Article Not Ranking for First Four Words From Title

Jump to Last Post 1-5 of 5 discussions (34 posts)
  1. eugbug profile image94
    eugbugposted 4 years ago

    I have a fairly old article which doesn't rank for the first four words from it's title in the first 130 SERP results ("What causes electric shocks"), however there are no other articles with those words at the beginning of the title. Ubersuggest says that there's low competition for the search term.
    Is it unusual for an article to appear so low in results even if there's no other competition matching the search string?

    This appears top of the results and doesn't give a useful explanation:

    https://kidshealth dot org/en/kids/electric-shock.html

    This is my guide to what causes shocks and how to stay safe:

    https://dengarden.com/safety/Electrical … ctrocution

    Views are down to about two per day.

    I added the "RCD" bit into the title to make people curious, but maybe it's either scaring or boring potential readers.

    1. OldRoses profile image68
      OldRosesposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      To my dismay, I am finding that any articles from Dengarden are generally not listed high in the search results.  I think that it is because people won't click on anything from Dengarden just as they used to skip anything from HubPages before the niche sites because they knew that there was a lot of crap there.  I wish that Google would show the author name for the Dengarden articles so that searchers could distinguish authoritative authors from the other dross on the Dengarden site.  Is anyone else finding this true of the other niche sites?

      1. eugbug profile image94
        eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

        The Site Diversity Update has a lot to answer for. If there are other similar articles on a site, the chances are only one of them will rank, and the other won't be anywhere in the SERPs for the keywords that match the ranking article. Google say that at least two articles may be listed per domain if they think it's appropriate, but that's not my experience. On Dengarden, they dumped one of my articles and on Owlcation I can't rank for three of the essential keywords because there's an older article on a similar topic.

        This one doesn't rank either for the first six consecutive words in 220 SERP results, although it used to be on page 1 or 2 for the title.

        https://dengarden.com/gardening/5-Ways- … our-Garden

      2. lobobrandon profile image78
        lobobrandonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

        Dengarden is actually doing pretty well compared to some other niche sites such as caloriebee. Based on stats on SEMRush, the monthly traffic to Owlcation is surpassed by just one of my dengarden articles in the summer or one of my caloriebee articles 2 years ago. Dengarden gets approximately 812k monthly visits while caloriebee gets 8k monthly visits. Owlcation is still doing well at 1.2M

        These are just estimates based on rankings by SEMRush, they are not accurate but a good ballpark figure.

        1. OldRoses profile image68
          OldRosesposted 4 years agoin reply to this

          I'm surprised.  Whenever I am searching a topic on Google that is covered by Dengarden (other than gardening articles), even if I go to pages 5 and 6, I very rarely see Dengarden articles in the search results.  Yet if I go to the Dengarden site, I find several articles on the topic that I am searching.

          I'm wondering if a stumbling block is that Google does not indicate who authors the niche site articles.  I never click on them in Google searches because I don't know if the article was written by an authoritative author or an amateur whose shaky article was edited by an editor who has no expertise in the topic.  On the niche sites themselves, the names of the authors are listed on the article capsule so I know immediately if the article is worth my time to read.

          1. lobobrandon profile image78
            lobobrandonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            Yes, the author's name is not shown. How many of the people coming to your articles through search engines have ever heard about you and among them how many will go ahead and remember you? In a percentage, this number is going to be really low.

            I and I know many others do not really care about the website (unless there is a negative association with it) but rather look at the title and the description to decide if it would answer a query. I also doubt that there are many people who have negative associations with Dengarden in general. The content here is a lot better than wikihow, The Spruce, etc. that rank well.

            I have a few on Dengarden that are not gardening articles, "kill termites naturally" without quotes brings my article on the 2nd spot for instance. This may differ across places.

            I have personally found your articles through search and you write well and also keep basic SEO in mind when you create your titles, headings and content, either intentionally or not.

            There are many that do not do this and their articles are not anywhere near the best on the web in the sense that they do not comprehensively answer the query. I would not expect these to rank and new articles also tend to begin ranking around page 3 or 4.

            I came up with a pretty interesting case study with my hub on watering tomatoes which is still ranked #1 for most terms after I covered the topic exhaustively. It can still be improved, but it's a lot better than the other alternatives out there and this has been rewarded over time. I encouraged others to do the same when I created my hub on Hub Pages SEO. That piece is pretty outdated, but if I recall I added some of these stats there.

            Last year I updated my article on tomato fertilizers and from page 5 I jumped to the first and second spot for most terms. It was already on Dengarden, all I did was make sure that it was better than the competition.

            Another example of an article ranking well is "improve home security" on the #1 spot by Eugene.

            If all this is good, then there comes the actual competition, etc.

            Having a well-written article is one thing and literally all we can do. The domain etc. is important too and I would say Dengarden is pretty strong and all those on page 5-6 can easily be edited to come to the first page. Maybe not the top spots, but the first page should be possible.

            An example of a bad domain is Caloriebee, where I went from ranking #1 for the term green apples and green apple benefits for at least 5 years, to now being nowhere in sight. (bottom of page 2). I am not surprised that  I do not rank for the general term green apples, that is an improvement to the search engine, but I lost rankings for the main topic too after the YMYL update came into force even though I at least have a lower degree in Biology.

            1. OldRoses profile image68
              OldRosesposted 4 years agoin reply to this

              Thanks!  I always appreciate your insights.

            2. eugbug profile image94
              eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

              I didn't realise that security article had gained a snippet, it doesn't get much traffic though, only about 20 views per day, so it mustn't be a term that's searched for much. I've got the snippet for "how to sow seeds" and that's more lucrative, over 300 per day this early in the season and that's double what it was this time last year.

              1. lobobrandon profile image78
                lobobrandonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                Nice. I lost my snippet on watering tomatoes, but I am glad I did because the new Google update moves your result to the 11th place if you have the snippet, you can not have the snippet and position 1 anymore. On the most popular page of my private website, I noticed the drop due to this. Some days I lose the snippet and have noticeable increases. Not statistically sufficent to be sure that it's not just some kind of correlation though.

                1. eugbug profile image94
                  eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                  Would there be any benefit to you if I added a link to your "Growing Tomatoes From Seed" article, or could that have unforeseen consequences as regards Google? (e.g. they think it's an attempt to game the system). It doesn't seem to appear in the related hubs list.

                  1. lobobrandon profile image78
                    lobobrandonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                    It would actually help. Internal linking is a good thing and I pitched this to the editors a long time ago. It does not show because it's not among the hubs in the category with the most traffic right now. Related is not really related from what I noticed, it just goes to the lowest category and picks the top hubs from there. During the summer months, it may show on its own smile I'll also take a look at your article this weekend and see if I can link out. I have already linked out to a few unknown authors here and there because good internal linking helps the entire website.

                2. DrMark1961 profile image97
                  DrMark1961posted 4 years agoin reply to this

                  That is an interesting change. Do you think the featured snippet is no longer something we should be shooting for? I have set up lists on my last few hubs and have got the featured snippet on several of them--now I am wondering if that is a good thing?

                  1. lobobrandon profile image78
                    lobobrandonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                    If you are on the first page I'd say go for it. But if you are on the first page and in the first or second spot already then I'd have to say I'm not sure what is best. I personally would not try to get it based on what I've seen so far.

  2. DrMark1961 profile image97
    DrMark1961posted 4 years ago

    When I looked it up the featured snippet was emedicinehealth.com and the number one was webmd.

  3. Titia profile image91
    Titiaposted 4 years ago

    When I looked it up I went all the way to page 17 and your hub never showed up. When I put the first four words in quotation marks your hub came up as number 3 on page 1.

    1. eugbug profile image94
      eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      That's because putting a search term in quotes forces the browser to only list results with those exact consecutive words. However most of the time people don't bother doing that unless they're looking for something specific. Using "+" between words makes it list everything with those words, but not necessarily consecutively (I think, but from my experience it normally tries to help by finding results with only some of the words which can be annoying). .

  4. Anita Hasch profile image61
    Anita Haschposted 4 years ago

    God what nice people we have on this earth.  Maybe you should walk in somebody else's shoes for a while. Somebody less fortunate than yourself.

    1. DrMark1961 profile image97
      DrMark1961posted 4 years agoin reply to this

      ?

      1. PaulGoodman67 profile image97
        PaulGoodman67posted 4 years agoin reply to this

        I'm guessing this was posted on the wrong thread or something? big_smile

        1. DrMark1961 profile image97
          DrMark1961posted 4 years agoin reply to this

          I put that in response to "God what nice people we have on this earth.  Maybe you should walk in somebody else's shoes for a while. Somebody less fortunate than yourself." from Anita Hasch.
          I am not sure if she was being mean to OldRoses, Eugene, or someone else on this thread. I hope she just posted it here on accident, but I made a useful comment to Nate (on how he might improve his traffic) and he came back with a hateful comment like the one above. Unfortunate.

  5. PaulGoodman67 profile image97
    PaulGoodman67posted 4 years ago

    For me, the ranking is less important than the potential and actual views and earnings. According to Ubersearch the average search volume is 210/month for the keyphrase: "what causes electric shocks". That means that the top result in the SERPS could well be getting just 4 or 5 views per day. Not sure if that's worth chasing if you are after views and/or earnings (it's only worth 8 cents for every thousand views according to advertising estimate).

    Unless I'm reading this all wrong, I would move onto something with more potential, if I were you. I guess it depends if views and earnings are important to you, maybe you are motivated by other things. Sometimes Ubersuggest is wrong too, but it's generally a fairly good indicator.

    1. eugbug profile image94
      eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      It was originally actually an article about DIY/gardening electrical safety, rather than what causes shocks, but I wasn't getting much traffic so I changed the title several times over the years. Now that I use Ubersuggest, I'll try to find a less competitive title relating to safety.

      Edit: "Electrical safety" gets 3600 views per month, but it's competitive - level 46 according to US.

      1. PaulGoodman67 profile image97
        PaulGoodman67posted 4 years agoin reply to this

        Well, I'm not sure whether changing the title is that useful unless it is also accompanied by a major rewrite. My philosophy is, as you know, to build the entire article around the key phrase targeted, not by keyword stuffing but making sure there are related headings, content, etc that bolster the keyphrase used in the title. Just changing the title has little effect in my experience.

        I don't pay too much attention to the difficulty level myself, especially if it's just 46 which is not particularly high, is it? It can be worth targeting the keyphrases with bigger views and potential earnings, if the article succeeds in ranking well. If someone else from HP/Maven has written a good article that ranks well on a certain keyphrase, I leave it alone, but otherwise I will often have a go...

        Having success with the small views/small value keyphrases can often turn out to be a hollow victory.

        It's all a guessing game anyway. Good luck!

        1. eugbug profile image94
          eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

          I've switched to using "GFCI Outlet" in the title which has 60,000 hits per month and rearranged the article a bit. This is even more competitive, but I'll see how it goes.

 
working

This website uses cookies

As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.

For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy

Show Details
Necessary
HubPages Device IDThis is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons.
LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service.
Google RecaptchaThis is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy)
AkismetThis is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Traffic PixelThis is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized.
Amazon Web ServicesThis is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy)
CloudflareThis is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy)
Google Hosted LibrariesJavascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy)
Features
Google Custom SearchThis is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy)
Google MapsSome articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
Google ChartsThis is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy)
Google AdSense Host APIThis service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Google YouTubeSome articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
VimeoSome articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
PaypalThis is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook LoginYou can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
MavenThis supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy)
Marketing
Google AdSenseThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Google DoubleClickGoogle provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Index ExchangeThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
SovrnThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook AdsThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Unified Ad MarketplaceThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
AppNexusThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
OpenxThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Rubicon ProjectThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
TripleLiftThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Say MediaWe partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy)
Remarketing PixelsWe may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites.
Conversion Tracking PixelsWe may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service.
Statistics
Author Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy)
ComscoreComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Tracking PixelSome articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy)
ClickscoThis is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy)