In lots of cases, SEO projects work very well…up to a point. You can choose a favorite keyword, optimize your site, and get great links, and see your site move up in the rankings over the space of several months. Unfortunately, you can also watch your site stop moving, or sit in the #11 position while the top 10 rankings shuffle themselves around as if they were having a square dance. Similarly, you may crack the top 10 but never break into the top 5 positions because the sites ahead of you just won’t get out of the way.
There are plenty of explanations for why a site gets stuck in a certain spot. Among them are:
- Incredible Link Popularity. Your quest to be #1 might be a multimillion dollar proposition if you want to compete with Adobe for PDF keywords.
- High Trust Factors. Wikipedia sometimes holds a top ranking and does not budge. A certain sector may have multiple “high trust” sites, in which case you need to think of how to make your site more trustworthy.
- Age. There is a common misconception that having an “older” site guarantees great rankings. In reality, the older site probably has been getting SEO value and trust for a long time, and its links have better age than yours. You may have to overcome the age disparity by getting more trusted links.
- Resource Value. This factor can’t be overestimated. Genuine link popularity is hard to fake, and a site that is endorsed by the masses can rule the rankings. (Once again, think Wikipedia.) If you have tools, sticky content, a killer app, or a rare value proposition, you can go a lot further than you could with artificial PageRank generation.
- User Experience & Code. A site with a high bounce rate may be getting held back, and bad code (or long load times) can be pushing you back.
- A Dynamic Environment. Guess What? Those other guys are probably investing in SEO too, and they have a head start.
- Cheating. Those other guys might just be employing some black hat tactics that work. They may not work forever. Every once in awhile, it pays to peek “behind the curtain” on competitor sites to see if something is afoot.
Even a savvy SEO professional can become perplexed when a site gets stuck. Sometimes it pays to take a step back and consult with other SEOs to see if there is a solution you might have missed. In other cases, you may want to start looking at alternative keyword strategies while you wait for your favorite phrase to move. Given enough time, rankings should start to move when your site’s content and links become more relevant and trustworthy. Usually, the toughest part about hitting a “rankings wall” comes with knowing that your efforts are “spot on” compared to the millions of sites beneath you, but not quite good enough to break into the top spaces. While it may be hard to counsel patience when dollars are being spent on an optimization campaign, you can at least rest assured that you’re starting to make the established sites nervous.
Tags: stuck seo
