All except main keyword ranked

[iamn]

I have a good performance site which has got ranked high on major search engines for all the secondary keywords which has a very high competition. But the main keyword (The product sold from my site)is not ranked. Any keyphrase containing that particular word is not ranked. Could it be because of the saturation of that word within the site. The url name also contains that word. Any clue?

[Vadim]

It might be the case.

The best advice for such cases that I read in this forum is that no optimization should make the page difficult to read or inpleasant for the vistors.

However, if you decide to deoptimized, try do it slowly and smoothly because sharp and significant page change may make the page to look new in the Google eyes, you loose the history and it will take several month to get it again.

Vadim.

[tedster]

I had this situation with a long-standing site that spent years at #1 for a "big" single keyword. We were using rather extreme frequency of that main keyword in the in-site anchor text (hey it worked at the time) and we backed off slowly. The site neve recovered its former glory, but eventually it did climb back, in gradual steps, to page two.

However, the long tail searches have proved to be more lucarative than the 1-word ranking ever did, so I guess Google did us a favor.

[iamn]

thanks for the reply. but in my case the site is very clear and there is no spamming done. The site is being crawled regularly. So, do i need to attribute it to the frequency of that keyword repeated in the text as well as in the anchor text, link text, etc. Would reducing the frequency of that keyword help?

[CainIV]

You would be surprised at the small amount of text needed - that is, a mix of both - easy on the eyes for visitors and suitable for search engines.

Many SEO's tend to just place their main keyword every *x* amount of words, or by some density.

The best thing you can do is:

Always write for the visitor. Have someone else proof read and give you feedback on what they thought.

When using keywords, early and often is a good idea. Using keywords in clearly defined and sensible Header (H1 - H3) tags is helpful as well and promotes good page layout. Make sure to add some variations to the text body. Don't drive yourself nuts with density.

Having keywords near the end of the page does help. This is usually as easy as placing the company name, if this is the name of the product.

[iamn]

let me be a bit clearer... mine is a pharma site, which is already getting ranked for many crucial keywords including the ailment related keywords (which i suppose is a major catch). but once you add the drug name to your search keyphrase, the ranking vanishes!In brief, none of the keyphrases (be it v.short or v.long) including the drug name in it is not ranked.

Thanks cainIV for the reply, but 'using keywords in clearly defined and sensible Header (H1 - H3) tags' has already been implemented. will try and cut short the content from a visitor's point of view.

[ronburk]

but once you add the drug name to your search keyphrase, the ranking vanishes

Should we assume by "ranking vanishes" you mean that you checked all ~1,000 top listings for those phrases and your website appears nowhere there?

Interesting. Kinda sounds you matched a domain-specific part of the algorithm. If it were mine and I didn't have any other facts (and I would have a lot of other facts if it were mine :-), I would start trying to find some other websites in a similar situation and see what I have in common with them.

OTOH, if most of the pages were relatively young (e.g., single-digit months), I would probably work on other problems for a few more months.

[eljefe3]

For that industry, I hope you have bots out there working for you to get the necessary backlinks in the uber competitive pharm industry that you're trying to work in.