Getting a highly ranked site a better result for 1 search term

[tadden]

I have a highly ranked website for a niche category. My site ranks higher in SEOMOZ than all of my competitors, but I can't get any higher than 4th on a page for one specific search term.

What can I do to help my site increase its ranking on a specific search term?

[MattAntonino]

Without seeing page specifics it's hard to say if the page is affecting the result (title, content, bolds, tags, etc.)

However, "winning" Moz metrics definitely doesn't mean you'll outrank everyone for everything.  I wrote a post on some factors that go beyond Moz. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/going-beyond-moz-metrics-to-answer-why-is-this-site-outranking-me

The other thing to keep in mind is - they may outrank you on one page for a huge variety of reasons: anchor text (yours OR theirs), specific weight of links to that page, specific weight and anchors of links to that page, cocitation (everytime they're mentioned is alongside that keyword, while you're mentioned alongside many.)  etc.

So ... it's difficult to say without specifics but with well over 200 factors, it's worth considering that there isn't just one "easy fix" reason they're winning that term.

[tadden]

My site is www.allsparkfireworks.com and I'm trying to rank highly for "buy fireworks online".  Does this help out with possibly evaluating the issue.

[MattAntonino]

I'm fairly tough on anchor text and I don't think you should control it any more than you have to but you're showing 3300 links on Open Site Explorer and I show zero with that exact anchor text.  I'm not suggesting you go build 1000 targeted anchor text backlinks ... but zero won't get you there.

(You have 438 for "buy fireworks" and you are much higher ranked on that keyword. I would suggest doing a bit of link building would help a lot.)

[tadden]

Thank you for the advice. I'm not a fan of controlling anchor text either. I don't want to end up in trouble with any of the search engines.

I will give it a try on a limited basis and see how it affects the search results.