Blog Ranking Discrepancy Question

[seanfalconer]

I have a question about why one of my pages is performing well but many similar pages are performing not so well.

One of my best performing blog posts for organic traffic is a job description for a front desk agent: blog.proven.com/front-desk-agent-job-description.

The page ranks 2nd for "front desk agent job description", which has a difficulty of 51. It also ranks well for a number of similar keyword combinations.

However, for the keywords "housekeeper job description", which has a difficulty of only 11, this page: blog.proven.com/housekeeper-job-description ranks 57th.

None of these pages have backlinks, but they are linked to from a definitive guide I wrote, which does have backlinks.

I created many of the original posts 5-6 months ago and I am in the process of updating the layouts, titles, meta descriptions and other things related to the on-page SEO and keyword targeting.

Any thoughts on why one page does well and the other is essentially invisible? Is the content too similar for Google? Too thin?

[vangogh]

Hard to say. Both pages look very similar. Nothing jumps out at me for why one would do well and one wouldn't.

One of my first thoughts is why do you trust the Moz difficulty numbers. Moz isn't Google. They do good work, but that doesn't mean everything they say is true or that everything their tools say is accurate. One possibility is the tool isn't giving you accurate numbers. Maybe the second page is really the more difficult page.

How long have you been keeping track of where the pages rank? Have you been monitoring them for awhile and has the front desk page always done better? With everything seo you usually need some patience. Pages will at times rank much higher or lower on a particular day and then revert back to mean.

[seanfalconer]

Thanks for the response.

I used Hubspot for the difficulty ratings, but even with Google's keyword planner, both search terms have low competition.

This is something I'm seeing consistently across a lot of search terms. All have decent search volume and low competition.

I've been tracking the page rank for some of the pages since October of last year, but some more recently. The front desk agent page has consistently ranked really well.

I did make changes recently to the pages, so maybe those changes have been reflected yet in the rankings. Many of the original pages created back in October were a little thin on content.

[vangogh]

My bad for assuming Moz instead of Hubspot, but my point still remains. Hubspot isn't Google so just because they say something has low difficulty doesn't mean it really is low difficulty. If you're seeing the same thing across a lot of search terms maybe the original assumptions are incorrect. It could be the search terms are more competitive than you think. It's also possible it's something in your pages, but nothing jumped out at me when I looked.

How long ago did you make changes? If the changes are recent then you probably do need to wait to see where the pages end up in the search results.

[seanfalconer]

My bad for assuming Moz instead of Hubspot, but my point still remains. Hubspot isn't Google so just because they say something has low difficulty doesn't mean it really is low difficulty. If you're seeing the same thing across a lot of search terms maybe the original assumptions are incorrect. It could be the search terms are more competitive than you think. It's also possible it's something in your pages, but nothing jumped out at me when I looked.

How long ago did you make changes? If the changes are recent then you probably do need to wait to see where the pages end up in the search results.

The oldest changes are from last week, which is not a ton of a time, but since the pages have existed for a while, I was worried that perhaps the original thinner versions might hold back the performance of the updated versions. Or that perhaps there was something else wrong with the pages.

[Harold Mansfield]

I have to agree that neither Hubspot or Moz are absolute authorities at all. Google is the authority and they give us all the tools and guidelines (that they are willing to share) based on how it works. You'll never be able to completely understand it's logic or reasoning. Ever. They will never tell. And self manipulation carries less and less weight every day. You can only do so much. After that, you must take heed to all of the other factors that they consider which you cannot self manipulate and have no shortcuts.

Plain and simple, they expect you to put in the work, follow the guidelines and after that it's really up to others. Usage, traffic, recommendations, and so on. The only way you can affect that is to have something that gets those things, and even then what they decide to give you is up to the math and algorithms, and it can change frequently.

From experience, when you think you're doing everything right, have traffic, and still aren't making headway or are loosing ground, many times you can trace it to something that you are doing incorrectly, or an old trick that doesn't work anymore. A bad link. Bad code. Relying too heavily on one thing.

Still at it's core, it's kind of a crap shoot and nothing is promised no matter what you do. SEO is one aspect of online marketing, not the whole kit and caboodle.

[vangogh]

The oldest changes are from last week

Probably too soon I would think. I wouldn't worry about the original thinner content causing problems. Once Google crawls and indexes the changed page, that will be what they rank and show in search results. You can even change things back to how they were if the changes make things worse and the old page should regain it's ranking.

The caveat is if the page (or site) had done something Google thought deserved a penalty of some kind, but if that were the case you probably wouldn't see either page in the results.

Give it a little more time for the changes to take effect. If the page is still ranking in the 50s somewhere you can make more changes and see what happens.

[seanfalconer]

Probably too soon I would think. I wouldn't worry about the original thinner content causing problems. Once Google crawls and indexes the changed page, that will be what they rank and show in search results. You can even change things back to how they were if the changes make things worse and the old page should regain it's ranking.

The caveat is if the page (or site) had done something Google thought deserved a penalty of some kind, but if that were the case you probably wouldn't see either page in the results.

Give it a little more time for the changes to take effect. If the page is still ranking in the 50s somewhere you can make more changes and see what happens.

Thanks so much for the thoughtful response. I'll give it some time and make more changes as need be. I was mostly worried about some kind of potential penalty.

[Harold Mansfield]

I was mostly worried about some kind of potential penalty.

Anything in your webmaster tools dashboard? Or was there something there in the past?
I know you run it through Moz tools, but what about Google's tools?

[seanfalconer]

Anything in your webmaster tools dashboard? Or was there something there in the past?
I know you run it through Moz tools, but what about Google's tools?

Nothing that I noticed. I mostly use ahrefs and Hubspot for keyword tracking.