Why would I be ranking for a term when it's not anywhere in my page or pages linking to it?

[lauramrobinson32]

Hi, I have a keyword that's not anywhere in my page in page-grade tool nor are any pages linking to it with that term, why would that be ranking. The term is "dynamic card solution" This is a company we used to have 5 years ago and merged with our company.  This term is ranking #1 for this page- http://www.datacard.com/instant-issuance-solutions  . I can't figure why that would be even as this is a newer page in the past year.

Thanks for any insight as I'm newer to moz.

Laura

[T0BY]

You're number one hit!  Is your old website URL pointing to your new website?

[mememax]

Hi Laura,

I think your key insight is in the next result in google serp. I can read that datacard acquired DCS and Cardwizard. It seems that you may be beneficiating of the strong relationship of DCS with the query you're highlighting.

Well in fact DCS is exactly the exact match for the query you show, so I think that google finds relevant to show the company that acquired the one leading that space.

Look at their facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dynamic-Card-Solutions-Instant-Issuance/92503396903

I'm not very confident with your market but I definitely understood that datacard is the new DCS and it seems that google understood that too

Welcome to the semantic world that hummingbird just brought!

Hope this helps!

[AMHC]

Sounds like Google's Semantic Search update called Hummingbird. We are seeing a lot of traffic for keywords that don't appear on our pages. Pretty impressive on the part of Big G.

[gazzerman1]

Very simple,

Your old site http://www.instantissuance.com uses a 301 redirect which can be seen here
http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/
It then redirects to http://www.datacard.com/instant-issuance-solutions which is the exact page you mentioned above.

In tools like Majestic and MOZ you can see that the most common term used in backlinks to the site apart from the domain name is "dynamic card solution".

When you perform a 301 redirect all the positive signals that a site has are passed to its new home. This is a clear indication of that happening.

I hope that makes sense!