Best Metrics but Consistently Outranked

[Yardboy]

I am hoping someone could help us determine why we generally rank quite poorly compared to our competition, despite leading in every single Competitive Metric.  We get outranked on a term where the Page Grade gives us an "A", and we best the competitor on each of the metrics.  Where would those with more experience suggest we start looking?

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[EGOL]

** Where would those with more experience suggest we start looking?**

Honestly, I would stop looking at metrics and start looking at ways to make your website better answer the query and better deliver what your visitors are seeking.

The metrics give no information on how to improve your rankings.  They are simply a guess at where you would rank using data that is different from what google uses.  Sometimes a good guess, sometimes a bad guess.   Go out in the SERPs and look at the rankings and look at the metrics. Do that over and over.  Make up your own mind how good they are at predicting rankings.  Watch Q&A and see how many people come in here asking the same question that you asked.

If you want to improve your rankings, begin by looking at your title tag, be sure it is description of your page and what your visitor really wants for that query.  Then look at your page and see if it delivers excellent information to answer the query - and lives up to your title tag.  If it is not the best at answering the query - clearly, completely, easy to understand, and well-illustrated, then put your work into that job.

You probably know better what answers the query than any information that metrics will provide.

After that, some things will be beyond your control.   A big popular site like amazon or wikipedia is going to win all ties, all close races and a lot that you will never understand.

If you have a small or a newer site that has not become popular, then time and promotion will be needed to become competitive with similar-quality content on stronger, more established and popular domains.

[Yardboy]

I understand.  It seems like a newbie question, and while I am not an expert by any stretch, this is my 2nd time as a paying MOZ member, and I'm really hoping this time we are able to make some progress. My example is there is a specific keyword phrase that we are trying to rank well for, and our page grade is an A, We outrank on metrics.  We are on the 4th page of Google for this keyword phrase.  Our competition ranks one or two.  We should rank on the 1st page based on our position in industry, age of domain, site quality, etc.

Exactly like those results at the top of the SERPS, we list a page of products, in a modern, responsive Magento grid.  There are 4 products per row.  We have a description of the category.  There are many pages like this, and I am trying to figure out which tools in MOZ can help me find the issue.  I have tried to see if we are suffering a penalty.  Spam score of 1/17.

I sense a bit of frustration in your response in that I was too quick to ask for help, but I have spent time in the SERP's, and I'm just not coming up with much.  This is a site-wide issue.  Generally poor ranking against competitors, with very little obvious difference in the quality of our site or results.

Is that the best it gets?  Look at SERPS and metrics over and over?  I was under the impression that the tools here were designed to help alleviate some of manual labor.

[EGOL]

It sounds like you are looking at a product page, where several different products or different types of products are displayed in a grid.

Those types of pages can be optimized for the query.  That might be enough to raise their rankings in weak competition, but if you are in strong competition their overall rankings are usually determined more by the strength of the domain and its populartiy rather than by the optimization of the page.

I would work to produce great content about these products that is excellent enough that people will share it, link to it, talk about it in other parts of the web.  If you can achive that, links from those content pages into the product grid pages can deliver traffic and transfer power that can help these grid product pages to higher rankings.

If these product pages have very little text now, higher rankings might be obtained from increasing the amount of text on them.  However, on-page improvments will only have a major impact if you are up against easy competition.  When you are in intense competition, those pages will either need to be on a powerful domain or have links or other off-site support to move them up the rankings.  These can be dangerous to acquire because google is becoming better and better at identifying contrived links.

[EGOL]

**I was under the impression that the tools here were designed to help alleviate some of manual labor.  **

In my opinion, the tools on Moz are best suited to monitoring your progress and giving you objective assessments.  They are not going to move you up the SERPs.

Moving your site up the SERPs takes effort from the webmaster (or whoever is hired to do that work).  That effort is all about making a better website.  There is a lot of valuable information on Moz to guide you with that work.  Most of that information is free.