Need help with fluctuating ranking for a specific keyword

[dgruhin]

my website www.totalmanagement.com fluctuates for the search term: web based property management software

I have been using SEO Moz for a few months now and have managed to get to the top 5 and jump around between 3 and 5.

Does anyone have any suggestions to assist me?

Long term goal is also to really target: Property Management Software

But I am still very new at this.

Thanks in advance for the help!

[RankSurge]

Have you done a press release for that term and the site? Typically, those will get some high quality authority links pointed to your site and should solidify your rankings.

[legalseo]

Jonathan -

Always a difficult task chasing (and obsessing over) a high a SERP. My search for your KW in Google found you at position 8. Perhaps your results are skewed by your search history and/or being logged into a Google account, which can personalize search results that give a higher weight to frequented searches and results (your own site).

Looking at you your competitors link profiles show much stronger domain authority and vastly greater number of links. You have only 1 externally followed link.Your on page SEO is better than some of them, but the strength of their link profiles trumps that.

Also check you loads times - I noticed your site was slow to come up, and I checked it in Google Page Speed where it time out, although a refresh did bring up an acceptable 83., so perhaps there is a third party item loading that is hanging up.

All things being equal, Google will put the most (or best) linked to site ahead. Quality links from trusted domains are the best way to insure a stronger, more consistent ranking.

Chas

[Naghirniac]

Hi Jonathan,

Welcome to the gray SEO world, full of "ifs" and google actualization. Is very hard to tell what happened, there is a lot of factors.

Google is change the algoritms again, and some points as load speed and text in the beginning of the website are becoming important.

And there is also the action from the concorrent websites. They got more links? they changed the website?

One tip I can give to you is stay connected at SEOMOZ blog to see the last changes at google and get a change to be ahead of the other websites.

[dgruhin]

Yes the competitors have been in business for years and we have not been. Server speed has been poor lately and I have complained to Hostgator.

I have been trying to get other sites to link to us but I am just at a loss as to how to get the volume I would need to even come close what the competitors have.

[legalseo]

Jonathan-

Your follow up reaffirms my suggestions where you need to take this to move up on your competitors. Link building is a difficult and multifaceted task, requiring dedications, perseverance (lots),  research and some charm (and persuasion). There have been numerous blog posts on SEOmoz (and elsewhere) regarding link building techniques; read them all - if your budget can handle it, there are some very savvy (and white hat) link builders out there that can help you but their services are not inexpensive.

Other methods include getting your users raving about how great your software is - offer free trials, killer customer service, urge your users to blog about you, get reviews, post those reviews on your site in a Google acceptable micro format.

best of luck along with your hard work

[dgruhin]

Can someone maybe help explain to me how this page:

http://www.point2propertymanager.com/property_management_software.html

is out ranking me for the term "web based property management software"

I ran a check on it with SEOMoz tools and the page grade is an F for the term and my homepage has a higher page rank and more linking root domains.

I am so confused I could scream!!!

[legalseo]

Jonathan-

I can appreciate you frustration - what point2propertymanager.com has is better (much better) overall domain authority and trust than your site - this outweighs your better on page SEO. Although your competitor's page links are internal, those links are passing strong link juice from the root domain. Examining their IBLs in Open Site Explorer shows domains with DA of 100 (e.g. adobe.com - and while those 100 DA links are nofollows, they still send a strong domain trust signal) - your site doesn't have a data available in OSE, but it would undoubtedly show your IBLs to both fewer and weaker.

In short, if you want better SERPs, you'll need to get quality IBLs through serious, systematic link building.

Chas