I suspect the WA Keyword Tool does not work.
Some people here may have come across one of rants about not ranking in Google. I often get told that I have to target low-hanging fruit keywords but I've done that a few times. And yet my posts still don't come up when I search for them.
I've been pretty angry at Google at times. In fact, I've reached the point where I loathe Google. I think it's wrong that everyone on the web has to jump through Google's hoops to get noticed. Who is Google to make all these rules? Who is Google to tell people how to run their own sites? As far as I'm concerned, a search engine's job is to bring up results that are relevant to a user's query and - and this is very important - let the user decide which results they want to look at further. And nothing else.
Someone ought to do the entire web a favor, create an organic search engine and bring this monopoly down.
However, as a non-programmer, that's outside my power.
But I digress...
I recently put a new post up on my blog and this time, I was very thorough in making sure that everything was correct in the SEO optimization so there could be no mistake.
I found the keyword on Wealthy Affiliate's keyword tool. According to that, this had 24 searches per month and only 7 sites competing for it. LOW-HANGING FRUIT.
With only 10 results per page on Google search, this meant that - even if my post ranked last - it should still be on page 1.
And is it? No. It's not ranked on page 1. Or page 2. Or page 10. Or page 16. It's nowhere.
I felt my frustration with Google growing as I'd been screwed over yet again by this company that seems to have nothing better to do with all its wealth and power than to design algorithms to crush small websites.
But then a thought hit me. What if it isn't Google that's the problem? What if the WA keyword doesn't work?
If it's giving incorrect information, then this could have serious ramifications for any of us who are using it.
Now, I don't want to have to pay $19 a month on top of the premium membership fee in order to use Jaaxy when it should already be included in the package but it may well be that people like myself will have to start exploring other options or our sites will never get organic traffic.
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Unfortunately life is never that easy, the WA keyword tool only supplies the keywords all the other factors that affect ranking are outside of its control.
Age of website and authority (i.e. amount of content relevant to that search) are the two biggest indicators used by Google. Pages may not be ranking at the moment but over time and as you continue to create more relevant content they will.
If it was that easy everybody would be ranking on page 1 all of the time and with millions of websites that logistically can't happen. SEO ranking is one of the hardest ways to capture traffic because it is a long play approach.
Low hanging keywords will eventually rank, quicker than other options and pages will move up the ranks - use a tool such as https://www.serplab.co.uk to monitor exactly where the results are and then you can see the actual progress of your pages ranking.
Hi Marie. It's very nice to meet you.
Thanks for your reply. This has to be one of the most honest answers about this issue.
It's disappointing that this kind of thing isn't discussed in the official training as that makes it misleading. And reading the comments on WA from the lucky few that manage to rank quickly can easily make the less fortunate feel that they're doing something wrong.
However, if you're right, then that means we can still keep using the WA keyword tool. Then I suppose it's just a matter of whether I can maintain motivation in the months ahead to continue writing articles without a readership.
I'm all ready to engage with my readers, to answer their questions and get some lively discussions going, but the blog's a ghost town.
I'm actually a prolific writer by nature and I've written a lot of fiction. I see from your profile that you're a writer as well and so you'd probably know how tough it is to get your work in front of a readership. Yet, I can handle that. When I finish a novel, I can share it with a handful of family and friends. And I enjoy reading my work myself.
But this blogging business is something else entirely. Putting a post up on a regular schedule just so it can float around ignored in cyberspace is tough.
However, I'll keep at it until my membership expires in November. If things turn around before then, I'll keep the site going longer. If not, I'll close it down.
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As someone who uses the WA keyword tool exclusively and have made it to Google page one more than 20 times, I can definitely say it is not the WA keyword tool.
As Marie mentions below there are many factors that go into ranking a website, almost 200 to be exact. But the problem most people have is that they focus too much on getting ranked and not enough time on constantly creating quality content for the website visitor and not Google.
Google doesn't want people to create content for the purpose of getting ranked, they want the same exact thing your website visitor wants, unique fresh and engaging content. Google does not rank content on how often a specific target keyword is used. Google ranks your content on everything within, the entire context of your content.
Just write naturally and forget about Google and their rankings. Keep providing quality information to help your website visitors. The content you create is for them first and foremost. Once you consistently make them your focal point, Google will then begin to take notice.
Thanks, Boomer. Content's never been a problem for me though - which is why I've found the ranking issue so frustrating. I don't just sprinkle a few keywords into a post and hope Google will notice.
I don't enjoy blowing my own trumpet by I'm a writer with decades of experience. I've been writing fiction since I was a small child and novels since I was a teenager. And I do a lot of writing in my career. I even teach others how to write on occasion.
The last post I did was well over a thousand words, very thorough in addressing its topic and - like everything I put on my post - written in an engaging and entertaining manner. And considering that there only seven other sites competing for it, I was shocked that it didn't rank at all.
However, it's good to know it's not the WA tool.
Cheers.
The problem I see with your website is that it has duplicate content within and is redundant. This is something Google does not like. On your website you have 19 blog posts on your home page blogroll. Then you split those up and put 13 in a category called blog.
Blog should not be a category because the WordPress home page by default is where your blogroll is for posts. Blog as a category is redundant because a category is a segmented area of the overall blogroll. That's like making one of the categories for books, books.
Hey, Boomer. I'll go and change that right now. I had no idea that qualified as duplicate content. I always figured duplicate content was content that was copied and pasted from another blog.
And you're absolutely right in that I don't need blog as a category if most of my posts just end up on the blog roll anyway. I don't know why I didn't pay any attention to that before.
Thanks so much for taking a look at the site and for the advice. I really appreciate it. Cheers, Boomer!