I am having an issue with my rankings

[weitzluxenberg]

I am having an issue with my rankings. I am not sure if there are issues with onpage dup content or with the way wordpress is behaving but there is no reason based upon the sites back link profile that the site shouldn't be ranking well. The site is mesocare.org. If anyone can help it would be appreciated.

[Ray-pp]

You're missing some key questions to diagnose what you need:

• What are you trying to rank for?

• Which pages are you trying to rank?

• What are the top 10 search results doing to rank for those keywords?

• What are your pages doing to compete for ranking of those keywords?

Only after those questions are answered can we begin to analyse your site ranking.

[weitzluxenberg]

The primary keyword I am trying to rank for is mesothelioma. Some other keywords to rank for are

Mesothelioma doctorMesothelioma treatmentMesothelioma symptomsMesothelioma victimsMesothelioma life expectancyI am not expecting to rank in the top 10 but should definitely be in the 20s but my site is nowhere.

[Ray-pp]

I wouldn't be so certain that you should rank high - Mesothelioma and related search are very competitive terms to try and rank for. It is a huge market for lead generation.

Start by tracking where your ranking is and work to improve the ranks incrementally. With such competitive terms, you really need to frame out your expectations and long-term goals.

Go back and answer this question for further strategies to execute:

• What are the top 10 search results doing to rank for those keywords?

[weitzluxenberg]

I have been in the mesothelioma lead gen space for a long time. Ranked several websitea successfully. Don't know why I can't this time.

[weitzluxenberg]

I have been in the mesothelioma lead gen space for a long time. Ranked several websites successfully. Don't know why I can't this time.

[Ray-pp]

The site does have some nice authority and link metrics.

I would start by targeting your on-page SEO a little better. Some tips:

• Add more related headings (the H1 tag was only used)

• sub pages could use better heading structure as well (missing H1 tags)

• Add some bold content (every little bit helps in this competitive space)

• Update your img alt tags (multiple images just use 'mesothelioma as alt text)

• Strengthen your intra-linking architecture. I.e. add contextual links pointing to authority topics on your site (from one article to another)

[evolvingSEO]

Google and being able to rank certain sites (especially affiliate and especially in health related fields) has changed a lot and has gotten much harder in recent years. The same tactics that worked in 2011/2012 won't work now. I'd say it was probably a little too artificially easy to rank those sites in the past, and now might be more a reflection of reality.

(I'll add more in another response)

[evolvingSEO]

Just looking at the anchor text in your back link profile alone gives clues to why it's hard to rank - http://moz.com/researchtools/ose/anchors?page=1&site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mesocare.org%2F - that is, the anchors are mainly commercial keywords that one would try to rank for - this is exactly the site of link building that is not working as much, and will even get you penalized in extreme cases.

You have links on such pages as this: http://blogs.creighton.edu/klb89788/2012/08/31/hello-world/ and this http://wsn.eecs.berkeley.edu/?p=56 etc etc - which are not going to help and will likely only hurt the site in rankings.

Unfortunately this will take quite a bit of effort and work to overcome. You'll really have to show Google over time (6-12 months at least) some more quality signals - not only links but user metrics etc as well.