Stuck rankings: does the serp position range define your next tactic?

[Jooky]

Was thinking about how/if google judges urls by different signals with respect to serp position range.

So if my url is stuck on position 72 vs position 35 does that narrow down what should I should do next?
What about position 35 vs position 13?

For position on page 1 it's usually more links, CTR tweaks, engagement. But what about page 4-6? I had a url stuck on page 6 and it was not responding to typical PBN or guestpost links. But a url on page 2 jumped to top 5 with 1 guest post.

Are there guidelines for this? ex:
If you're stuck on pages 2-3, check your A & B.
If you're stuck on pages 4-6, check your C , D, E.
If you're stuck on pages 6+, check your F.

?

 

[Ryuzaki]

I don't think it's possible to say anything definitive on this but if I had to wing it and say something, it'd be this:

Firstly, this is how I think it might roll for a site with an established backlink profile. If you have a new site (or even page), the answer is often time. You need to wait and do the basic work of promoting and growing a site's content amount and backlink profile. For existing sites seeing problems:

For page 6+, something is wrong with your fundamental on-page SEO. Usually either too much keyword usage or not enough. If you've got the keyword in the title tag, H1, H2, and a couple instances in the post and an alt text, that's usually enough to land you higher than page 6 unless we're talking about insanely competitive SERPs. If you didn't cover those basics, that's your issue. If you did but you then crammed too many uses of the keyword in your post, that's your issue. Look out for "recent post" widgets and breadcrumbs and things like that inflating your usage count.

For page 4-6, the SERP is probably tough and your site needs more authority and age. More backlinks to the page can give you an indication of your upward mobility, but in general if you get that close you probably did the on-page stuff right at the basic level. If you know it's an easy SERP and you still can't bust through, you might be slightly over-optimized in your keyword usage count or in your anchor texts.

For page 2-3, more links and start looking at advanced on-page, which takes into account what other ranking pages are doing as well as getting into topical depth and breadth, etc.

For page 1, more links of course but you can get a lot of mileage out of tweaking on-page in the advanced arena. LSI terms, related-entity mentions, TF*IDF, using keywords from the same basket of terms Google ranks these pages for, etc. You need to get into dwell time, CTR, reducing pogo-sticking, etc.

 

[becool]

I don't think it's possible to say anything definitive on this but if I had to wing it and say something, it'd be this:

Firstly, this is how I think it might roll for a site with an established backlink profile. If you have a new site (or even page), the answer is often time. You need to wait and do the basic work of promoting and growing a site's content amount and backlink profile. For existing sites seeing problems:

For page 6+, something is wrong with your fundamental on-page SEO. Usually either too much keyword usage or not enough. If you've got the keyword in the title tag, H1, H2, and a couple instances in the post and an alt text, that's usually enough to land you higher than page 6 unless we're talking about insanely competitive SERPs. If you didn't cover those basics, that's your issue. If you did but you then crammed too many uses of the keyword in your post, that's your issue. Look out for "recent post" widgets and breadcrumbs and things like that inflating your usage count.

For page 4-6, the SERP is probably tough and your site needs more authority and age. More backlinks to the page can give you an indication of your upward mobility, but in general if you get that close you probably did the on-page stuff right at the basic level. If you know it's an easy SERP and you still can't bust through, you might be slightly over-optimized in your keyword usage count or in your anchor texts.

For page 2-3, more links and start looking at advanced on-page, which takes into account what other ranking pages are doing as well as getting into topical depth and breadth, etc.

For page 1, more links of course but you can get a lot of mileage out of tweaking on-page in the advanced arena. LSI terms, related-entity mentions, TF*IDF, using keywords from the same basket of terms Google ranks these pages for, etc. You need to get into dwell time, CTR, reducing pogo-sticking, etc.

I know @Ryuzaki suggested the above isn't "definitive" and that he's "winging it," which I can appreciate, it's worth mentioning that I observed all of the above four stages/phases on a single site I have been working on and the site's keywords didn't move upward until I corrected the deficiencies referenced above, nearly in lockstep with what's outlined above. In retrospect, I regret that I neglected to post a case study here with notes documenting what I did and the nearly-contemporaneous corresponding movement in the SERPs. More importantly, I think my experience with the site I'm referencing underscores the importance of adhering to the best (or even sensible) practices like those delineated in the Digital Strategy Crash Course. (Despite having been familiar with the practices outlined in the Digital Strategy Crash Course, I didn't implement them until later on down the line after I disbanded the team of idiots who were marketing the site for me because I was too busy to do it myself as a result of the rigors of my day job, which is probably a conversation for another day.)

For what it's worth, I am in a competitive niche and I've been "stuck" dozens of times over the course of a year and a half plus. Adhering to the Digital Strategy Crash Course and the knowledge diseminated throughout this forum hasn't landed me in a positive ROI quite yet, but I do have roughly 25 keywords in the top 5 spots and 50 keywords in the top 6-10 spots, with significantly more keywords in the top 20 spots (although I'm admittedly using approximations). Having that said (and really, the point I'm trying to make is) I'd look into the above if you're "stuck" as it's all eerily familiar and I think the information provided above is spot on. If it helped me in my exceedingly difficult niche (and I guarantee you're not in my niche, as I know everyone in my niche, quite literally), it will more likely than not work for you too.