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We have decent pagerank and our site comes way below irrelevant sites with lower pagerank.
The keyword appears several times on the page/site. In addition to many backlinks containing the 2 keyword combination, the site has many internal links with just "location".
I am baffled.
Are your competitors for 'location widgets' also on top for just 'location'? If so, research what they do..:)..if not...all the more reason not to worry about it.
just my 2 cents..
In addition, and in most cases the single keyword is more likely to get you that much less targeted traffic.
A good example is "software" -- if you consider all the various types of software available -- +90% of your traffic would be coming to find that you don't have what they want and although its great to say "I'm #1 and getting 20 million visitors per day" but only 20 people are actually interested in "how it make ice-cream software" all that dissatified traffic will remember your domain -- but for the wrong reason.
Keep looking for additional 2 word phrases in your niche (you will slowly move up on the single word as well).
This month I am 42nd for the same 1-word keyword (higher position but very low traffic) but have dropped to 133rd for the 2-word keyword, so for some reason (please tell me GG) the logical argument :-
"A little thing called "density" and much more competition on the single word. "
doesn't apply to me! Thank god it's Friday ....
However, my longest running personal site (started in '96) targets one particular word. I've always floated between first and fifth place in Google for that one phrase, and done everything in my power for about 5 years to associate my website with that one word. It's worth observing that it's not a commercially hard fought for word, so the competition could be a lot fiercer. I feel quite sorry for the visitors that I get to my site because I'm sure about 80% leave feeling confused and disappointed. But hey, I rank well so that's all that matters.
In retrospect I think that I inadvertenty built my site around the concept of themeing, so maybe that's a subject you could investigate, if you haven't done so already.
Another thought, after seeing the recent thread about Brett's A-Z of building a website for Google (which has made me reappraise a lot of what I think over the last few days) is that really what everyone should be doing is to focus on writing 500 amazing words a day for their site. Do that for six months or a year and you should find all your other worries will fall into place.
Most of the sites on the first page should be there. I mean the local newspaper, universities and such like. What baffles me though is my extremely poor performance. And yes, my competitors rank better than me....even the product wholesalers who don't specialize in my location. I kick these other sites' asses for the hot keyword combinations.
My keyword density for the location is ok - within the limits that have been discussed in another thread here.
It's not really that important. It's just a niggle and shows there is a lot to learn - especially about targetting single keywords.
