From what I am seeing, John, it seems more likely that a site about cats with high DA can outrank a site about dogs with low DA on the search term "dogs" or "puppies". In this respect, Google seems to suck pretty badly now.
Posts made by Gavin.Atkinson
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RE: Why do small changes in keyword phrasing have such big SERP impacts?
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RE: Why do small changes in keyword phrasing have such big SERP impacts?
It would be good to get more input to this question. I appear to be mostly answering it myself, but none the wiser for doing so.
Another example I noticed in my Moz reports today is "Understanding Thai Baht" where a post I created about currency exchange and carrying/spending money in Thailand is #1 on Google for this phrase. Google keyword analysis says there is no demand and no competition for this phrase, yet it is driving some traffic into my site and the SERPs have almost 50 million results for this phrase. If I use the other half of my page title "managing money in thailand" I disappear from the results, yet it too apparently has no demand and no competition.
It seems at the moment like I can rank very well for any phrase nobody is interested in, but I disappear in the SERPs as soon as there's any level of competition - even from sites that are almost totally unrelated to the query.
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RE: Why do small changes in keyword phrasing have such big SERP impacts?
That's actually a useful clue. I was close to thinking that, but had not quite got there. Using the Moz keyword research tool, I can see that:
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"bachelor hotels phuket" has a KDS of 22
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"bachelor hotels in phuket" has a KDS of 59, so much more difficult to rank for.
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"girl-friendly bachelor hotels in phuket" has a KDS of 29
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"girl-friendly hotels in phuket" has a KDS of 58, so again more difficult to rank for.
Unfortunately it seems the search volume scores fetcher is broken at the moment (must be missing a spline) so I can't see whether ranking for these easier keywords is worthwhile or not. It has been from a traffic perspective, anyway.
But that's not the full story, of course. The attached image shows the detailed Moz ranking analysis for "bachelor hotels phuket" and what's really interesting about this is that my page, with a PA of just 13 and a DA of just 27, is out-ranking pages with a PA of 30 and 38 and DA of up to 97. I guess that's Google being democratic in small spaces?
If I spent 50 credits on the "full report" at this point, would I find out much more about the situation? Not sure if it's worth spending the 50 credits here or not.
The second attached image is perhaps even more revealing (or at least intriguing). When "IN" is added to the search phrase, my PA=13, DA=27 page is being out-ranked by four URLs that have a PA=1 and no backlinks, although they do mostly have higher DA. The page ranking above mine, however, has a PA=1 and DA=13, with only 2 backlinks to my 34. How does it rank ahead of me for this phrase???
Sometimes the more I know the less I understand.
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Why do small changes in keyword phrasing have such big SERP impacts?
I am trying to better understand why some of my pages rank well and some don't rank at all. I've discovered that slight changes to how the key phrase is typed into Google can have dramatic effects on the results. Why is this? And how should I interpret it or use it? I understand that some phrases will be more competitive than others, but that doesn't seem to explain the variances entirely.
For example, http://traveltipsthailand.com/phuket/best-bachelor-hotels-in-phuket/ (which is SEO optimised for the long-tail phrase "bachelor hotels in Phuket" and "girl-friendly bachelor hotels in Phuket") ranks #1 or #2 for the key phrase "bachelor hotels phuket", but if I modify the phrase slightly to "bachelor hotels IN phuket" it drops to #12 (page 2) with less relevant competitors (like "Bachelor hotels in Chiang Mai") getting in ahead of it.
Likewise, if I search on "best bachelor hotels phuket" (the URL phrase of the page) it is #1 or #2 again, but if I modify the search phrase to "best bachelor hotels IN phuket", my SERP drops to #13.
If I use the longer-tail key phrase "girl-friendly bachelor hotels in phuket" the results are even more dramatic. I rank #5 for that phrase in the SERPs with or without "IN" in the search phrase. But if I remove "bachelor" from the key phrase and just search on "girl-friendly hotels in phuket" my page drops right off the SERP radar. Somewhere above #200 I think.
Would love to get a better understanding of what influences these changes if anyone really knows. Is it just Goovoodoogle or is there a logical explanation?