Why SEO

[iivgi]

Hi Guys,

it's going to be a long one so thank you from advance for your patience.

First i wanted you to i am new to SEO world and this world excites me

In the last 30 days, i started to check my companies (i am employee not an owner) website in SEO point of view.

What we do: Online grocery shopping and home delivery

www.artizone.com

I will share with you some of the results:

5482 errors for duplicate page content

8850 errors for duplicate page title

37 title missing or empty

some pages had 4+ H1 tags

many more HTML errors.

page authority 42/100

domain authority 40/100

We have no listing

163 back-links domain to our Dallas & Chicago website

and much more

another thing i checked was where are we for the keywords that we are interested in:

"online grocery shopping Dallas" - position 1 in Google search

shop for groceries online Dallas - Position 1 in Google search

shop for groceries from home Dallas - Position 1 in Google search

And some more and the same for Chicago

I Did all the searches in new incognito window

My Question - how come we build our website so bad, with no Google+, we have very few back-links(compare to our competitors) and the page and domain rank are so low and still we are in the 2 or 3 highest position in Google search

One more question - Why to invest time in fixing all the SEO issues i found?

You are all welcome to have a SEO view in my website

Thank you vest much

Ivgi

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ivgi,

I'm responding on this thread rather than on the first one I responded to. I received the email you sent me and took a very quick look at your company's website. Within the scope of Q&A, I'm afraid no on can do your keyword research for you - that's a big process that will require an investment of multiple hours of time. What I can do is give you my honest take on your situation in hopes that it will help your company to make a good decision.

• I think there is a lack of clarity in the business model. I am not familiar with the online shopping business model and have not worked with this type of business before, but it seems to me that if your company only delivers groceries to two places, then you aren't just an 'online grocery delivery', you are in some way a local business. I'm not positive about this, but whomever handles the work for your business needs to totally clarify what the business model is. You've stated that you deliver to two cities. Then I see something on the site about nationwide delivery. Which is it?

• The website is not giving me any type of value proposition. Why should I be shopping online? Why should I be shopping online with your company? What is the value? How do I get groceries? Who delivers them, when, etc? The site isn't telling me.

• The website copy needs a complete overhaul. It appears to have been written by an ESL copywriter, and as the audience is likely to be primarily speaking English as their first language, the problems with the copy will not instill trust in the quality of the business.

• It may be that the overall architecture of the website needs to be re-done, and for sure, the company needs a clear strategy for exactly what they are doing. The front entry page appears to indicate that there are 2 different sections to the site, one for each city. But what about the nationwide offer?

These are just a few of things I see in my brief glance at your website. It is my belief that your company's success depends on hiring a professional SEO and Usability team to do a complete audit of the website and create and implement a strategy, based upon market research, that will enable the business to clarify is model, message and promotion options. If they are expecting you to do this in-house, and you are, as you say, a beginner, then the company's expectations are not on-track.

I would strongly urge the business to choose the very best firm they can afford. You need real pros to do this right...perhaps check out the list of recommended companies here on this website.

http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended

I hope my suggestions are useful. I truly do believe that your company needs expert assistance with their online marketing and should not be expecting an in-house novice to get them results. That is too much responsibility to put on one staff member's shoulders, given the size, scope and needs of the website and the business.

[iivgi]

Robert and Chris,

First many many thanks for your answers, looks like you spent real time investigating my question and i really appreciate that.

Just to make things clear, i really think this website should be fixed.

I didn't mentioned that in my original question because i wanted to get answers that come "from the stomach" and not only answers that will try to help the "poor me" who don't have his boss OK to spend company time on fixing it.

I think that when you build something - first off all build it right  - and with so many issue obviously this website wasn't build right.

Second - As mentioned before i am new to SEO and SEM - so Robert if you can explain how can i find better KW for this industry(as you mention in your replay) i will appreciate that.

BTW - what "marginal ranking" is?

Anyway - i am going to continue with my report, i am employee in this company not and outsider that they higher. i really want this website to succeed.

Chris, the traffic is very low, but these KW have low traffic to begin with so i cant expect high traffic, what i need to find are relevant KW for this industry in my local location(Chicago & DFW) that has higher traffic and that i can target.

Any ideas on how to work to find these KWs?

Thank you both again for your answers

IVGI

[Chris.Menke]

For question #1: You don't have that many direct competitors for those search terms and the overall strength of the homepage isn't bad, compared to those that you do have.

For question #2: If you weren't already being overwhelmed by traffic for keywords like "online grocery shopping Dallas" you may look to branch out and try to get traffic for terms like "online grocery shopping", "buy pistachio and cherry tart online", "online gourmet foods", etc. Someone in that scenario might look to eliminate all possible hurdles that stand in the way of ranking for those terms. Such a person might add some additional content to those pages, as well.  But, if you're happy with how things are going for you now, then there's probably no reason to worry about any of those things.

[RobertFisher]

In terms of the overall question, Why SEO, I would say don't. Just wait and see what happens.

Now, how did it feel when I said that? Shock maybe? Concern maybe?

That is the answer. If you don't what marginal ranking status (rankings are not as important as sales IMO) to go away, you will have to improve this.

**"how come we build our website so bad" **Typically, when it shows like this, someone was cutting corners and did not want to pay for a really funcional, fully SEO'd site with prior thought given to business model, strategy, most important items to sell and why, competitive analysis, a real web dev team, real web dev experience, real web design experience (not pretty sites, functional and pretty sites with good UI/UX). Sorry, but that is reality. I never cease to be amazed at how very bright business people end up with a ____ site because they got cheap on the one thing they should have spent money on. Think about it, it's an ONLINE grocery store...

Without going into a massive list (I just spent 10-15 minutes in research), I will say this you have more issues than you even realize. On top of that, the KW's you are ranking for are ok. But, they are not the best searched terms around your industry. So, where do you rank for those terms?

Here is the bright spot and I mean this: They hired you and you are digging and researching. 
But, with companies that take this type approach, typically what we see is this: someone comes to us saying hey, we need help, blah blah blah, really ready to fix it, blah blah, blah, and can you give us a proposal? Sounds good so far! Early in my career as a marketing firm, we would detail what all needed to change, when, why, and cost. The business then takes that to India, cousin Wilbur who once worked the phones at GoDaddy, or says to their bright new employee who found it all:"You have the list of what needs to be fixed; go fix it!"

So, that is all I can give you. Don't fix it at your own risk as others in your vertical are way ahead of you.

I sincerely wish you luck as you go forward,

Robert