Why Did My Site Go Limp On Me?
-
One of my clients was once in the #1 position for "Philadelphia interior designer" and other related terms, but her site has dropped significantly. Still it is on the first page, but far from its former glory.
http://www.interiorsbydonnahoffman.com is the site.
What really confuses me is why in her home turf search of "Bucks County Interior Designer" a competitor, http://www.miriamansellinteriors.com, is above her in the SERPS. According to OSE her competitor has a PA of 32 vs my client's 39. My client has 35 Linking Root Domains (and some of high quality) compared to just 11 for the competition. In all aspects her competitor looks weaker and less relevant to me.
Her site has been weak in the SERPs since May/June.
We are redesigning her site- she has a high bounce rate compared to my other interior design clients, something like 55%.
Any insights from y'all?
-
Thanks for that Ricky.
-
Completely agree that on-site is needed, however, i'm not sure HOW much good it would do for that keyword phrase.
You are competing against one site for that term that you are extremely unlikely to outrank due to high DA/PA (2 SERP listings for houzz.com)
That being said you are competing with ashlimizell.com and down2earthdesign.com for the spot just ahead of the local listings (which may be hard to rank for due to the fact you are not actually located in Philly) and I think the on-site changes should take care of winning over that #3 ranking!
I also agree, kill the linked footer text. The anchor text doesn't really even match the corresponding page (ie interior design bucks county links to about page)
Also check out the Moz 2013 ranking factors for other areas that could help you get a boost in the SERPS! http://moz.com/rand/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/rank-factors-pie-2013lrg.gif
-
I didn't realize that by marking your answer as "good" that it was going to show as "answered" on the main thread. Whoops. I am still hoping for some more feedback on the off-site part.
-
No offense taken. I agree with you that this site is in a sorry state. Thanks for reminding me what I am dealing with. Unfortunately I inherited this poorly made website and until we launch her new one it is what I must work with.
I never thought of how the text below the footer could hurt her, although it is obvious now that you mention it. Again, it is an inherited tactic.
My only question on your feedback is about the title tags. They are clearly there: "Philadelphia Interior Designer | Bucks County Interior Design" so what are you referring to?
Thanks so much for your time, Lesley.
Do you notice any off-site red flags/issues?
-
Please don't be offended by this.
Honestly looking at the site I see no effort put into onsite SEO.
- h1 text is mostly her name (if people knew about her they more than likely would not search for her, make it more general)
- Page speed is average, it could be a lot better.
- No title tags
- Too much good text as images
- Missing a few key alt tags
- Your h2 elements are blank, which to me is a spammy red flag.
It honestly looks like a spammy site to me. You have a lot of text included after the copyright, which I am assuming you are using for ranking. Which in my mind amounts to no more than just putting a big list of keywords at the end of the page.
I am a firm believer in onsite first and off site next. You have a lot of on site work to do.
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
-
Web Site Ranking
Hi Folks, I made some changes on my website www.gemslearninginstitute.com and published it two days ago. It was ranking on Google first page for a few keywords. I did not touch the pages which were ranking on first page. Since then I am not seeing the website ranking on the Google. Does it take a few days to rank again? How can I ensure that next time if I update the website or publish some blog on my website then it should not effect the ranking. Secondly, if I would like to rank in three different cities then do I need to create separate pages for each city or how should I proceed with this. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fslpso0 -
What do I do about sites that copy my content?
I've noticed that there are a number of websites that are copying my content. They are putting the full article on their site, mentioning that it was reposted from my site, but contains no links to me. How should I approach this? What are my rights and should I ask them to remove it or add a link? Will the duplicate content affect me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
New links not showing in site explorer ?
I have built links to my site this past month that I know are live and in place and some do follow and some no follow ... Are the no follow links just not going to show up in my site explorer data ? And the others - why would they not be showing up yet ? SeoMoz updated thier link data aug 1st , my site has been crawled since then , but this new work I have done for link building have not shown up - None of them ? Its like I did not do any work ? how long could it take for them to show up and affect my site trust ect ? Also is there anything I vould be doing to speed the process up of having the new links found ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlane90 -
Need help or explanation on my site!
My site has suffered greatly since the recent Google update. I have done everything as suggested. I have had all bad links removed over 2 months ago. I have lowered keyword density (not easy since the keyword is in our company name!). I have rewritten various content and bolstered our existing content. What gives? What can I do? As an example the keyword, "maysville plumber" - I rank about 40th for this keyword. The first three pages are filled with websites with literally NO content or no added value. Maysville is a town of about 1k residents - there is no competition. Before the update I was #1 for years on this particular keyword. And this is the case with 35 other cities (mostly small cities, but a few larger ones). Please help me understand or suggest what I can possibly do at this point. We have hundreds of pages of unique content on each and every page. We have zero duplicate content (I have ran tests and crawlers). We have no fishy links. I have not gotten any messages from google on Webmasters. PLEASE HELP!! I asked a similar question a little while back and fixed all of the suggestions. My site is www.akinsplumbing.net.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chuckakins0 -
Site comparison - what is wrong with me?
www.bcspeakers.com/ vs www.psbspeakers.com/ with the search term "speakers" why does BC speakers show up in around #50-60 and PSB is not in the top #1000? From all metrics on seomoz PSB kicks BC in every area by a large margine! can anyone see why BC is listed for that keyword and PSB is not?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevin48030 -
Has my site been penalized?
Our site was listed on the first page for the phrase Active SEO on Google.co.uk. We suddenly find ourselves on page 4 overnight and we're not sure what's going on. We have not undertaken an Black hat techniques however the site is fairly new. Anyone have any ideas as to what is going on?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MassivePrime0 -
Not ranking well after site was hacked
My site was hacked and that seemed to have a pretty big effect on search rankings. I'm pretty sure I've gotten the hack completely removed (as of 10/16.) During the hack and even now, all of my posts created after Aug 1 don't rank in regular Google searches at all even if I search for the titles in quotes. But I can tell they are indexed because I see them when I do a site search in Google. And I see that they are cached. Posts from before Aug 1 rank well in Google searches. The issue with August and after posts no longer appearing started in mid September. Prior to that the some of the August posts were actually performing very well. The September date corresponds to when we first started working on removing the hack. It looks like the August and after posts all have a pagerank of 0, whereas the mozrank is much higher. I've request reconsideration from Google and was told that no manual action was taken against my site. I know that's a lot of background, but I'm wondering how long do I need to wait before the August and after posts start ranking? Is there anything I can do in the mean time to address this pagerank issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris-at-Magoosh0 -
Can you advise why my site get outranked by sites with way less authority and so on
Hello SeoMoz, As a new member I first want to thank you guys for your service, seomoz is by far the best resource and toolbox I have ever found. I have a question, or more of a request if you could advise me on what I do wrong.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DennisForte
I have a website: www.letsflycheaper.com with a Domain Authority of 80, and my target keywords are keywords like: cheap business class, business class flights.
My target page is: www.letsflycheaper.com/business-class.php. With all my keywords I am page 2 and I have a real hard time getting on the first page, but if I look at my competitors like: www.wholesale-flights.com with a Domain Authority of 'just' 50, crappy backlinks and so on, they are all on the first page with almost all of my keywords that I want to target. What do I do wrong? Can you maybe give me a couple tips on where I should focus on more? Hopefully you guys can help me... Kind Regards, Ramon van Meer0