New site, SEO well considered, no traffic :/ What next?
-
Hi There!
We've built whatphone.com.au with SEO at the top of the list but things are not going as expected.
Yes, there's still a lot of work to do, but I was hoping to get some guidance on what to do next to make sure we keep the right focus.
This is what we've done to date:
-
Added lots of unique and relevant content, particularly to our blog (and will continue to do so on a weekly basis)
-
Ensured internal linking is strong
-
Optimised each product page around product name (and relevant internal links pointing to it)
-
Ensured the code is clean (ok, we are not a 100% but in a good place)
-
URL structure, metadata, page titles, file names and alt tags following best practice
-
Named the company and registered our domain around one of main keywords we are currently targeting "what phone"
What we're working on:
-
Link building
-
Site speed
-
Social signals
-
Rich media (videos, more images)
Not a bad effort right? No love from an organic traffic perspective
Ok, the site / domain is no older than 2 months old, it's a very competitive industry, and no inbound links yet, but come on!
Questions:
-
Are there any benefits of engaging external providers to help with link building? I'm talking about outsourcing from elancer or similar.. Or is this playing with fire?
-
Have we missed something obvious here?
Any help will be greatly appreciated!
PS: we currently have some issues with our pricing tables, but will fixed as soon as possible..
-
-
A quick look at the SEOMoz keyword difficulty tool tells us that is a 68% - Highly Competitive search term and you are just not going to rank a new site for that term overnight.
This is not a perfect science but just take a look at some of the commercial sites that do rank
- 500 linking domains, 100 linking domains to the page itself
This is the kind of ballpark you are working in and you are just not going to do that overnight.
You need to look at a long term strategy, start with long, long tail and work backwards over time - this kind of thing:
what phone to replace htc desire
what phone for an old age pensionerThen when you have this kind of level dialled in come back a notch in terms of competitive keywords and slowly but surely (over a year or so) work towards your bigger terms.
Also, remember, phrases like 'what phone', it probably shows big numbers but just how good a term is that? What is someone looking for? An informative breakdown of which phones are around maybe? Maybe you could do that and provide a truly authoritative look at the phones around and update it each qtr on your site.
Look to become known for your content, seed it out in other ways, be the best possible result for 'what phone' and keep your eye on the prize and you will get there but.... it's going to take time and effort and some content smarts.
Oh, and don't buy cheap links, that's just going to smash this ship into the rocks before you even leave the port!
Hope this helps
Marcus
-
Even if this might not be a very helpful comment.... but that's the experience I've made every time. Unless we have some coverage from major media sources it always took a minimum of 3 months, but up to one year until we got some decent traffic to our site. So I don't think it's that you're doing something wrong, it's just the name of the game..
As you say, it's a competitive business, and unless you get some great link magnets on your site, Adwords might be the way to go for starters. Oh, and of course looking for niches in the long tail.
-
I think you are playing safe till now... depending on your link building, content marketing and Social Media efforts you can measure the time and impact of your success.
I think asking out for outsourcing is great unless you know that service provide is going to help you instead of getting a shit out of the money you are investing.
I recommend you to go for a freelancer or company who have a good name or have done something for community... and have good idea for your company to work on...
Keep that in mind if all idea they have is directory submissions and article submissions and Yahoo answers then you are wasting your time indeed!
-
For new websites, Google imposes a "sandbox" penalty so it will be at least a few months before you can rank competitively for keywords. Read more here:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-sandbox-still-exists-exemplified-by-gradercom
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
-
LOCAL SEO: Franchise --> One storefront. Multiple territory. Multiple listings?
An interesting problem came our way, and I'd love your help in solving it. An individual I'm chatting with owns and manages a number of territories of a service-based Franchise business around Eastern Iowa.**His territory covers multiple cities and zips. He services all of those places, but does not have a physical presence in all. There is one company office. But he has local numbers for each territory.**The corporate franchise's website is dynamic. It shows the 'local' number and information based on the visitor's location. Basically, little microsites for each franchise territory.Three years ago he set up individual Google Places pages for each territory, using a PO box address and the local phone numbers. The Google listings are set up not to display an address. The kick is -- those addresses are now expired. Those Google Local listings still exist, and drive considerable traffic in each target city. As you can imagine, this also causes havoc on his other citations. There are scattered (YP, Yahoo, Yelp, etc) listings for each address. Their name in GetListed brings up all five different addresses, each with a number of web properties already claimed.Now that I've offered to help, I need to determine the best way to move forward. Suspend the verified listings with hidden addresses and move to a single listing for the office location? We could add all of the zips in manually, but it would cover a very wide range, and could lose its rank in local SERPs. Even with a well-optimized description. And the local numbers would likely not show up. Keep the listings. Don't touch them at all. The owner is looking to maintain the look and feel of a local business in each of his territories. That is difficult to do with a single listing. Assuming we decide not to touch the active listings (option 2), what will we do for other listings? Do we claim a local Yahoo listing for each location? Just for the corporate office? Would love to hear how others have attacked the multi-territory franchise problem, or would in this case.Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | SocialJosh0 -
Is it possible for a web site to get 'Pigeon Holed' geographically?
I have a site that sells widgets. It's called widgets.com. I want to sell widgets locally in 10 different geographic areas so my url structure/kw goal is as follows: URL KW I Hope to Rank For
Image & Video Optimization | | BrianJGomez
widgets.com 'Widgets'
widgets.com/houston/ 'Houston Widgets'
widgets.com/dallas/ 'Dallas Widgets' So I've optimized my site accordingly where my home page has no Geo optimization and my 'city pages' are all geo optimized, complete with hcard brick and mortar addresses that are all legit offices that sell our widgets. My problem, is that despite all that, my home page (which again, is not geo-optimized) is now ranking for 'Dallas Widgets'. This is messing up my strategy and very frustrating because the home page does not have any information Dallas residents will find helpful about widgets. So my question is, am I better off just owning this 'Dallas' label is forcing on my site and just optimize the home page for dallas and keep the rest of the 9 cities in their directories? Does anyone have any experience with getting pigeonholed geographically speaking?0 -
Local SEO: Ste vs. Suite vs. #
Hi, I used the spelled out "Suite" in my local NAP, but sometimes it's been shortened to Ste by citation websites. I'm trying to remain consistent here Should I use Ste H, Suite H, or #H? This is a good article on it: http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-local-citations/1605-suite-vs-ste-vs-your-citation-addresses-2.html but I'd still like your opinion.
Image & Video Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Can SEO companies be listed on Google Local, Bing Local, and Yahoo Local?
Can anyone confirm if SEO companies can be listed in the local results for Google, Yahoo, and Bing? I'm asking because when you search for most local terms, it will return their local listings. However, that doesn't appear to be the case when searching for SEO or marketing services - or at least none show up when searching from Houston and I'm pretty sure we have quite a few SEO companies here 😉
Image & Video Optimization | | ChaseCameron0 -
Are multiple embeds of the same video considered content duplication?
We are considering using Wistia to host our “new” video content on our website. Currently we use YouTube and find many people watch our technical videos (Eg. Fitting videos have10k + views, which is very high for our niche industry) We currently have “the same” YouTube videos embedded on several different blog posts on our website, as the video is still relevant to what the post talks about Question: Since Wistia updates our video Robot.Txt file, would multiple embeds of the “same video” be seen as content duplication on google & “be harmful” as a result? Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | Ray_UK0 -
SEO for Explicit / Medical Pictures - Will It Hurt Rankings?
I have a client with page 1 rankings for several keywords. He wants to make some updates to his website. He is offering a new service and wants to show before and after photos of the procedure. He is an OB/GYN, so the before/after pictures are very explicit and have full nudity. How will this affect his rankings? Is there something that I can do to tell Google and other SE's that these photos are medical and not pornographic? Should I host them on another domain? Just looking for thoughts and insight. Thank you in advance!
Image & Video Optimization | | itrogers0 -
Video SEO: Videos in Multiple Sources
Frist time question, so excited! 🙂 We are hosting videos on Wistia for a new series we're calling Tatango University - Very similar to Whiteboard Fridays as you can tell - thanks Rand for the idea. My question, should we also be uploading the videos to YouTube or will this somehow we looked at as duplicate content or video spamming? Also, if we host them on YouTube will they always come up before our videos on our own site, therefore driving all the traffic to YouTube? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Image & Video Optimization | | Tatango0