A page is not ranking—how would you diagnose the issue?

If a page is not ranking, I diagnose it in 4 structured layers: Technical → On-Page → Off-Page → SERP/Intent Fit.

Here’s a professional SEO audit flow you can use in interviews or real projects.

Technical SEO Diagnosis (First Priority)

If Google can’t crawl or index it, nothing else matters.

Indexing Check

• Search: site:yourdomain.com/page-url
• Use **Google Search Console → URL Inspection
• Check:
  • Is it indexed?
  • Is it marked “Crawled – currently not indexed”?
  • Is it “Discovered – not indexed”?

Possible issues

• noindex tag
• Robots.txt blocking
• Canonical pointing to another page
• Soft 404
• Duplicate content
• Thin content

Crawl & Rendering Issues

Use:

• Screaming Frog
• Google Search Console (Page indexing report)

Check:

• JS rendering problems
• Blocked resources
• Broken internal links
• Slow page speed

Core Web Vitals

Use:

• Google PageSpeed Insights
• Core Web Vitals report inside Search Console

If:

• LCP is high
• CLS unstable
• INP poor

It may impact competitiveness.

On-Page SEO Audit

If indexed but not ranking, check optimization quality.

Keyword Targeting

• Is the primary keyword in:
  • Title tag?
  • H1?
  • URL?
  • First 100 words?
• Is the keyword too competitive?
• Are you targeting multiple keywords with one page?

Use:

• Ahrefs
• SEMrush

Search Intent Mismatch (Very Common Issue)

Ask:

• What type of results rank?
  • Blog posts?
  • Product pages?
  • Videos?
  • Tools?

If SERP shows:

• Comparison articles
• Long guides
• Listicles

But your page is:

• A short informational page

→ That’s intent mismatch.

Content Depth & Quality

Compare your page vs top 5 ranking pages:

• Word count
• Subtopics covered
• FAQs included
• Structured data
• Multimedia (images, tables, video)

If competitors are 2,000 words and yours is 600 → upgrade needed.

Authority & Backlinks

Even perfect pages won’t rank without authority.

Backlink Analysis

Use:

• Ahrefs
• Moz

Check:

• Page-level backlinks
• Domain authority
• Anchor text relevance

Internal Linking

Ask:

• Is this page linked from:
  • Homepage?
  • Relevant category pages?
  • High-authority blog posts?

Weak internal linking = weak ranking signals.

Competitive & SERP Landscape Analysis

Sometimes the problem is competition.

Keyword Difficulty

Check:

• KD score
• Domain strength of top 10
• Are top 10 dominated by:
  • Government sites?
  • High-authority brands?
  • Established sites?

If yes → you may need:

• Long-tail variation
• Content cluster strategy

Algorithm or Penalty Check

Use:

• Google Search Console
• Manual actions report
• Security issues

Ask:

• Did traffic drop after a core update?
• Is it affected by a helpful content update?

Structured Diagnostic Framework (Interview-Ready Answer)

If asked in interview:

“First, I check indexation in Search Console.
Then I verify technical issues like canonical, noindex, crawl errors.
Next, I evaluate search intent and compare content depth against top-ranking pages.
After that, I analyze backlink gap and internal linking.
Finally, I assess keyword competitiveness and algorithm impact.”

Most Common Real-World Reasons Pages Don’t Rank

• Search intent mismatch
• Weak backlinks
• Thin content
• Poor internal linking
• Keyword too competitive
• Crawl/indexing issues
• Cannibalization