Confused... ranking PR1 and no visitors?

[KeesW]

Hi Guys,

The facts:
I have a site running with nice design, homepage not well SEO, about 10 articles with better SEO.
After going live about 4 weeks ago, I started (automated) link building.
Daily indexing by Google goes well, without any faults
For keyword research and finding the monthly search volume (MSV), I use a good word tracking-tool.

The results on Google.com(today):
Keyword 1 (MSV 40.000): PR1
Keyword 2 (MSV 6.600): PR1
and a few other less important (long-tail) keywords also ranking on page 1

My questions:
- For the two keywords I am ranking PR1 since one week now. With the corresponding MSV, i should have at least maybe a few hundred visitors a day coming in trough Google-search. But the fact is that the number of incoming visitors trough Google are limited to 1-3 per day. What is happening here? Do I overlook something?
- Fot the keyword 1, I have an article with the keywords in title and URL and good backlinking with anchor text. The page is well indexed by Google, but it is ranked low. Instead, for the same keywords, my homepage is ranked PR1.(keyword density on homepage is lower than the density on the article)
Why doesn't Google use the article instead of the homepage?

Searched Google about this subject, but couldn't find anything on this particular subject. I am really confused now.
One of you guys have an explanation for this?

Thanks in advance,

Kees

[piatkow]

I assume that you are referring to your ranking in the SERPS rather than Page Rank which is an absolute score for the page.

There are several possibilities come to mind here:
1. You have optimised for the wrong keywords, these are not terms that people use to find your topic
2. Adsense places some more enticing sites above the organic search results
3. Something about the results makes people think this isn't what they are looking for and they drop down to the sites in 2nd and 3rd place
4. Your site is so specialised that that is all the traffic there is

[leeds1]

or you are logged into google and these are personalized results and really you are not ranking #1

[KeesW]

MMM....maybe the reaction of leeds1 makes sense. How can I check that? I did a search on www.google.com, without being logged in with my google account.

For the remarks of piatkow:
1. You have optimised for the wrong keywords, these are not terms that people use to find your topic
I researched the keywords in WordTracker, and the Keyword 1 has a monthly search volume of about 40.000. So people are really searching for this.(I guess....)
2. Adsense places some more enticing sites above the organic search results
There is no adsense involved yet....
3. Something about the results makes people think this isn't what they are looking for and they drop down to the sites in 2nd and 3rd place
Yep, that happens, but could that lower it from several hundreds to 1-3 per day?
4. Your site is so specialised that that is all the traffic there is
Its not a specialized site. It is a site about coffee and everything related to it.

So, in short: page ranking is good for well researched keywords with search volume on a well designed SEO-site, but no visitors are coming in.

Kees

[KeesW]

eeehhhh....sorry: Where I mention PR or Pagerank, I mean SERP.

[atlrus]

There is no such thing as "good keyword tracking tool"

The only way you could know how much traffic the #1 result is getting for certain keyword is to actually rank #1 for it.

I would assume that your keyword is not very popular, considering you got to the #1 spot in the SERPs within a month. It takes much longer to rank #1 for a keyword that's actually getting real 40,000 visitors/month.

[KeesW]

ok, now I am confused!
What about the keyword-research tools? Is it a scam? They must base it on something i guess....

Kees

[atlrus]

They must base it on something i guess....

That's exactly what they base it on :)

The best way to find out, short of "after the fact", is to run a brief Adwords campaign for that keyword, aiming of being the #1 ad displayed for that keyword.

[piatkow]

Another possibility
Geolocation? Only number one where you live.

[KeesW]

That is a possibility.
For the record, I live in France

On google.com my SERP is 1
On Google.fr my SERP is 13

If you are right, then google.com uses geolocation for France, then why am I lower on Google.fr?

Mind-breaking!

[londrum]

you should check what leeds1 said... click the little cog at the top right of google's page and then choose 'web history'.
you dont need to be logged in to get personalised SERPs, so making sure you're logged out wont solve anything

[KeesW]

ok, that explained alot.

I paused the webhistory, and 'suddenly' my SERP was lower. But on the second page (SERP18)

Still have some work to do......

Thanks a lot for all your time and help!

Kees

[Donna]

Are we talking about " exact searches" here , because it can be a big difference

[tedster]

For the record, I live in France

Ypou may also find this earlier discussion useful: Seeing Country-Located Results - from outside the country [webmasterworld.com]

That and other important past discussions are available from a thread that is pinned to the top of this forum's index page: Google Hot Topics and FAQs [webmasterworld.com]