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You should be good, but it's always something that you can A/B test without compromising the integrity of the content!

No they never performed all that well. Here's a chart of the avg. keyword position and impressions for AU-based searches over the past 16 months.

Strangely, here's the average keyword position for NZ-based searches (where we don't target at all).

They changed the blog URL pattern, and changed to secure in around November of 2017.

It doesn't HAVE to be an exact match title tag in order to generate favorable rankings. Semantic search has come a long way in interpreting the meaning of content, rather than the exact keywords you feed it.

In the past, Google only knew about a page what you told it. This is no longer the case, in that it can read in between the lines and understand the intent of a search, and match it up with content that will sufficiently answer that intent.

However, the system isn't perfect, and as you can see in this article, there is a slight correlation between exact match keyword usage in title tags and position. I also wrote an article that confirms the importance and continued relevance of on-page optimization.

If I can get an edge, I'll take it. I still use exact match (unless it feels forced or otherwise compromises the integrity of the content).

Woo, thanks for the help!

We have not changed the domain, except for switching over to a secure site in November of 2017. The footer link was removed about 30 days ago.

I took a deeper look. This doesn't seem to be the issue. My competitors have similar inbound link profiles by region origination. Scratch that one off the list!

1. Demand in AU for the targeted terms is sufficient (I'm really only targeting the AU) - the demand is definitely there. See image.
2. Competition - as shown above, the terms I'm targeting have an average difficulty of 21, our DA is a 42. In looking at the domains ranking for each target term, we should have zero problem ranking in the top 5 for each.
3. **Local Pack - **We now rank in the local packs. There is a significant amount of competition for our HQ in Sydney. Lots of content marketing agencies in the same area, and ranking in the local pack and maps.
4. **Technical - **I'm 99.9% sure this is technical problem rather than a competition or demand problem. I just can figure out what it is.

Correct, this content does not exist on any other domain.

That's good thinking. I took a cursory look in AHREFs and found the inbound links to be fairly similar in origin to local competitors, but I didn't really evaluate them as thoroughly as this. Thank you!

I don't think that would be the problem because we are only targeting the AU and English language, so we never set up any regional redirects (there would be nothing different to redirect to). We only use the ccTLD '.com.au'

For starters, congratulations on the improved metrics you're experiencing! I would have to also agree with EGOL on this one, in that it will be important to observe how those numbers are pulled, because it's very easy to get false positives with small amounts of data after large changes.

Some tips:

• You may want to look into your numbers a little deeper, and isolate performance based on location and user type. Meaning: are your numbers being skewed by internal members of the organization? Your tech team is a notorious source of generating false numbers if their IPs are not filtered. An easy way to do this is to compare % new users before/after launch. If the % of new users is substantially down, you may want to drill down into location to see if there is anything fishy going on. Which brings me to #2...
• Drill down into city to ensure that all of the traffic isn't coming from one place. You would be surprised at how much traffic is actually bots. If you see a disproportionate number of sessions coming from one city, take a look at the % of new users from that city. If it's in the single digits, you have a bot or developer, or spammer. I wrote a blog post on how to identify bots (and if they are creating false positives).

**As for rankings...: **

• Lots of controversy over this one, but I think more SEOs than not seem to agree that dwell time (time between leaving SERPs and visiting a site, then returning to SERPs) is an important factor for RankBrain.
• Look up "pogosticking" and its relationship with bounce rate. This is also likely a RankBrain factor.

In my opinion, if the numbers are true, in a very cursory observation, it seems that you have created a better experience for visitors. I would imagine that this **may **result in better rankings. At least, there is a better chance than not resulting in better rankings.

Apologies, SEOs never seem to give clear-cut answers, and qualify every statement

Jeff

It doesn't HAVE to be an exact match title tag in order to generate favorable rankings. Semantic search has come a long way in interpreting the meaning of content, rather than the exact keywords you feed it.

In the past, Google only knew about a page what you told it. This is no longer the case, in that it can read in between the lines and understand the intent of a search, and match it up with content that will sufficiently answer that intent.

However, the system isn't perfect, and as you can see in this article, there is a slight correlation between exact match keyword usage in title tags and position. I also wrote an article that confirms the importance and continued relevance of on-page optimization.

If I can get an edge, I'll take it. I still use exact match (unless it feels forced or otherwise compromises the integrity of the content).

For starters, congratulations on the improved metrics you're experiencing! I would have to also agree with EGOL on this one, in that it will be important to observe how those numbers are pulled, because it's very easy to get false positives with small amounts of data after large changes.

Some tips:

• You may want to look into your numbers a little deeper, and isolate performance based on location and user type. Meaning: are your numbers being skewed by internal members of the organization? Your tech team is a notorious source of generating false numbers if their IPs are not filtered. An easy way to do this is to compare % new users before/after launch. If the % of new users is substantially down, you may want to drill down into location to see if there is anything fishy going on. Which brings me to #2...
• Drill down into city to ensure that all of the traffic isn't coming from one place. You would be surprised at how much traffic is actually bots. If you see a disproportionate number of sessions coming from one city, take a look at the % of new users from that city. If it's in the single digits, you have a bot or developer, or spammer. I wrote a blog post on how to identify bots (and if they are creating false positives).

**As for rankings...: **

• Lots of controversy over this one, but I think more SEOs than not seem to agree that dwell time (time between leaving SERPs and visiting a site, then returning to SERPs) is an important factor for RankBrain.
• Look up "pogosticking" and its relationship with bounce rate. This is also likely a RankBrain factor.

In my opinion, if the numbers are true, in a very cursory observation, it seems that you have created a better experience for visitors. I would imagine that this **may **result in better rankings. At least, there is a better chance than not resulting in better rankings.

Apologies, SEOs never seem to give clear-cut answers, and qualify every statement

Jeff

I have a bit of an odd scenario for you.

I'm working with a content marketing company based in Sydney, AU**.** Oddly, this web property ranks for almost 4x as many keywordsin the US than the AU. (See attached). It also ranks much more favorably for target keywords in NZ.

This is despite having an AU ccTLD, proper geolocation targeting in GSC, and Google My Business and other NAP citations pointing towards an AU address.

To add to this geo-targeting issue, the site has absolutely bombed in search visibility over the past year. We are talking more than halving our search exposure.

**What's been done: **

1. Sitemap created and submitted.
2. All versions of GSC created and verified.
3. New site structure for top level landing pages.
4. Redirects okay.
5. Internal link structure okay.
6. Robots.txt and other indexing issues fine.
7. Google My Business fixed (Incorrect NAP previously).
8. No duped content.
9. No known penalties
10. Site crawl - no major issues.
11. html lang changed from "en-US" to "en-AU".
12. Reduced load speed by over 100%.
13. Fixed an issue with Yoast creating duped pages for media files (same title tags on orphaned pages).
14. Currently auditing and working through citations.
15. Removed .js banner causing indexing issues.
16. Removed a sitewide footer link from an external site, sending 20k inbound links w/same anchor.
17. http --> https redirects okay.
18. Title tags structured properly, and targeting well-researched KWs.

**Despite these necessary corrections, I haven't seen a blip of life. **

TL;DR,

• Poor visibility in general, especially over the past year.
• More favorable rankings in foreign search (not AU).
• Stumped!

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1. Demand in AU for the targeted terms is sufficient (I'm really only targeting the AU) - the demand is definitely there. See image.
2. Competition - as shown above, the terms I'm targeting have an average difficulty of 21, our DA is a 42. In looking at the domains ranking for each target term, we should have zero problem ranking in the top 5 for each.
3. **Local Pack - **We now rank in the local packs. There is a significant amount of competition for our HQ in Sydney. Lots of content marketing agencies in the same area, and ranking in the local pack and maps.
4. **Technical - **I'm 99.9% sure this is technical problem rather than a competition or demand problem. I just can figure out what it is.

Correct, this content does not exist on any other domain.

Woo, thanks for the help!

We have not changed the domain, except for switching over to a secure site in November of 2017. The footer link was removed about 30 days ago.

They changed the blog URL pattern, and changed to secure in around November of 2017.

No they never performed all that well. Here's a chart of the avg. keyword position and impressions for AU-based searches over the past 16 months.

Strangely, here's the average keyword position for NZ-based searches (where we don't target at all).