good point Kris

Hi Cesare, I made purely content changes to my page and I resubmitted it to Google. I could see the changed rank immediately - in my case from not having any results to result 50. I observed it on a weekly basis and the rank kept improving every time (without any further activity): 50, 37, 24, 18, 16, 13, 11, 6 - and I believe it's not over. Can you rely on the actual position? No! My rank grows in a pretty unique way. Normally it fluctuates and the pattern would be more like 50, 24, 37, 11, 24, 16 - basically up and down. This is what I keep experiencing with majority of our keywords. Especially nowadays, Google is not as static as in the past and you can see this fluctuation very frequently, sometimes daily. I agree, I would recommend at least 8 weeks' observation and between week 8 and 12 you might know where you are and optimise accordingly. I hope this works for you. Good luck! Katarina

it was a pleasure

I am talking about the subfolder and anything past the forward /

It would be odd for Google to invest in ranking high in Google searches for "search engine" and I wouldn't be surprised if they actively suppress that result because -- well -- people searching on Google have already found Google's search engine. But Google does land on the first page of Bing results for "search engine". In any event, I'm not sure how this relates to my question. Can you help me understand? For example, do you think Google -- who most would agree are a fairly important search engine -- are trying to rank high on Google searches for "search engine" and discovering that for unknown reasons, they can't even get into the top 15 pages of results for it? That is what I am asking about, except it's Firefox and "browser". Firefox is second for "browser" on Bing. It's been a browser for twice as long as Chrome has existed. It is at least as well optimized for the keyword "browser" as, say, a random GitHub project on the 14th page of "browser" results. And yet, it doesn't rank. I'm looking for ideas why. For what it's worth, unlike Firefox, Google may not need to invest in search rank for, say, their browser. Anyone who visits Google Search (or any other Google tool) in a non-Chrome browser is apt to get an advertisement at the very top of the page, outside and above all search results, encouraging them to use Chrome. You don't need a lot of SEO when you own the SE.

16 times out of 490 words is a 3.2% density, which is right where you want to be. You could actually use it more times. a 3-7% density is good. Also, make sure you have this target keyword synergized in your title, description, and Hs. I would suggest the change in ranking is a temporary dip, since you changed the copy of the page. Think of your rankings like a stock market. Even the best stocks go up and down. Now that you have entirely new copy, Google is now reorganizing your content in it's index. Should be back up, if not better, soon. Personally, I see pages with 1500+ words rank well. But then the challenge is user interface and design to allow an easy read.

Hi John Doherty, I know this page is very since 2011, but I was wondering if you or any other person could help me out with the right schema for  meQasa's real estate developers page. Will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Nigel, That is my line of thinking as well. I'm in the process of separating the pages of the blog into separate pages. Each post is already optimized with a meta description and from my perspective, I think that having them all on one page is muddying the content. They do claim to have the HTML5 configured correctly but I'm not seeing any of the blog posts ranking anywhere - only the home page of my site. This blog set up nonsense was the reason I went over to WP - but after dealing with too many system crashes and bloated themes- I realized, if I was a developer then WP would be perfect, but for me and the little time I want to spend on my website- SS is a good choice. However, their blog set up is confounding!

Thank you so much for your help!

Hi Nigel, Thanks again for your help. Much appreciated.

Thank you, Christy!

Hi Roderick, From experience, this is quite hard to shake a keyword off a homepage and onto another that isn't ranking without physically removing that keyword the homepage - which comes with great risk. I wouldn't advise doing that on it's own, as it won't necessarily mean that  your new page (although more relevant for that term) will start ranking in its place - it may just result in you not ranking at all. Your homepage will naturally have a higher PA than the sub-page with more links built to it and in Google's eyes, may look more relevant. You'll need to make sure that you cover the topic from all angles to tell Google that the sub-page is more relevant for that term. For example, using internal linking with that anchor text throughout your site going to that page and not the homepage. You'll then need to back this up with external links. Use Moz's backlink anchor text checker to pull all external links that have been built that go to the homepage and contact them to ask them to change it to the more relevant page. As to how long it can take is a 'how long is a piece of string' question. It depends how quickly you can make the above changes and how long it takes Google to recrawl any other links. I hope that gives you a good start for what you can do to take action. Kelly

Hi Judd. You wouldn't need the title or description tags for Google's sake (or Bing's sake) on pages behind a login since they couldn't crawl those pages. That said, title tags aren't just used by search engines. That is also the title that shows for the page in the browser window and in the bookmark name (if people bookmark those pages), so it can be worthwhile to add a good title tag to help your visitors. Obviously, beyond the meta description tag, there are other meta tags that you might need (like meta viewport or metra reresh, etc.).

Hi, First of all, there is no way you can submit a URL to any tool and it will provide you with a definite number of keywords you rank for. Why? Because you can have thousands of long-tail keywords that would bring your URL in search results. There are a couple of things I would advise. The first one is a tool called SemRush - this will show you limited number of keywords your URLs rank for - you can explore your competitors' pages and their keywords too. The tool is really interesting, it allows you to submit projects and track changes over time. Another tool is your own Google Search Console which is probably the best solution - simply select a date range and you will see all search queries you received impressions for. You can also see clicks and positions. You can select a particular landing page (equivalent of your URL) and this way explore all search queries that triggered this page for impressions. If you are not sure how to do it, let me know and I'll send some screenshots across to guide you through. It will be very useful for you indeed! i hope this helps. Let me know how you get on! Good luck! Katarina