Site not progressing at all....
-
We relaunched our site almost a year ago after our old site dropped out of ranking due to what we think was overused anchor text....
We transferred over the content to the new site, but started fresh in terms of links etc. And did not redirect the old site. Since the launch we have focused on producing good content and social, but the site has made no progress at all. The only factor I can think off is that one site linked to us from all of their pages, which we asked them to remove which they did over 3 months ago, but still showing in Webmaster tools....
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
-
Hi Jason,
Thanks for writing in. Without going into a full site audit (which could take hours-days) a few areas I might take a closer look at:
-
As others have mentioned, the site design does have an outdated feel. Beyond user experience it looks like a site that might be vulnerable to Panda updates. Relentlessly improving user experience will likely lead to an increase in rankings.
-
Is the new site a copy of the old? Just wondering if any duplicate content exist out there from the old site. If you, you probably want to make sure to remove all old content from Google's index.
-
I'd give the site a full link audit. You can do this by hand using Google Webmaster Tools and Open Site Explorer. Lately, I've been using Link Detox with good results. Disavow any dodgy links you can't remove.
Overall your link profile looks decent for your vertical, nothing too penalty worthy but some of the directory-style links may be suspect (or at least lower in value) in Google's eyes.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
-
Nope, webmaster is all good.
-
Thanks Jesse, we are in-fact just undertaking a new design, as like you we felt it was a little difficult to understand all the info. We'll address the alt tag issues as part of the redesign.
Do you think that is what is causing the lack of serps?
-
Couple pointers to increase your onsite SEO:
Alt tags - I see very few alt and title tags on your images and when I do see them they don't seem to be attacking specific keywords. Do so but not in a forced manner, keep it organic and relevant. For example your home page is title "Mobility Aids" yet that keyword only exists 5 times on the page and zero times in images titles or alts.
Also with your images you might want to consider naming the actual file something other than padlock2.png or things like this... That is a personal preference and I can't really back it up with data but I swear it'll help.
Your blog is a bit funky. The titles of the most recent articles are simply chapter numbers and tell me nothing about the content. It makes me not want to read them at all. You need to try and attract users with your content, not deter them.
Another article I randomly clicked was something about an Interview you did. This was the entirety of the article:
"Just got back from interviewing a mobility scooter user for tips and advice... Is there a better way to get advice than from someone who owns and uses a scooter. Probably not. Finished video coming soon."
That's it. It was posted in August. See right away as a user I feel like you aren't trying and don't want to return. I bet your bounce rate is rather high and length of visit rather low. These factors matter for sure. Engagement is arguably the most important thing when it comes to your design.
Speaking of design, it is kind of all over the place. I didn't really understand the layout and had trouble navigating. I looked for the blog which was found via a weird button at the very bottom of a very long wordy home page with weird formatting. At the top of the home page is a "usefull articles" button which goes to a page with a few titles that are underlined and say "read more" and then more links pop up and it doesn't even look like you can click the "read more" part because it's not actually a link but instead a clickable div and my run-on sentence here is an attempt to illustrate the confusion I experienced. Whew.
So I guess what I'm saying is you should focus more on improving the design, layout, and usability of your site. Please don't misconstrue my comments as demeaning or poking fun at your site. It isn't terrible at all. I just think addressing the issues I've pointed out might actually go a long way to improving your ranking. The social stats are great but if users land on your site and leave immediately due to poor UX then it's all for not.
Hope this helps. Don't give up!
-
Hi Jason
Well I have run a few checks and I must admit I cannot explain why your site is not ranking in the top 50 SERPs for some of the key phrases you are targeting. Some of the content is a bit thin in places but, I have checked quite a few pages I would have thought you should be in the top 50 for as a minimum and you are not.
So, like you I am scratching my head a little. I presume you have a Google Webmaster Tools account for this site. Is there anything reported in there that would indicate an issue?
Peter
-
The sites has made no progress in ranking.....
Our social consist of Google plus (97), facebook (2600 likes) and twitter 500 plus followers with which often retweet our posts. The content is user focused, and try to answer questions with in depth articles. Our site www.help-my-mobility.org if that helps.
-
Hi Jason
Are you able to give more information? What do you mean specifically by your "site not progressing at all"?
A lot has changed with Google over the last year. If you started with a new site, then that site needs to build up its authority. When you say you have focussed on producing good content and social that is good. But it's important to check if you have optimised that content correctly, is it customer-focused and targeted at the questions and information your target market are asking and looking for. With social are those you are engaging with sharing it through likes, tweets/retweets, +1s etc? Have you checked your site against competitors? How do they compare?
There's a lot of things to look at and check so with what you have said I can only give you ideas about where the issues may lay, but it's likely to be an issue with one or more of the above.
Peter
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
-
Google Mobile site crawl returns poorer results on 100% responsive site
Has anyone experienced an issue where Google Mobile site crawl returns poorer results than their Desktop site crawl on a 100% responsive website that passes all Google Mobile tests?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MFCommunications0 -
Old sitemaps after site migration.
Hi, I was wondering if it's safe to remove all the sitemaps from the old site in search console? It's been 3 months since site migration from http://sitea.com (301 redirected) to http://siteb.com. Therefore, can I delete the old sitemap from the http://sitea.com from search console? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
How much SEO damage would it do having a subdomain site rather directory site?
Hi all! With a coleague we were arguing about what is better: Having a subdomain or a directory.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gaston Riera
Let me explain some more, this is about the cases: Having a multi-language site: Where en.domain.com or es.domain.com rather than domain.com/en/ or domain.com/es/ Having a Mobile and desktop version: m.domain.com or domain.com rather than domain.com/m or just domain.com. Having multiple location websites, you might figure. The dicussion started with me saying: Its better to have a directory site.
And my coleague said: Its better to have a subdomain site. Some of the reasons that he said is that big companies (such as wordpress) are doing that. And that's better for the business.
My reasons are fully based on this post from Rand Fishkin: Subdomains vs. Subfolders, Rel Canonical vs. 301, and How to Structure Links for SEO - Whiteboard Friday So, what does the community have to say about this?
Who should win this argue? GR.0 -
Merging Niche Site
I posted a question about this a while ago, but still haven't pulled the trigger. I have a main site (bobsclothing.com). I also have a EM niche site (i.e shirtsmall.com). It would be more efficient for me to merge these site, because: I would have to manage content, promos, etc. on a single site. In other words, I can focus efforts on 1 site. If I am writing content, I don't have to split the work. I don't have to worry about duplicate content. Right now, if I enter a product URL into copyscape, the other sites is returned for many products. What makes me apprehensive are: The niche site actually ranks for more keywords than the main site, although it has lower revenue. Slightly lower PA, and DA. Niche site ranks top 20 for a profitable keyword that has about 1300 exact match searches. If you include the longer tail versions of the keyword it would be more. If I merge these sites, and do proper 301s (product to product, category to category) how likely is it that main site will still rank for that keyword? Am I likely to end up with a site that has stronger DA? Am I better off keeping the niche site and just focusing content efforts on the few keywords that it can rank well for? I appreciate any advice. If someone has done this, please share your experience. TIA
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
Breadcrumbs for E Commerce Site
Hi, Does anyone have experience with Breadcrumb nodes for e-commerce? http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.overstock.com%2FOffice-Supplies%2FOffice-Star-Professional-Air-Grid-Deluxe-Task-Chair%2F2605023%2Fproduct.html What happens if your product appears in more than one category? Should you let google spider the various breadcrumb routes to the category?? Which one would take preference in results? Right now, for ease of management, we have not enabled category URL paths to the product - so the product appears right after the domain, for example, www.mydomain.com/en/myproduct.html - If we do enable category URL paths, Any comments or opinions? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Merging Sites: Will redirecting the old homepage to an internal page on the new site cause issues?
I've ended up with two sites which have similar content (but not duplicate) and target similar keywords, rather than trying to maintain two sites I would like to merge the sites together. The old site is more of a traditional niche site and targets a particular set of keywords on its homepage, the new site is more of an authority site with a magazine type homepage and targets the same set of keywords from an internal page. My question is: Should I redirect the old site's homepage to the relevant internal page on the new website...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lara_dar
...or should I redirect the old site's homepage to the new site's homepage? (the old site's homepage backlinks are a mixture of partial match keyword anchor text, naked URLs and branded anchor text) I am in two minds (a & b!) (a) Redirecting to the internal page would be great for ranking as there are some decent backlinks and the content is similar (b) But usually when you do a 301 redirect the homepage usually directs to the new homepage and some of the old site's links are related to the domain rather than the keyword (e.g. http://www.site.com) and some people will be looking for the site's homepage. What do you think? Your help is much appreciated (and hope this makes sense...!)0 -
New site now links disappearing in Open Site Explorer and GWT
We launched a new site at the beginning of December 2012 and carefully 301'd all URLs from the old site to the new (custom CMS on old site wordpress on new). Our rankings have slipped quite badly but the most worrying thing is that we used to have about 1200 backlinks according to GWT/OSE before the new site launched and now we're down to about 30. Can anyone help shed some light on this please? The site is www.littleoneslondon.co.uk A few things that might help: 1. We were getting a lot of links through our job feeds (it's a nanny recruitment site) on indeed and trovitt, for some reason no new ones from these have appeared in site explorer and all the old jobs are gone completely. 2. We had 1000s of not found errors in google webmaster tools and once these were redirected and marked as fixed this is when the links disappeared. 3. We are getting quite a few 504 errors on the site due to an old proxy redirect (/blog was hosted on a different server on the old site and has not been removed yet), this will be fixed tomorrow but could this be a factor? 4. The developer seems to have redirected all the links through wordpress directly some how (I don't see any redirect plugins but there are lots of pages called 'redirect'). There are no references in the htaccess file for any redirects other than from the /blog folder that the wordpress instance sits in. Sorry for the long post, I hope I've given any details you'd need and I really appreciate any help anyone can give. Thanks, Karl
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bdig0 -
What on-page/site optimization techniques can I utilize to improve this site (http://www.paradisus.com/)?
I use a Search Engine Spider Simulator to analyze the homepage and I think my client is using black hat tactics such as cloaking. Am I right? Any recommendations on to improve the top navigation under Resorts pull down. Each of the 6 resorts listed are all part of the Paradisus brand, but each resort has their own sub domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0