How can we compete ???
-
Hi Guys,
We are new to MOZ and just getting some data on one of our projects Shottle Hall
This is a wedding venue in Derbyshire and as you can imagine it's quite a competitive niche.
We have been working with them to help build website content and build natural links.
However we are against a lot of sites that have obviously had lots of "questionable" SEO work done in the past and these sites are still ranking above Shottle Hall
One competitor has lots of links from very low quality blogs - that they have obviously made themselves
http://derbyshire-attractions.blogspot.co.uk/
Another site is ranking well and is buying banner links that pass page rank
http://whimsicalwonderlandweddings.com/
This really makes me think should we be doing these tactics ??
We are told by Google that this is not the way to rank but I am very disheartened by these facts!!
-
Hi Marcus,
Thanks so much for adding some more really great suggestions to this post.
The NAP consistency is something I will look into ASAP
Kind Regards
James
-
Hey Karl, Ninja
One quick clarification here from my original post - when I say local I mean folks searching in and about Derbyshire. Important clarification as quite rightly as we want to target everyone looking for a wedding venue in that location.
Your Google+ Local page is actually really nice but a few things jump out at me.
1. Potential issue with page name using 'Wedding Venue' - this is a violation and whilst some folks get away with this it's uneccessary and something I would try changing
2. The rel=publisher tag is not set so I would implement that: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1708844?hl=en
3. Reviews - we could always use more reviews from real (and happy) visitors
4. NAP Consistency - from the quickest of looks I see some NAP consistency issues. Different names for the hotel (Shottle Hall Country House Hotel), different phone numbers, address variations. Getting your NAP really consistent is one of the easiest jobs to help overall and will impact in a positive way and remove some negative effects. This ties back into the use of the name on the profile page as 'Shottle Hall Wedding Venue' and 'Shottle Hall Country House Hotel' elsewhere (as they could be two different things entirely).
5. Sites like hitched.co.uk are highly visible and if profiles are well configured they should drive lots of targeted leads. Think beyond the link / citation and consider this a potential source of revenue and ensure you are measuring so can assess the ROI - wedding venues charge a pretty penny so if these sites generated one confirmed sale per month at £1000 PA they are likely providing a strong return on investment and an additional channel.
6. PPC - yep, it's brutal out there but again, it's just another channel and if you can measure it and it does not bite into leads from other channels then in many competitive industries it can be somewhat essential. Even if you only use it for some display / retargeting after organic visits to keep pushing the venue PPC is worth exploring (and measuring).
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
Thanks for the reply
it's a good point about the disavowed links I had not thought of this
Blogger outreach is something we are keen to look at further, however many wedding bloggers will only offer sponsored content or side bar adverts.
Other websites seem to be paying for these do-follow links but I was keen to try and avoid anything that may lead to a future penalty ??
It's annoying that others seems to be doing this and getting away with it!!
Kind Regards
James
-
Thanks for the reply Marcus,
We are increasing our PPC at the moment as we can measure this and it seems to be quite effective so far.
Our site was always ranking first position of Google Maps but has recently dropped so got to try and figure out why ??
The strange thing is we now have a vanity URL on Google+ and out of most of the other local venues we are really the only ones active on Google+ ??
Regarding hitched.co.uk we came off a few of the big directories a few years back as they just just kept pushing the prices up and at last they were trying to get us to pay over £1,000 per year for a listing!! and I assumed as these were no-follow probably not worth the money ??
We have a website refresh planned soon and I am hoping to add some more video content and of course we plan to keep producing high quality blog content.
Thanks agin for your input and advice I was feeling a bit disheartened earlier
-
I would stick to the local SEO strategy but think about contacting influential bloggers from around the area, maybe look at Yorkshire and even Lancashire because people will be willing to drive a couple of hours to a nice hotel. I know you won't be able to target those location keywords onsite but in terms of your outreach, it may be better for you as people in Derbyshire won't necessarily be looking for a hotel there.
Whatever you do, don't go down the black hat road, Google is far too smart for that now and you WILL get penalised. I'm assuming you have done a backlink analysis on the competitors to see what links they have, well don't forget they could have disavowed these links and they would still show up in OSE etc so don't believe everything you see when it comes to backlink analysis.
I'm not a huge advocate of PPC, even with the (not provided) problems we are having, but you it would be interesting to test a PPC campaign out to see the response and you can use these results to help you in your SEO campaign.
-
Hey Blue Ninja
I have had a quick look and it appears that you do well for 'wedding hall derbyshire' so you are doing something right there. Alternatively, if I search for 'wedding venue derbyshire' which is likely the more popular term I don't see the Shottle Hall site but I do see some localised results and a four pack of listings from Google Maps.
That localisation looks like an opportunity to me and one that you can certainly compete in. From the quickest of reviews the sites returned are not really doing anything from a Local SEO perspective and they have not claimed their profiles, encoraged any reviews etc (which would indicate they were going after local search).
How do you compete?
- Well carry on keeping it clean. You have no evidence these bad links are working and if they are they won't for much longer
- Try and add some local SEO into your approach to drive more visibility with local users
- Ensure you are well listed on important industry verticals like hitched.co.uk as they can drive a lot of visibility (and will kick back into your local SEO)
- Consider some GEO targeted PPC to pick up some leads from paid search
- Round out your strategy a bit - try to build social followers, build solid evergreen locally focused content, engage with your social audience, consider some retargeting adverts, social adverts etc
I think there is plenty you could do here with some options being something that can start working straight away (social, hitched.co.uk & PPC / remarketing) and others that will take a little more time (organic & local listings).
Hope that helps!
MarcusP.S. UK based?
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
-
Can affiliate links affect DA?
Hey guys, over the past two months my DA has gone down from 17 to 12, and I have no dura what could have caused it. I started putting in some Amazon affiliate links in my posts - could that be the reason why? Also, I have about 30 backlinks from a blog with a spam score of 11% - could this also be affecting it in any way?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AmyAed0 -
Where can I find either web directories or decent sites that will link back to me...without paying thru the nose?
Hi Community! For starters, from my question, you can probably determine that I am either a novice, or very low intermediate SEO person. We all know, links are king with our friends at Google. I am a recently-retired IT person with a very small freelance IT company (just me), and I'd like to generate more leads/business. I'd be thrilled with one or two small jobs per week to supplement my pension. I've used the MOZ tools only to determine the majority of my competitors have like a thousand links, whereas Google reports me as having 97 links. My on-page grades are all upper 90s and a couple are at 100%. I am not targeting really competitive keywords, so that's not my problem. My problem is my DA, which is sitting at a mere 20...pause to laugh! I don't want to pay thru the nose for high DA links for the obvious reasons. I submitted my URLs to as many directories as I could find. Would anyone have a decent list of sites where I could submit my URL to get some more links? Thanks guys and Gals! Willy
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NewSEOguy0 -
Best tips needed to compete in SEO industry? (Thank you in advance)
Hello Moz Friends, So I wanted to ask for your friendly tips. Im in Colorado and my competition has business names like Colorado SEO and then one company owns like 5 of the top 10 Google ranked sites under different names. Im an honest guy, but how does someone compete in a crazy competitive industry? How about you? Did you start at the very bottom and never got to the top? Or did you outrank the leaders? I know seo people are smart, but it's easy to wonder if there is any room left? So just wondering your success or failure stories with competing in a competitive market online Any tips are appreciated! Chris
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | asbchris0 -
Can a Self-Hosted Ping Tool Hurt Your IP?
Confusing title I know, but let me explain. We are in the middle of programming a lot of SEO "action" tools for our site. These will be available for users to help better optimize their sites in SERPs. We were thinking about adding a "Ping" tool based in PHP so users can ping their domain and hopefully get some extra attention/speed up indexing of updates. This would be hosted on a subdomain of our site. My question is: If we get enough users using the product, could that potentially get us blacklisted with Google, Bing etc? Technically it needs to send out the Ping request, and that would be coming from the same IP address that our main site is hosted on. If we end up getting over a 1000 users all trying to send ping requests I don't want to potentially jeopardize our IP. Thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David-Kley0 -
How long we can keep 302 redirection for a webpage url?
Hi Friends, I have a webpage featuring a product. I have created a new domain featuring the same product and the page is under construction. I am planning to do 302 redirection from the new domain to the existing domain for the time being. How long can I keep the 302 redirection from the new domain to existing domain? Is there any fixed time period/ duration that we can keep the 302 redirection for a webpage? I am planning to make few more pages (privacy policy, about us, etc) from the new domain 302 redirected to the existing domain. Is it possible? If so, how long can I keep the same? May I know which redirect is safe to use in this case, 302 or 301 redirect?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | zco_seo0 -
Can good penalize a site, and stop it ranking under a keyword permanently
hi all we recently took on a new client, asking us to improve there google ranking, under the term letting agents glasgow , they told us they used to rank top 10 but now are on page 14 so it looks like google has slapped them one, my question is can google block you permanently from ranking under a keyword or disadvantage you, as we went though the customers links, and removed the ones that looked strange, and kept the links that looked ok. but then there ranking dropped to 21, is it worth gaining new links under there main keyword even tho it looks like google is punishing them for having some bad links. the site is www. fine..lets...ltd...co....uk all one word cheers
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | willcraig0 -
How can I make use of multiple domains to aid my SEO efforts?
About an year, the business I work for purchased 20+ domains: sendmoneyfromcanada.com sendmoneyfromaustralia.com sendmoneyfromtheuk.com sendmoneyfromireland.com The list goes on, but you can get the main idea. They thought that the domains can be useful to aid http://www.transfermate.com/ . I can set up a few micro sites on them, but from that point there will be no one to maintain them. And I'm, honestly, not too happy with hosting multiple sites on one IP and having them all link to the flagship. It is spammy and it does not bring any value to end users. I might be missing something, so my question is - Can I use these domains to boost my rankings, while avoiding any shady/spammy techniques? P.S. I had this Idea of auctioning the domains in order to cover for the domain registration fees.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Svetoslav0 -
Is it possible that since the Google Farmer's Update, that people practicing Google Bowling can negatively affect your site?
We have hundreds of random bad links that have been added to our sites across the board that nobody in our company paid for. Two of our domains have been penalized and three of our sites have pages that have been penalized. Our sites are established with quality content. One was built in 2007, the other in 2008. We pay writers to contribute quality and unique content. We just can't figure out a) Why the sites were pulled out of Google indexing suddenly after operating well for years b) Where the spike in links came from. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dahnyogaworks0