What is wrong with our site?
-
Hello Seomoz friends.
I've about to pull all my hair out and need to turn somewhere. Our site, www.sightmax.com has been around since 2004. We used to be ranked at the top of page two on google under the keyword "live chat". We are no on page 4, heading to page 5.
Can anyone take a look at the site and see if anything jumps out at you? The only way we have been able to get on the first page, is the pay for google adwords (which we've been doing every month for 7 years).
Again, the site www.sightmax.com and the keyword is "live chat".
Any help or feedback would be appreciated SO MUCH!
Thanks!
Eric
-
Resslers tip here about varying the anchor text is one of the most over-looked factors. This is extremely important, as is the entire link profile being given consideration. You never want just one type of link vs another.
-
I've talked to a couple, but I've never worked with one. Just make sure to ask if they are using multiple servers across the country you are doing business in, that they are correctly using C-Blocks and that your links will be put in relevant content.
Another factor to remember is making sure your link landscape is diverse. Have both exact and similar keyword usage ("Live Chat" - "Chat Software" - "Live Chat Software"), a collection of both followed and no-followed links and websites with Page Ranks ranging from really low to really high. This makes it look more natural.
If you wanted to use a link building service for the high quality links, you could then go after low quality links on your own. Post on blogs about your topic, use social bookmarking, etc.
-
Thanks RM. I'm certainly considering Shannons proposal. Have you used any link building firms, if so, any names that you would highly recommend?
Thanks again to everyone for their participation.
-
Websites linking to you is one of the more important SEO techniques, and actually offers the highest potential. However, trading links with other websites will actually hurt you, and I would not advise doing that at all.
Link building comes from using various strategies in order to convince them to link to you. This could be through writing very informative or controversial articles (Link Bait), emailing webmasters or hiring an agency that specializes in it. These companies tend to have networks of websites that they use to build links. Because of that, it's very important to ask for references.
I would also suggest listening to what Shannon Lily has proposed to you for a technique. There is such an art to link building that any good tips will help!
-
Hey man, email me at shannonlilly@rocketmail.com I have a link building technique I would love to share with you privately.
-
Thanks for all the answers so far. Through all our analytics and conversion reporting, it does seem that the keyword is still "live chat" and not "live chat software" (or similar).
Link building will be tough since we are a commercial site and don't want to do reciprocal linking to someone that has nothing to do with SightMax.
The way the site is dropping, it feels like someone is duplicating our content on another domain name or some type of spamming. Seomoz tools give the site a "A" grade for the "live chat" optimization that is in place on the site.
I'd be very happy to get this site back to page two somewhere on google.
Thanks for all the nice help folks, I'm really struggling with this and have for quite a bit of time.
-
Ok, from my point of view your website title is a bit spammy.
I would of rather gone for the software name and then optimize each page/product accordingly with your chosen keywords and perhaps target more keywords than just the ones you chose as your site name.
Just a brief observation.
-
I concur here with Ressler.
You def need LOTS more quality links to gain front page exsposure but before you spend the time and money to do that (time is money) be sure that is the best term you should be going after.
You say you are using awords, I would split test which keywords (like i suggested before) actually convert clicks to customers (split testing will give this data too you).
You will then know which keywords are better for organic rankings. This is when PPC or CPC comes in handy!
-
First off, I agree with Shannon. There are some long tail phrases that would work better for you. As for a quantifying reason for why you are slipping: the #1 website in that search has 2414 linking domains, compared to your 300. Regardless of the overall quality, that is still a massive gap.
I would suggest two things:
- Go after less competitive long-tails (which will convert better)
- Either start, or get more aggressive on link building
Although having visitors looks nice, and makes you feel good, your ultimate goal should be to convert visitors to customers.
-
Hey Mate,
Well first off your site is really nice (good job).
Your aiming for a very competitive phrase. You would be better off and probably convert more seeing as how your service is not actually for live chat but rather the back-end of allowing people to have live chat on there websites. I would go for terms like live chat software, live chat program etc... You would convert better and rank easier. When I go to google and type in live chat its because I want to chat with someone live. Not find a software to do it myself.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Thinking about redesigning site to reduce bounce rate - have a couple of questions
BACKGROUND Im looking at redesigning the website for a creative consultancy to improve the user experience. The website is mainly an image portfolio along with “press”, “our services”, “about us”, “contact” pages. I originally designed the website a few years ago and when we did, we wanted to make the image portfolio the most important feature. So we made it a full screen JS image slider with lazy loading of images, so that there are about 40 full screen images on the homepage that rotate. From a users point of view i still feel this is the best system as it very quickly allows them to browse the portfolio, which we looking for a creative consultancy is their UPS (unique selling point). The site has a very strong backlink profile compared to its competitors in the SERPS it has about 20-25% increase in PA and DA. But our site has been slipping down the rankings in recent years / months. From spot 1-2 to about spot 5-7. MY HYPOTHESIS I think that the reason the site may be dropping back in the SERP is that although its a very usable site, all its portfolio information is “too easy to find / view” and results in a user coming to our site, seeing everything they need to see, then bouncing back to the SERP. Our site has a bounce rate of 40-60%. Where as on competitors sites, their “portfolio” is a separate page off the homepage, so a users has to click through to a separate page, and even if they don't like the design content of the portfolio it doesn't get logged as a bounce. MY QUESTION Does bounce rate affect SERP ranking ? Could the sites SERP performance be improved by redesigning the site to put the portfolio on a separate page so a user would have to click through to it, if that would get the bounce rate down, would the site see a benefit even if people still clicked back to the SERP results eventually after seeing our portfolio, even though it wasn't a true 1 page bounce ? Dose time on site affect SERP ranking ? Is there a way i can see a competitor's bounce rate ? Would welcome any other thoughts inputs on this matter.
Web Design | | sl_pa0 -
Does having too many wordpress portfolio pages with little content hurt a site's SEO?
I have a site that is for a service company, not image based like a photographer or artist. We utilize the Portfolio feature to create a gallery of floor coating finishes (images of all the flooring finish options available) but this solution has created /portfolio/file-name pages for each image. These pages have no other content besides the image. I've run SEMrush audits on this site which shows a high percentage of pages with low text/code ratio and duplicate content (a lot of the finishes have very similar names). This site has been extremely slow to improve any visibility online (more than 9 months) and I'm wondering if this is a factor by possibly having a negative effect on our site. We initially chose the portfolio option because it was the best-looking solution for our users but we can certainly change it to another format if that is better. Thanks!
Web Design | | WillGMG0 -
Is there an issue if we show our old mobile site to Google & new site to users
Hi, We have our existing mobile site that contains interlinking in footer & content and new mobile site that does not have interlinking. We will show existing mobile site to google crawler & new mobile site to users. Will this be taken as black hat by Google. The mobile site & desktop site will have same url across devices & browsers. Regards
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
URL Re-Mapping Question ?. Do I need to the theme of my business in my url struture even though GWT knows what my site is about
Hi All, I have currently planning to do some url remapping on my Hire Website as alot of most important pages are far to many levels deep from the root domain. This is also making my sitemap not tidy etc. In GWT, Google knows that the theme is my website is Hire as it's the top word. Therefore do I still need to use the word hire in all my new url categories / structures or not ? Examples http://goo.gl/BFmvk2 I was thinking of remapping to www.xxxxxxx.xco.uk/tool-hire-birmingham http://goo.gl/pC9Bdp I was thinking of remapping to www.xxxxxx.co.uk/cleaning-equipment Notice in the later example , I do not have the word rent in the url. Any advice is much appreciated thanks peter
Web Design | | PeteC120 -
How much does on-site duplicated content affect SERPs?
Hi, We've recently gotten into Moz, with our E-commerce websites, and discovered that it's crawler takes note of about 2500 pages which it thinks are the same (duplicated). We've now begun to completely rewrite every description of every product (including Meta Title/Description) so that this number may be reduced. Since this is the biggest issue Moz spots I'm wondering what the effect of fixing it will be on our position in the SERP (mainly Google). Does anybody have some stories or experience about this topic? Thanks in Advance! 🙂 Alexander
Web Design | | WebmasterAlex0 -
Sites went from page 1 to page 40 + in results
Hello all We are looking for any insight we can get as to why all (except 1) of our sites were effected very badly in the rankings by Google since the Panda updates. Several of our sites londonescape.com dublinescape.com and prague, paris, florence, delhi, dubai and a few others (all escape.com urls) have had major drop in their rankings. LondonEscape.net (now.com (changed after rank drop) ), was ranked between 4th & 6th but is now down around 400th and DelhiEscape.net and MunichEscape.com were both number 1 for several years for our main key words We also had two Stay sites number 1 , AmsterdamStay and NewYorkstay both .com ranked number 1 for years , NewYork has dropped to 10th place so far the Amsterdam site has not been effected. We are not really sure what we did wrong. MunichEscape and DelhiEcape should never have been page 1 sites ) just 5 pages and a click thru to main site WorldEscape) but we never did anything to make them number 1. London, NewYork and Amsterdam sites have had regular new content added, all is checked to make sure its original. **Since the rankings drop ** LondonEscape.com site We have redirected the.net to the .com url Added a mountain of new articles and content Redesigned the site / script Got a fair few links removed from sites, any with multiple links to us. A few I have not managed yet to get taken down. So far no result in increased rankings. We contacted Google but they informed us we have NOT had a manual ban imposed on us, we received NO mails from Google informing us we had done anything wrong. We were hoping it would be a 6 month ban but we are way past that now. Anyone any ideas ?
Web Design | | WorldEscape0 -
How can the Web site designer and the SEO strategist work together peacefully?
The organization I work for has decided to re-design or re-develop the existing company Web site. My part in this project is to come up with new features to add to the site, as well as making the site SEO-friendly (copywriting, link-building, keyword research, etc.). I don’t know a thing about Web site design, coding, format, etc., and I guess I will have to work with a designer on this project. How would I go about finding a Web site designer? Should they have some SEO knowledge? How much designer, coding and site structure knowledge should I have? And how do we not infringe on one another as we work together? (Sorry so many questions.)
Web Design | | Obie0 -
Buying mutliple keyword rich domain names and directing them to one site
I've noticed some folks buying keyword rich domain names and pointing them to one site to try to rank for those keywords. An example of this is a plumbing business that buys domains like austinplumber.com, localaustinplumbingservice.com, bestplumberinaustin.com and then pointing these domains to their main website. Does this help the site rank for these key phrases? How does google see this? Thanks mozzers! Ron
Web Design | | Ron100