Why some websites can rank the keywords they don't have in the page?

[Raymondlee]

Hello guys,

Yesterday, I used SEMrush to search for the keyword "branding agency" to see the SERP. The Liquidagency ranks 5th on the first page. So I went to their homepage but saw no exact keywords "branding agency", even in the page source. Also, I didn't see "branding agency" as a top anchor text in the external links to the page (from the report of SEMrush).

I am an SEO newbie, can someone explain this to me, please? Thank you.

[seanginnaw]

Hi there,

Historically in SEO, search engines used to use the 'exact match' text of a page (be that in the page title, URL, page copy, H1 etc.) to inform the term to rank the page for.

Nowadays, Google is a lot more understanding of related terms and synonyms since the 'Hummingbird' update. For example, if I optimised my entire site for 'advertising agency', there's a good chance that Google will understand that 'branding' is likely to come under my field of expertise and rank me for searches such as 'branding agency' or similar.

Their optimisation for the term 'branding agency' might not just be down to the homepage - the likelihood is that they have a page on the site explaining their branding services which helps the overall domain rank for that kind of term.

I hope this helps,

Sean

[Raymondlee]

Thank you, Sean. That is really helpful.

But why this guy ranks better than his competitors even though competitors are targeting exact keyword "branding agency". What are the reasons behind it?

Thank you,

Raymond

[seanginnaw]

Could be a lot of factors at play here such as the age of the domain, the inbound links it receives etc.

Check the Moz stats for it - page authority, domain authority etc.

[Raymondlee]

Thank you!

[TheSymmetran]

Also who is the guy lol name them if you suspect wrongdoing or unethical behaviors! I know of at least one page 1 ranking site around my locality that ended up converting a student organization domain with a lot of .edu backlinks and then just ran with it for seo and represented itself in multiple irrelevant and across the country large cities.

They even blatantly dared to SELL backlinks on their site... in broad daylight! in 2016! Needless to say I reported them to Google and saw them get kicked down a notch to page 2 for my test keywords from earlier searches.