My keywords are stuck

[SyedNumanshah]

I have a question to moz pros. I have a blog about tattoos and i am using extremely low competition keywords in all my post. Some of my keywords are ranked in top 10 results in google but they are stuck, e.g. i've target a keyword "lion king tattoos" and it is currently ranking on no 6. its been a long time its stuck on no 6 and i am not getting any traffic from this keyword as well. i am very new in SEO and want some suggestions so that i can improve my rankings and traffic. my blog link is http://tattoosalbum.com please have a look and help me

thanx

[wearehappymedia]

Hi there!

It's not uncommon for positions to seem like they are stuck for weeks or even months. We've simplified this step by using open site explorer to study the competition who rank higher than us and see why. We call this a term ceiling and it's based on MANY factors but the good news is one good link can help you break through that ceiling. Hope that helps.

[Paddy_Moogan]

Hi Syed,

Thanks for the question.

There could be a number of reasons why you can't rank any higher in search results. One place to start is to look at the websites that rank above you and see what they have that you don't. The things I'd look for are:

• Are they stronger, mainstream brands or established websites who are naturally stronger than you? For example from the UK, I see websites such as Buzzfeed and Amazon ranking for this keyword. These types of competitors are going to be very hard to move above.
• Do they have more and better quality links than you? Radi pointed this out in his answer and Open Site Explorer can help give you an answer here.
• Is their content better than yours on this topic? Be honest with yourself here and see if they're doing anything better than you and see what you can learn from this.
• Do they have larger audiences (you can get an idea of this from their social channels or engagement such as blog comments) which means they may be generating more user signals to Google?
• Is their content more keyword focused than yours? You can use the Moz on-page grader here to get an idea of this.

It can be hard to jump above stronger websites, but focusing on lower competition, niche keywords first is definitely the right approach.

I hope that helps!

Paddy