Case Study: How to Get a Page Back to Google's Search Results When It Refuses to Rank It!

A client in a competitive field came to us with a page that couldn't get ranked or worse, Google preferred to rank sub-pages under it. Weird, but it happens.

From our initial investigation, we found that:

• Competitors with less content on their pages, but covering more or less the same topics were ranking higher (our client overdid it).
• Competitors with less quality content, or less depth and professionalism, were ranking higher in our opinion.
• The client's page loaded very fast on desktop, but had a sticky image on mobile that was originally 1600x800, but actually appeared as 100x100, for some reason.
• The opening paragraph was very generic and didn't tell anything about what was going to be on the page.
• They tried refreshing the page at intervals of about a month and a half over the past year or so, but every time they just added more content without much thought.

What we did:

• We contacted three of our best content writers and asked each one to suggest outlines for the topic, regardless of the existing page. We asked them to do research and each suggested their own - of course, no one knew about the others. (We did this to save learning time. As far as I'm concerned, I trust them, and if all three suggest that a topic needs to be covered because of the intent, I'm with them.)
• We edited the opening paragraph to "1. General Opening, 2+3. Why it's worth staying here, and what they're going to see here" - I think this is one of the keys to keeping people from running away from a long and verbose page from a content perspective. A kind of first few seconds of what they're going to see here.
• We reduced the image that was just a waste of events (with a general impact on the rest of the site and not just the page we worked on).
• In the final stage, after receiving the suggestions from the content writers, I compared and reorganized the page, deleted no less than 2000 words, and didn't even feel any pain for a second (because I didn't pay for the content ??). In my opinion, the best page was created, the most focused on the user and what he expects to see.
• We purchased two strong links as part of the action plan for the next two months, from a link provider that did excellent and precise work for my request (real NEWS sites with traffic from the specific country the client targets) - whoever wants a connection, I'll be happy to help him in private.

Results:

• Generally, I don't send a page for re-indexing, and I prefer Google's natural scanning method, but for some reason, I said it was worth it because we made significant changes to the page structure.
• After 3 days, Google did not index any page for this search term from the client's site. We started to regain trust, and for the first time in about a year, the page appeared in the search results (appearing in the image).
• Currently ranked around 30~, but that's less interesting because I believe that within a short period, this client will enter the top 10 with several accurate links and changes in the content itself to show Google that we are "on it" and that this page is not just another evergreen like other competitors.

Good luck!