Client WIll Not Rank for Targeted KW Terms

[maxcarnage]

Good Morning Mozzers,

I am at a total loss. I have been working with a client in a "difficult" (to say the very least) vertical for roughly the past two years and for the life of me, cannot get these clients to rank within the top 3 for the targeted keyword terms.

It seems that every time our targeted keyword begin to gain a little bit of traction and improve their ranking position, it is immediately followed by the same keywords plummeting shortly thereafter.

I have done everything (in my mind) I can to try and get this client's keyword terms to rank, everything from revising the on-/off-page content, building citations, submitting the site to services like Yext, advertising on AdWords and Yelp, etc. but it doesn't seem to make any significant difference.

I'm hoping that someone can offer some guidance into how I can get these clients to start ranking highly for the targeted keyword terms because I'm at a complete loss. I look forward to all of your responses! Thank you for reading.

If you'd like to check out the site, the URL is: www.lawtonmd.com

[KevinBudzynski]

It could be a wide-range of issues involving both on/off-page (as I'm sure you know).  I am guessing it service + location keywords you are trying to get higher organic rankings for. What are the keywords?

[MattAntonino]

Duplicate page titles

Duplicate meta descriptions

A number of page titles in the 80-100 character range = too long.

Many WAY too long meta descriptions.

Meta KWs usually act only as a negative ranking factor, if anything. You have a LOT of the same KWs & KW spam.

Anchor text issues for all 4 words: newport, beach, plastic and surgeon. All way over optimised.

Majestic historic shows a HUGE number of referring domains but a much, much smaller level of IPs - typically a spam signal so there may be even more in Search Console that needs clean up, removal or disavow.

I would assume this site dropped initially during a Panda algo update at some point. It has a lot of content-quality issues and some anchor problems.