Ranking Page #1 for Keyword without Hypen, Not at all for Keyword with Hyphen

[dpayne1]

Hi There!

So I work in an industry where there are different conventions for referring to, searching on and spelling the industry name. For example, let's pretend there were a variety of different conventions for referring to the SEO industry. So someone could search for S-EO, SEO, sEO, etc. and those would all be accepted and understood means of referring to the industry.

If we use the SEO example as a comparison for our industry, the two most common conventions would be S-EO and SEO. Using this example, we rank on the first page for the term "SEO" but do not rank AT ALL for the term "S-EO". We have a high-value piece of content that is targeted in the following way: "S-EO (SEO): The Basics Guide" so it is more targeted at the hyphenated word but does not rank at all for the hyphenated version, whereas it is page one for the non-hyphenated term.

As additional pieces of context:

-In general, our site is more targeted at the hyphenated term and there are places where we rank in the top spot for both the hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions. For example, we rank in a top 2 position for both S-EO & SEO software but do not rank at all for the broader "S-EO" term.

-There are times when we do appear on page one for the term "S-EO" but it's typically only for a matter or hours or days and then we disappear entirely from the SERPs for that term. We consistently appear for "SEO."

-I currently do not believe we are dealing with a penalty of any sort - our link profile is clean and our spam score per Moz is 2 / 17.

Any thoughts or ideas as to what is going on here and how we can potentially rank for the term "S-EO?"

[DonnaDuncan]

Hi Daniel,

I know you said you believe your link profile is clean, but it is strong enough? That's what I'd research first. Do you have enough high-quality incoming links with keyword relevant anchor text to outrank the competition?

[dpayne1]

Thanks for the reply, Donna.

I believe we do - going back to the example - the terms S-EO and SEO have almost the exact same competition score in Moz, 47% & 48%, respectively (and they really are the same keyword, anyway), and we rank page #1 for SEO but not at all for S-EO...like, not even on the top 200 pages.

Furthermore, I have seen instances where we do appear on page one for S-EO for hours or even days but eventually go away entirely. This makes me think some sort of penalty but, again, I don't see anything in the link profile to indicate that, there have been no black hat tactics that I'm aware of in the three years I've been there, and there's no manual penalty in GSC.

[DonnaDuncan]

In those instances where you do appear on page one for S-EO, is the page displayed the same as the one when searching for SEO or is it a different result?

And my question is about your link profile compared to the top 10 competitors, not the competitiveness of the search term. Not sure if I was clear about that.

Why don't you share the term you're talking about your domain. If you 're not comfortable doing that, feel free to private message me.

[dpayne1]

Hi Donna,

Yes, in instances where we do appear for "S-EO" it is the same result as for SEO.

And the specific term(s) of concern are "ediscovery" (we are the "E-Discovery (eDiscovery): The Basics Guide" result on page one) vs. e-discovery. Thanks!

[DonnaDuncan]

I don't see a logical explanation for the results we're seeing Dan.

Your link profile could be stronger, but if that was the root cause I'd expect to see you on page 2 or 3 of search results for e-discovery and yet (as you've mentioned), you're nowhere to be found.

The only thing I can think of, and I don't think it's the explanation either, is that Google is ranking pages that intend to answer the question "WHAT IS e-discovery" and while your content addresses that, it is more focused on HOW TO.

Maybe someone else will see something we're both missing.

[dpayne1]

Thanks, Donna. Yeah, I'm with you, it doesn't make sense to me and doesn't seem logical. Hopefully, someone else has a theory on something we're missing.

Thanks for your time in looking into it!

[dpayne1]

Another update on this - I added a rel canonical to the page, making it clear what the true URL that should be appearing in the SERPs is. That URL is the same one that shows up on the SERPs for the version of the keyword without a hyphen.

After doing this, the page appeared briefly on the keyword results with a hyphen and then disappeared entirely again within the same day. It still shows for the keyword with no hyphen.

Often, when I make a change to that page, it will appear in the SERPs for the keyword with a hyphen and then disappear entirely again within hours or days. It consistently appears in the results for no hyphen though, regardless of changes to the page.

[DonnaDuncan]

It probably shows up when you make a change b/c of the "freshness" factor.